Do I Already Know?

In The Sutra of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life, there is an important story about Bodhisattva Dharmakara, who would later become Amida Buddha.

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 Countless aeons ago, there was a king of extraordinary ability and wisdom. One day, he heard the teachings of Buddha Lokeśvararāja and was deeply moved. He awakened the aspiration to seek the highest enlightenment. He gave up his kingdom and his throne, became a monk, and took the name Dharmakara.

 

Dharmakara went before Buddha Lokeśvararāja, bowed respectfully, praised the Buddha, and expressed his aspiration. Then he asked how he should walk the path to Buddhahood.

 

But Buddha Lokeśvararāja did not give him an answer. “You yourself must know.”

 

What a strange answer.

 

Dharmakara had been a king. He had knowledge and experience, authority and status. He had led others and made important decisions. All of these had shaped the person he had become. Yet none of them could give him the answer he was seeking.

 

The path before him was the path to Buddhahood—a path he had never walked before. His experience as a king could not take him there. To see what lay before him, perhaps he first had to step away from everything through which he had understood himself and the world.

 

When I was studying this sutra, my teacher often warned us not to dismiss stories like this too quickly. To modern ears, they may sound like myths or ancient tales.

 

But he would say: “Do not let what you already know shape the way you read it. Open your eyes, open your mind, and look carefully. The heart of Buddhism can be found in stories like this.”

 

He also taught me that we may read the same story again and again and yet see something different each time. The story has not changed. We have changed.

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Our experiences change. Our circumstances change. Our responsibilities change. And our way of seeing things changes. A passage we once read without giving it much thought may suddenly speak to us in an entirely different way.

 

That is why we should not be too quick to say, “I already know this story.” We may know the words, but that does not mean we have seen everything within them.

 

Perhaps the same is true of our lives. We value what we have acquired through the years —our education, knowledge, experience, accomplishments, positions, and titles. We take pride in what we have learned and what we have achieved. These things are important. They help us work, make decisions, support others, and fulfill our responsibilities.

 

But without realizing it, they can also become the lens through which we see everything. We see a situation through our past experience. We see another person through our own values. We decide what something means according to what we already know. Before we know it, we may no longer be seeing what is actually before us. We may be seeing it through the lens of “me.” Perhaps this is the deeper question in Dharmakara’s story:

 

Can I see what is before me without first measuring it against what I already know? Dharmakara had all the experience of a king, but it could not show him the path to Buddhahood. His position, title, and authority could not help him. Even his remarkable intelligence could not give him the answer.

Perhaps we are not so different.

“I know that.”

“I have done this before.”

“This is the way we have always done it.”

“I know what I am doing.”

 

The more experience we gain, the easier it becomes to say these things. Yet sometimes the very knowledge and experience that have served us so well can prevent us from seeing what is actually before us. “You yourself must know.”

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Perhaps Buddha Lokeśvararāja was not simply withholding the answer from Dharmakara. Perhaps he was urging him to step beyond the knowledge and experience he had relied upon, beyond his position and accomplishments, and even beyond his idea of “This is who I am.”

 

To truly see, perhaps we sometimes have to step away from ourselves. My teacher’s words still come back to me: Open your eyes. Let go of your assumptions. Look sincerely.

 

When we stop thinking, “I already know,” and step away, even for a moment, from our own experience, opinions, and sense of self, perhaps we can see what is before us with an open heart.

 

And then, something we have never seen before may begin to open before our eyes.

 

Namo Amida Butsu