From the work of Nagarjuna, we understand birth and death and many occasions of everyday life as samsara. We can personalize this samsara, understand it as a living thing, and also nirvana, the truth with which we live as an enlightened one. Nirvana can exist within this samsara, through this living thing, this living being, and also beyond people’s concern, too. A sentient being and an enlightened being, in other words, samsara, and nirvana, are no different from each other. Zen always speaks of this: Fool and wise person, deluded person and enlightened being, are the same. This is illogical talk, but we have to see something is going on. From one side we call it samsara, from the other side, nirvana.
At some point, people produced the word, “bodhisattva.” Nirvana/samsara is another word for “bodhisattva.” Nirvana has the sense of peace and freedom. Another word for nirvana is “perfect innocence,” or, maybe, “perfection.” In Eastern religions, this opposite of samsara existed from the beginning. For a bodhisattva, always living in nirvana is always not abiding in nirvana. Always not abiding in nirvana is in nirvana. Otherwise the Bodhisattva is frozen in nirvana. Consider a person who is jogging in the street and suddenly stops. That’s the end. Dwelling in nirvana is that frozen state. A bodhisattva doesn’t “dwell in nirvana,” and as bodhisattvas, we don’t ignore or leave samsara. Yet, for a bodhisattva, the cycle of life is expanding.
Instinctive abilities are counted as the five hindrances, so these hindrances are not a bad thing. When we gaze at our own life, we have to claim it. We have these desires: The desire to eat, the desire to be known, not only fame, but maybe also to be known by others, to be understood, to not be alone. In this desire to be known, there is the awareness of friendship and family, the organic system of life. And eating maintains our life of today into tomorrow and promises more time, as well as the existence of consciousness of time. You look back and see the difference between yesterday and today. You are aware of space and time. You cannot live in the sky, in empty air. You settle to the ground, you have to have certain places to be, and so maintenance of life appears, desire for material possessions, and the desire to have generation. This is where man and woman come together. Physically and spiritually, we have to do that. These are all the basic work of instinct.
So the result of awareness of living is questioning ignorance; eating the apple becomes the opportunity to maintain life. If you don’t eat, you are in perfect innocence. By picking this apple, you maintain individual life, you limit yourself in perfect innocence. This whole existence, the very instinctive ability of us, is spoken of as “karma,” in Buddhist thought. Karma is the cycle of life. It goes on and on, whether you are aware of it or not. Awareness of samsara was the origin of Eastern religions. From the very beginning this was the experience of awakening, because without enlightenment there is no opportunity to see ignorance. Therefore, what we have to know, is that the people who wrote Genesis, who knew the mistake which was the beginning of separation, were enlightened. In Eastern religions the origin of the awareness of samsara can be called the awakening of avidya, ignorance, that is, you see it and are aware of it. Your age of awakening, as a socially-formed religion, is about three thousand years old. Three thousand years ago, many, many people began to be aware of themselves.