-9- Noah Ark-like Ships as a Metaphor for Means of Liberation
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
The word ‘ship’ is the metaphor for Dhamma. Dhamma is compared to a ship or a raft which carries people across a river or a sea. Please carefully take note that we must not grasp at and hold on to the ship or raft. We should consider it as just a means for us to cross a river or a sea. If we hold on to it, then we cannot leave it. Neither can we do anything else.
This means that we must ‘ferry’ our lives. In everyday language, this is to say that we must cross the saṃsāra. In the Dhamma or spiritual language, our mind has to be raised above suffering. The ferry is in our mind; we don’t have to look for it anywhere else. Dhamma is like a ferry. When you study Dhamma, you study about the spiritual ferry, which will carry you away from suffering to non-suffering. In everyday words, you cross over saṃsāra to nibbāna. In Dhammic words, you get away from ignorance to enlightenment.
Within our mind, there is already something similar to a great sea – one which is even greater than any real sea in the world. Let’s pay attention to how we can cross it. If we have Dhamma as the ferry, then we will be able to do so. If you see a ship, always think about ferrying. But don’t be deluded by the ship. Don’t hold on to it or stay comfortably in it. Try to flee the shore of suffering to the shore of non-suffering. Any time you see a ship or its picture, think about it this way.
Death is just like a sea or an ocean. Don’t get killed by physical death or spiritual death. Speaking in either a mundane or Dhammic way, we should not get killed by a sea or an ocean. We should be able to cross it, thereby making our lives worthwhile.
I would like to say that it’s extremely funny that, what I took a lot of trouble to construct does not benefit those who see it as much as I had hoped, but it benefits me a great deal. It’s laughable that the merit does not get to those whom I intended, but it comes back to me all the time. Whenever I see the things I have created, I always collect the merit. But the visitors rarely do so. I don’t know whom to blame. Maybe I have not tried hard enough to explain it to them. I cannot blame the visitors. Anyway, the ships we built are not so useful for the target people, but they are very useful – extremely useful – for myself.
The ships were built to collect rain water. I asked myself about what shape a rainwater tank should have and came up with that of a thought-provoking ship. This is why the tanks were built as ships. But some fools who came to see them asked why on earth the ships here contained water rather than being surrounded by it. They thought we were out of our mind. As they see the ships this way, they do not get the benefit that we intend for them.
They don’t know the reason why we built the ships to contain water. I thought of telling them, ‘Hey! These are people-catching ships, not fish-catching ones. Your dirty fishing vessels are in water, but our ships catch people. That’s why ours have water in them.’
(From "Benefits You Should Get from Coming to Suan Mokkh," a talk given by Tan Ajahn in December 1988 at the request of Tan Dusadee Bhikkhu, as translated from the Thai by Aj. Mongkol Dejnakarintra.)
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“24 Benefits of Suan Mokkh,” is a series of weekly posts published to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the foundation of Suan Mokkh in May 1932 in Chaiya, southern Thailand.
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For other Dhamma teachings by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (audios, free ebooks, interviews, poems), please visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.
Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives collection (Ref. W-138)