Five Eyes - Physical Eye

Terjemahan Indonesia:  Lima Macam Mata – [1] Mata Fisik

Five eyes (pañca-cakṣu, 五眼).

These are

(1) the physical-eye that a sentient being is born with;

(2) the god-eye that can see anything anywhere;

(3) the wisdom-eye that can see the emptiness of dharmas;

(4) the dharma-eye that can discriminate all dharmas;

(5) the Buddha-eye of omniscience, which includes the preceding four at the highest level

THE FIVE EYES

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Delivered at the Temple of Enlightenment, Bronx, New York
May 25, 1969, the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of Buddha Shakyamuni

Link: http://www.baus.org/baus/library/5eyese.html

Dear friends:

What are the five eyes?

Buddhism classifies the eye into five categories; namely, the Physical eye, Heavenly eye, Wisdom eye, Dharma eye, and the Buddha eye.

It should be pointed out first that the term 'eye' used here does not refer to the ordinary human eye. The human eye is but one kind of physical eye. As a matter of fact, the human eye is not the best example of this category. An eagle has eyes which can see much farther than can those of a human. An owl has eyes which are much more sensitive to light than our eyes, and can see things in the darkness that we cannot see.

Physical Eye

In order to illustrate the limitations of the human eye, I shall use a chart prepared by scientists which is called the electromagnetic spectrum (Chart I). This chart tells us that our naked eye can only see a very narrow strip of the universe, called visible light. We cannot see infrared wave lengths and beyond, nor ultraviolet wave lengths and beyond. This means that before man invented the instruments to assist his naked eye in detecting the universe beyond the visible band, the world that he saw and considered complete, true, and real was actually incomplete and a very small portion of the whole universe. It is really amazing to realize that more than 2,500 years ago Buddha drew this same conclusion without the assistance of any of the instruments we now have.

Chart I

The following example may illustrate more clearly the inferiority of our human eye, and how it compares with the heavenly eye:

Imagine that there is a totally enclosed dark house in the middle of a big city, with one very small window from which one can see only crowded tall buildings, a little blue sky above, and a few limited human activities. Suppose a child is born and grows up in this house. What would be his impressions of his world? They would no doubt be based on what he sees through the small opening. No matter how eloquently one might describe to him the beauty of the vastness of a seascape and the wonder of a view at sunrise and sunset he could hardly understand and appreciate them.

This is precisely how our human eye limits us. We are actually in a dark house, viewing the universe through a very small opening which is our physical eye. Yet we insist that what we see is the complete, real, and true world.

Now imagine that there is another house on top of a mountain. The house has a large picture window from which one can see the unlimited sky and infinite horizon. Maybe we can make it even more romantic by saying that numerous flower gardens and dancing girls surround the place. Again, a child is born and grows up in this house. Is it not conceivable that the world he envisions is much greater and more beautiful than the one seen through the small window facing a crowded city? According to this analogy, the second child possesses the heavenly eye whereas the first one has only the physical eye.

To be cont'd.......



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