So let me offer now a modern Western parable of the Buddhist "wisdom of the yonder shore" -- that shore beyond reason, from which "words turn back, not having attained" -- of which I first learned some thirty-odd years ago, from the lips of my very great and good friend Heinrich Zimmer. As we have said, Buddhism is a vehicle or ferry to the yonder shore. So let us imagine ourselves standing onthis shore; let us say, on Manhattan Island. We are sick of it, fed up. We are gazing westward, over the Hudson River, and there, behold! we see Jersey. We have heard a good deal about Jersey, the Garden State; and what a change that would surely be from the filthy pavements of New York! There are no bridges yet: one has to cross by ferry. And so we have begun to sit on the docks, gazing longingly over at Jersey, meditating upon it; ignorant of its true nature, yet thinking of it ever with increasing zeal. And then one day we notice a boat putting out from the Jersey shore. It comes across the waters, our way, and it docks right here at our feet. There is a ferryman aboard, and he calls, "Anyone for Jersey?" "Here!" we shout. And the boatman offers a hand.

"Are you completely sure?" he says, however, as we step down into his craft. And he warns "There is no return ticket to Manhattan. When you put out from this shore you will be leaving New York forever: all your friends, your career, your family, your name, prestige, everything and all. Are you still quite sure?" We are perhaps a bit intimidated, but we nod and declare that we are sure, quite sure: we have had Fun City to the teeth.

My friends, that is the way of becoming a monk or nun; the way of monastic Buddhism; the way of the earliest followers of the Buddha, and, today, of the Buddhists of Ceylon, Burma, and Thailand. We are here entering what is known as the "little ferryboat," or "lesser vehicle,"Hinayana , so called because only those ready to renounce the world as monks or nuns can ride in this craft to the yonder shore. The members of the lay community, unwilling as yet to take the fateful step, will have to wait (that's all!) for a later incarnation, when they will have learned a little more about the vain conceits of their luxuries. This ferry is small, its benches are hard, and the name inscribed on its side isTheravada, "the doctrine of the ancient saints."

We embark, the ferryman hands us an oar, and the craft moves out from the dock. Ship ahoy! We are on the way, but on a rather longer voyage than we knew. In fact, it may endure for a number of lives. Nevertheless, already we are enjoying it, and already we feel superior. We are the holy ones, the voyagers, the people of the crossing, neither here nor there. We actually know, of course, no more about the Garden State than the fools (as we now call them) back on shore in the rat-maze of New York; but we are heading in the right direction, and the rules of our life are entirely different from those of the folks back home. In terms of the ladder of the Kundalini ascent, we are atchakra five, Vishuddha, "purgation," the center of ascetic disciplines. And we are finding it, at first, very interesting and absorbing. But then gradually, in a surprising way, it begins to become frustrating -- even hopeless. For the aim of it all is to get rid entirely of ego- consciousness, whereas the more we strive, the more we are building up ego, thinking of nothing, really, but ourselves: "How amI doing?" "HaveI made any progress today? this hour? this week? this month? this year? this decade?" There are some who become so attached to all this self- examination that the last thing they really want to achieve is disembarkment. And yet, in some chance moment of self-forgetfulness, the miracle might indeed take place and our boat, in the spirit of the ancient saints, put to beach -- in Jersey, the Garden State, Nirvana. And we step ashore. We have left the boat and all its dos and don'ts behind.

But now let us realize where we are. We have arrived at theri hokkai, the shore of the knowledge of unity, nonduality, no separateness; and, turning to see what the Manhattan shore might look like from this absolute point of view. . . Astonishment! Thereis no "other" shore. There is no separating stream; no ferryboat, no ferryman; no Buddhism, no Buddha. The former, unilluminated notion that between bondage and freedom, life in sorrow and the rapture of

Nirvana, a distinction is to be recognized and a voyage undertaken from one to the other, was illusory, mistaken. This world that you and I are here experiencing in pain through time, on the plane of consciousness of theji hokkai, is, on the plane ofri hokkai, nirvanic bliss; and all that is required is that we should alter the focus of our seeing and experiencing.

But is that not exactly what the Buddha taught and promised, some twenty-five centuries ago? Extinguish egoism, with its desires and fears, and Nirvana is immediately ours! We are already there, if we but knew. This whole broad earth is the ferryboat, already floating at dock in infinite space; and everybody is on it, just as he is, already at home. That is the fact that may suddenly hit one, as "sudden illumination." Hence the name,Mahayana -- "big ferryboat," "greater vehicle" -- of the Buddhism of this nondual thinking, which is the Buddhism best known as of Tibet, medieval China, Korea, and Japan.