Purification of Alms’ Food

This is what I have heard:

At that time the Buddha was staying in Anathapindaka’s monastery in the Jeta Grove. The venerable Shariputra in the early morning left his hut and went to where the Buddha was. He prostrated before the Buddha and then sat down to one side facing the Buddha.

Then Buddha instructed Shariputra:

Your organs of sense seem to be pure, your countenance is bright and different from that of ordinary people. In what kind of meditat samadhi are you coursing freely?

Shariputra replied:

World-honoured Lord I usually course freely in a kind of samadhi called the samadhi on emptiness.

The Buddha said to Shariputra;

Excellent, Shariputra! Excellent Shariputra! To be able to course freely in the samadhi on emptiness is something infinitely precious. Why is that? Among all the kinds of samadhi, the samadhi on emptiness is the highest kind of meditation. A bhikshu who is able to dwell in the samadhi on emptiness can transcend the ideas of self, human, living-being and lifespan. Such a monk can also transcend the notion of a beginning and an end of formations (conditioned objects of mind). That monk by his actions does not produce the conditions that are the root of formations, because he has transcended the idea of the beginning and end of formations. For that reason he is no longer subject to becoming in the future. Because he is no longer subject to becoming in the future, he no longer is burdened by pleasant or unpleasant retributions.

Shariputra, you should know that as I sat at the foot of the bodhi tree when I had not yet realized the fruit of buddhahood, I always asked myself: What practice is it that beings are not able to master so that they have to continue in the cycle of birth and death and cannot escape from it? After that I discovered: It is because they do not know how to practice the samadhi on emptiness, that living beings are drifting up and down on the ocean of birth and death without being able to arrive at the shore of liberation. The fact is that the samadhi on emptiness is there, but because they do not know how to practice it living beings give rise to perceptions and notions and are caught in these perceptions and notions. Because they give rise to perceptions and notions about the world like this, they are burdened by the condition of birth and death.

Once one attains the samadhi on emptiness one no longer has the need to run after anything anymore and one attains the samadhi of aimlessness and transcends forever the ideas of birth and death. At this point the practitioner simultaneously attains the samadhi on signlessness and experiences much joy. It is because beings are not able to realize these three samadhis (on emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness), that they have to keep going around in the cycle of birth and death. We have to keep looking deeply into objects of mind until we realize the samadhi on emptiness. Once we have realized the samadhi on emptiness we shall go on and realize the highest right and equal enlightenment.

Shariputra once we had realized the samadhi on emptiness, we continued for seven days and nights to sit at the foot of the bodhi tree in order to keep looking deeply and our eyes never grew tired.

For this reason, Shariputra, you should know that the samadhi on emptiness is the highest of all samadhis, the king of all samadhis.

Shariputra everyone who can should find ways to practice the samadhi on emptiness to its perfection. You should also practice like that.

Having heard the Buddha speak, Shariputra rejoiced and put the teaching into practice.

~Ekottarikagama 45, 6. Taisho 2, 773