20191004滋潤慧命布善種 Inspiring More People to Live Out the Dharma
Every day, I look at what’s happened in the world. Seeing how manmade and natural disasters have frequently occurred, I’m truly worried and concerned. Take for example a parable in the Lotus Sutra. In the parable, there were naughty children frolicking in a burning house and their father kept crying out to them: “Danger! Danger! A fire has broken out on all sides. Get out of there!”
However, those naughty children had been carried away by having fun and simply turned a deaf ear to their father’s cries. They were unaware of the impending danger and their father’s extreme anxiety.
When did I spend such a long time explaining the texts of parable? Because it strikes a chord with me. I ask myself if I’m like the naughty children and if I’ve remained vigilant at all times. As the world, now fraught with disasters, is truly like a house on fire, I ask myself every day if I’ve always remained vigilant and worked hard to escape the burning house.
Everyone, will you heighten your vigilance after hearing what I’ve shared? As manmade disasters arise from people’s minds, all of us must tame our minds first and quickly make a great vow to do good. We must form affinities with our relatives and friends, the friends of our friends, the relatives, and so on.
To do good and sow blessings for the world, we must form good affinities with everyone. It’s not enough if we only form good affinities with those around us. We must also form good affinities with those who are related to them, just like a water drop falling into water, ripping out, and creating many concentric circles.
This is how we inspire and guide everyone to serve as a living bodhisattva. Only when everyone in the world practices the way of Bodhisattvas can we truly feel peaceful and at ease. What we are most concerned about is that people are not inspired to give with love.
So, everyone, may all of use learn the Dharma and cultivate ourselves to deliver all sentient beings. May all of us seize time to learn the Dharma so as to purify our hearts and minds and deliver others. Only when we have a pure heart and mind are we able to purify others’ hearts and minds. And, only when we’ve purified our hearts and minds and work to purify others’ hearts and minds can we walk onto the Bodhisattva Path.
To walk the path, we must strive towards enlightenment first. We must work to cleanse our hearts and minds and strive towards enlightenment so we can return to our pure, true nature, develop the three wisdoms, and understand the Four Noble Truths. The three wisdoms are the wisdoms of learning, pondering on, and practicing the Dharma.
We must listen to Dharma talks, take the truths to heart, and ponder on them with diligence rather than forget all the truths just after we learn about them. We must take the Dharma to heart, ponder on it, and take action to live it out. This is how we cultivate ourselves and walk on the Bodhisattva Path.
We must also practice the Three Flawless Studies, which is to cultivate moral discipline, samadhi, and wisdom. After we learn, ponder on, and practice the Dharma, we must cultivate moral discipline, samdhi, and wisdom. And we must do so with the same heart. This way, we can all have pure heart and mind and return to our pure, true nature. We must quickly work to purify our hearts and minds and help others to purify their hearts and minds so our society will be safety and peace.
For that, we must uphold our initial aspiration of learning the Dharma to deliver all sentient beings. As time always passes very quickly and I’m already advanced in age, I often ask myself if I’ve grown in wisdom. This is what I’m very concerned about. May you, as my disciples, also understand that our life diminishes day by day. Life is impermanent and we don’t know when our time will come. Yet, this is not important, for it is a law of Nature that none of us can escape death.
What’s most important is our wisdom-life. We must ask ourselves if we’ve learned the Dharma, if we’ve taken it to heart, and if we’ve etched it deeply upon our hearts so we can truly from in wisdom. Everyone, the Jing Si Dharma lineage is like pure water and is indispensable for us to nurture our wisdom-life and for seeds of goodness to grow. If we do not water the seeds we’ve sown, they will not sprout. So, with the Dharma, which is like water, we can nurture our wisdom-life and the Bodhi seeds we’ve sown can grow into a Bodhi forest.
For that, may you be mindful always. May we all seize the time we have to live out the Dharma in daily life and to serve as living bodhisattvas to help the needy. May all of us work mindfully to safeguard Mother Nature and take the Dharma to heart. We must understand that as we humans live under the same sky and on the same land, it is blessing for us when everyone else is safe and well.
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