20210528潤漬蒼生濟世間 Aspire to Serve as Bodhisattvas in this World中英
Mom suffers from a combination of geriatric diseases; she has delusions about people harming her, and talks to imaginary people. Sometimes she stays up the whole night talking to herself. It’s only manageable with medications.
Keep your eyes close, Granny!
You gotta tell us if you feel uncomfortable. Yes, you’re happy, aren’t you? We’ve seen that life is full of suffering; it truly has much suffering. No one can escape suffering as there’s a lot of it in life. No matter we are rich or poor, we have to go through birth, aging, illness, and death; nobody can avoid this at all. In term of aging, we may not notice it happening, yet, every second and every minute, it eventually takes everything away from us.
This is what I have spoken about recently. Every second and every day, it silently takes things away from us. Our appearance changes, as we can tell when our hair turns grays. This process silently happens as it takes everything away from us when our body starts aging. Such is life. When we get old, our body becomes weak. For sure, there are some people remain strong even in old age. But, under the law of nature, most people become weak physically as they get old. This is normal and natural.
So, recently, I have been telling myself. First, I tell myself that I am blessed. I’ve told myself that I am truly blessed. For more than fifty years, my blessing has been that I have the affinities of people helping me. Volunteers. More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha talked about the future world, a world filled with five turbidities. The Buddha also talked about living bodhisattvas in our world. He came to our world for one great purpose of teaching the Bodhisattva Way, which is in the Lotus Sutra.
The Lotus Sutra clearly mentions that the Buddha’s great purpose of coming to this world is to teach the Bodhisattva Way. The world is the only place that we can become bodhisattvas. Outside of this world, bodhisattvas cannot come into being. Even in the heaven realm, one cannot practice the way of Bodhisattva.
So, you see, to listen to Dharma, heavenly beings have to come to the human world. In the heaven realm, one cannot attain Buddhahood because there is no chance for them to give of themselves. Heavenly beings live in paradise; no one is suffering. They enjoy life and use up their blessings. They enjoy life and use their blessings.
They enjoy the blessings they’ve created in their past lives. In heaven, after they use up their blessings, they still need to undergo what karmic retribution they have. That karmic retribution might be in hell, animal realm, or in human realm.
They might not be reborn into the human realm because they’ve created heavy negative karma in their past lives. It’s just that they also created a lot of blessings. Yet, can the heavy negative karma be eliminated? No. They seeds of heavy negative karma are still there. It’s just that their abundant blessings surpass their negative karma, so they get to enjoy their blessings first.
After they use up their blessings, they still bring their negative karma with them to their next life. Whether it’s the animal realm, hell, or hungry ghost realm, they can still be reborn in the three lower realms. This is how we ordinary beings who have not been liberated undergo karmic retribution,
I often tell people that we mustn’t admire those who want to go to heaven. We must remember to make vows to be in the human realm. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva vowed to help beings in hell. I’ve vowed to guard the door to hell so that Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva does not have to work so hard.
I want to help them empty the hell sooner. So, we have to encourage people not to do bad deeds in this world. If people don’t do bad deeds, they will not go to hell. Yet, when people do good deeds, they must understand Dharma and walk the Bodhisattva Path. This is called practicing the middle way. We truly need to realize and understand Dharma.
When we chant the verse of the Three Refuges, in taking refuge in the Buddha, we must understand the great way of Truth and aspire to enlightenment. In taking refuge in the Dharma, we vow to deeply enter the sutra treasury. That’s how we gain wisdom as vast as the sea. In taking refuge in the Sangha, we are to guide living beings. So, in interacting with people, we need to recruit more living bodhisattvas.
If we abide by the rules of the Buddha’s teachings and cultivate our hearts and conduct, we’ll be able to guide people with our example. We can say, “I’ll take you with me on the road of Dharma.” Hence, we can guide all living beings without obstruction as long as we are sincerely pious, believe in selfless dedication, and believe everyone has love in their hearts.
Everyone has the affinity to enter the Buddha’s path, they just don’t have someone who introduces them to it. If we aspire and vow to inspire living beings, there are countless living beings that we can vow to deliver, yet, to do that, we must eliminate our afflictions. Don’t get caught in disputes amongst people, arguing who’s right and who’s wrong constantly, getting stuck on “but I’m right, he’s wrong” and not being able to get over it.
Doing that will lead us to forget our kindness all the time. I always tell people, spiritual cultivation calls for us to eliminate our afflictions to the point that is flawless. We need to keep eliminating them so that we can retain all the Dharma we receive. Don’t be like a water hose, which lets water pass by but remains empty inside.
We need to fill the water of Dharma to full capacity, so we are full of Dharma water. Even if they come just in droplets, or else, we will not have any Dharma to help us. “No Dharma to help us” would be a rather helpless state. Let us always have Dharma filled to the brim, so we can be moistened, and that the parched land of our heart can be under an air of dampness. With one good seed planted in our inner field, we can give to innumerable seeds.
One seed can give rise to innumerable seeds. As long as we have one seed, we can accumulate and accumulate seeds of kindness nonstop as we recruit more living bodhisattvas. With people, there will be a way. Everyone, when we have people, we will have a way, and we can gather up the various ways to carry out thigs we need to do, hence, there will be a positive force behind us.
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