Two weeks ago,
we talked about Chapter Three. After we reform ourselves, how we change for the better. How do we do good deeds? After we reform, we stop our bucket from leaking. So we (begin to) accumulate goodness like, after the bucket is fixed, we accumulate the merits on top. Liao Fan had a very interesting way of doing this, like any good speakers, or any good, best sellers, they always start with stories. He gave you the cases they had in his time, in the Ming Dynasty. He talked about a gentleman, his surname was Yang. There was a case where the people had a lot of floods, the dam had broken the flood was killing a lot of people, because back then, the irrigation was not as good. Mr. Yang, instead of being like normal people who always loot, because when people and their property were being washed away, everyone looted the property around them, because finders keepers, that kind of mindset. But he himself was quite unique, he didn't choose to loot, even though he was not going to get caught, he chose to save lives. There were a lot of bodies flowing down the flooded river, and he saved as many as he could, resuscitating them (if necessary). This is one case of how Liao Fan demonstrated the good deeds done by (others), I mean, how people cultivated good deeds. Most of the cases are about being real, being true. So, instead of trying to do it for the sake of publicity, as we know, nowadays, the celebrities do it for a PR stunt. This action is done, even when people are not looking at them, or even when people are criticizing them. They go against the flow, when the flow is going towards the bad guy. This is one case, Mr. Yang, and, what's the effect? He has committed a good cause. Cause and Effect, right? We keep saying good cause, what's the effect? The effect is, it might not be shown in his life, but in his own offspring, which is Mr. Yang's son, and grandson. Mr. Yang, when he was middle aged, he and his son saved a lot of lives during the flood, even though everyone else was looting, but the result, just like fruit, right? It bore fruit in his grandson. His grandson became as high as a normal human could get in Imperial China. So he became the advisor to the Emperor, basically, in Australian terms he would be Governor General, in a sense. So he reached a very high position, and obviously, his whole family was lifted. So this is one case of people who act out of the kindness of their heart, get repaid. In fact, Master Chin Kung talks about this, these are just Huabao(花報), these are the leftovers. These effects are leftover good karma already so high in terms of the human realm. You can imagine the gentleman himself who committed these deeds, I don't think this world can sustain his good karma. So he has to go up to heaven. So there are many cases. Like, for example, there was a very poor government official. We keep seeing a lot of corruption nowadays, right? Not just nowadays, back then until today. We see corruption in Venezuela, in African countries, even in the US, they legalized the corruption, they call it lobbying. I study politics, I see that this is basically just corruption. But what they want is more money and a lot of people change their principals because of money. Right? They BianJie(變節). They don't hold on to their principals. (There are) very few, very precious people who do not do that, and we respect them a lot. So this was one case. There was a gentleman named Ying Zi Cheng. Okay, so Ying is a place and he's also Young. What happened is: he was one of the assistants to the district county or something. So his job was to do the paperwork on the legal matters in that county, very small, but he was, you can imagine, his salary was not really much, barely enough to feed his children. However, he saw his boss was being excessive in his punishments, you know, use of excessive force, as you can see nowadays, like the police overusing guns and all that. And it caused a lot of commotion in the court, and he just went and knelt in front of his boss, who was the judge, the district judge, the county judge and then he pleaded: Holdback you force, Sir, because these people who are guilty, these criminals, maybe petty thieves, or, you know, they steal stuff, or break into a house or something like that. They didn't mention it here. But he said that the reason why the people, the common folks were committing crimes was because the people who were in a higher position were not setting a good example. So in some sense it is a slap in the face, but what it means is that there's no example for them. Families breaking up maybe, the position is not great, so he just knelt in front of him, and he pleaded, pleaded mercy from him and said that we need to reflect on ourselves if people were not doing good stuff. So all the common kids, so to put it in a modern example, like you know, the unfortunate school shootings, or that in Australia, there's a lot of break-ins, with, you know, hostages and all that. The whole point is because of the people who they look up to, their parents, supposed to look up to their teachers, and everything, they don't have any more examples for them, to glue them together, to keep them on the right track. So these are the things that we need to reflect on as a community, as a society. So this is what he tried to present, the whole society is already breaking down. So what's that like? These people are just simply the effect of symptoms, like a cold, right? You just sneeze and all that. Yes, they need to be caught and punished, but you only catch the shoots, but you didn't go to the root of the matter. So why did that happen in the first place? So that's what he's trying to present in a simple action of kneeling and pleading for mercy. So this is how sages educate the world by example. So not just that, okay, he was poor, but when he met those prisoners, it's common to say he is a bad guy, we don't need to worry about him. But he saw this prisoner. I mean, back then they didn't have enough to eat. So the prisoner was so hungry. They were starving and maybe they were forced to go,... because he's starving, that prisoner is starving and he's like, I only have this much, like half a bag of rice. If I give it to the criminal, I mean to the prisoner, I wouldn't have anything else for my wife. So he talked to his wife and his wife agreed to cook porridge, because you know, porridge, you can cook more than rice. And he scooped up half of it, gave it to the prisoner, half of it for themselves. So this is kindness. And it's not, there's no Instagram, there's no Facebook or news report saying it's good or something, only done out of his heart, it is only heard through word of mouth, through Liao Fan. So, yeah, this was a very simple kindness, but, what happened when he did that. Also, all these cases usually focus on one life, which means that you might not see that person getting a good karma in the next life, because human realm we can't see beyond past, present, future, normal humans. They talk about something you can see. So his children, the good karma is obvious in his children. So he had two children, and both of his children have gone beyond his rank. So he had gone through the Imperial Examination, he got selected, and then he got to the higher position. So his whole family was better. The condition was better. So that's how it works. Then not just his children, his grandchildren went even higher. So, it’s like, the father was the county secretary, and then his children became something like a state (official), and then his own grandchildren became federal level (officials), very high ranking officials, so their lives got better and better and better. Yeah. It's a very good example. So these are all usually on the civilian side. There is also a case for military, military people, like people who serve as the armies and soldiers and all that. So, in Fujian, back in the Ming Dynasty, there's a person called Deng. he had a situation where he was assigned by the Emperor to overtake, to pacify Fujian because there were a lot of bandits like that. There were a lot of people becoming bandits, maybe because of poverty and stuff. And there were a lot of common folks who joined the bandit ranks. He was assigned by his superior to capture them. So kill or capture, something like that. He was attached to another person in command of the area. So before he operated, he commenced another operation to reduce collateral damage, to reduce unnecessary killing of the wrong people. He already had a list of those people who joined the ranks of bandits, so these people would be punished by death. So the rest were common folks, because they mixed together, right? They didn't have a clear rank and said ... or something. So what they did was they identified who the innocent people were, and he secretly sent one of their soldiers and gave each of them a piece of white cloth, and told them to put it on a pole, a flagpole and put it in front of the house on the night of the operation. So on that night, he commenced the operation of clearing the bandit camp, and this bandit camp was mixed in with the common folks home. So those households who were innocent or cleared, they were told exactly when to put the flag. So they put the flag out on that night. So when the soldiers came, when they saw a white flag, they kept going because the bandits wouldn’t hide in there. So the white flag Okay, good people. So ... everyone about 10,000? I think, yeah, there was a lot, there was at least 10,000 I think. And, they didn't say how many they captured, but how many people survived from this operation. Up to 10s of 1000s of people survived . So he saved a lot of killing. So, obviously, his children immediately went up and became Zhuang Yuan(狀元), in Chinese terms, this would be akin to something as high as high distinction. And this high distinction is not just, because back then China, when you get Exam pass is so rare, everyone who passed would immediately have a job, you would not have to go to a job interview. Right? Like, nowadays, we have a lot of people who get the ... , so the asset is more worthy. Okay, in the sense they secure a job immediately. So they got the high level and they became assistant to the Prime Minister. So Deputy Prime Minister in a sense, that means really high. There's so many, I can't keep going. But yeah, those stories can be reflected in modern times because good deeds do not have an era, like they don't have a time limit. This is hard, right? 我們老和尚(淨空老法師)講... this kind of thing is not restricted by era or whether you're poor or rich, it doesn’t matter, if you can do it. You just do it. You don't think about it. So these are all Liao Fan’s examples, beautiful, beautiful examples and all of them center around sincerity, they did them out of their real heart, and they all used their position. Some people were as low as a county secretary, some were like a normal scholar. Some were just normal folks like us, and they helped whenever they could. So everyone can commit good deeds, as long as they do it out of their heart. Not for show. So, after telling these stories, Liao Fan then talked about the principles, the underlying principles. So he talked about how you categorize kindness, those things are for us to understand what is true, how do we cultivate goodness to its fullest potential, without leaking it with our selfishness or our Xi Qi(習氣) our bad habits. So, Liao Fan's has listed eight pairs, so basically eight opposites. So first is real and fake(真假). Real kindness, fake kindness. The second one is Duan and Qu(端曲) is appropriate and inappropriate. The third is obvious and not obvious (陰陽), so obvious, is Yang(陽), not obvious, is hidden(陰), we call it hidden kindness, is Yin(陰). (是跟非), right and wrong, basically what appears to be right, it's actually wrong, what appears to be wrong in the first place, it is right in the long run. It's that deep. (The next) one is crooked. Not good enough or it diverted from the point. One is straight to the point that actually served the purpose. So crooked and straight,(端曲) direct translation. Another one is half kindness and full kindness. (半滿) So it's well rounded or half, halfway there, not enough. The last two: The second to the last is big and small.(大小) And the last one is easy and hard.(難易) So, you have eight (of kindness)(善有八種), real and fake(真假), inappropriate and appropriate(端曲), hidden and obvious kindness(陰陽), right and wrong(是非), diverted or straight to the point(偏正), half and full(半滿), big and small(大小), easy and hard(難易). So this is quite hard to put in English because all of them seem similar. So to do that, Liao Fan was very kind. He said that we need to go in depth. So these are really like a recipe, right? You need to know the grams and all that. So once we know that, the first thing you already get to the point and before he even said that, it is important to know this because if we just do blind kindness, out of blind, like a ... like oh, I want to be a good guy. So you might end up committing a bad deed. So Liaofan said that we need to know and the first thing, he goes straight to the point like what Master Chin Kung might say 真誠清淨 so the first thing is 真 假 and the best one is our dear Venerable Zhong Feng(中峰國師), who was the one who made 三時繫念 (Buddhist Thrice Yearning Service) for us, Dear Venerable 中峰禪師 (was from) the Yuan Dynasty. All these Confucius scholars asked him: What is good and bad? Real and fake, the real kindness is when people are not doing it for the sake of publicity and show, as I have mentioned. Venerable Zen Master Zhong Feng had been asked by all the dear Confucius scholars. Confucius scholars represent the worldly view. They asked him: Buddha says that there are Karmic consequences for everything we do, Cause and Effect, just like the shadow follows your body, it will always be there. but they don't seem to have a prosperous household, they do good stuff(deeds). Why don't they get respected or have a good ending? Some people did bad deeds, like as you can see in the modern world, you can already put yourself in that situation. Some people do a lot of bad deeds, the cartels and all that you know and they're rich. They are very flashy, their life is very good, as you can see from the media. So what Buddha says has no point. What Buddha says does not have logic and does not have a following. Then Master Zhong Feng replied, because we're ordinary beings our heart is not clean, that means our lense is not clean, we are not seeing things clearly. Our eyes are not open, our eyes of wisdom, which means we can't see things clearly, just like a mirror blocked by the dust they cannot reflect exactly as what’s happening outside. It's not accurate. They think the good is bad. They think the bad is good. They see things on the surface, they don't see beyond the surface, they don't see through the surface. It's unfortunate and very common for ordinary beings to reverse the truth. They diverted from the truth and ended up blaming the Gods, blaming the Heavens, blaming the teachers. They blame outside. They didn't see the reality. They thought they were talking about superstitious stuff. Little did they know, they actually talked in depth. People ask: Then how did that happen? Why is the result different? Shouldn't the good get the good and the bad get the bad? As you can already see from the question, Zhong Feng had wisdom. The next time when people ask you hard questions, don't reply straight away. So what Master Zhong Fong did was he asked them back. Just like Aristotle, Socrates and Buddha, he didn't answer straight away, he asked them back: what do you think about it? That's very good. What did he ask these scholars? There's a person, if someone did this action: hit people, scold people and oh NO, Venerable Zhong Feng says: What do you think about good and bad, kind and unkind? These common people replied: If a person hits people, scolds people, it's bad. If a person is respectful and appears courteous, it is kind. Venerable Zhong Feng says: Not necessarily. Then that person continues with another case: if a person hoards the wealth to themselves and take without permission, that is bad. A person who is very clean in their tenor as one of the officials or company staff, if they're being clean and follow the law, the rules are good. Venerable Zhong Fong says something very surprising: Not necessarily. These people keep saying all the common occurrences in the world. Venerable Zhong Feng says: Not necessarily. He doesn't say no. He says it can be right, but it's not always right. It’s more complicated than that. Everyone's like why? Venerable, why is that so? Venerable Zhong Feng replies: The demarcation, the standard of being good and bad is actually based on the effect. If you actually benefit the people, then you can call it kind (good). If what you do is only benefiting yourself, even though it appears good, it's bad. His standard is really high, selflessness basically. If you actually benefit people, do it for the sake of the people. Then even when you hit people, scold people, it's kind (good). If you only benefit yourself, even if you put up a face of respect or courtesy, being very, very, very polite, it's not full-kindness (goodness). What he is saying (or doing) is only for show basically. Therefore, a person who commits good deeds, it's based on what is their purpose, what's the intention. If they truly want to benefit the public, then it's good. If it benefits the public, it means it's true. You're benefiting everyone, not just yourself. If you only do it for yourself and only yourself, then it's called selfish. If it's selfish, then it's not true. We can put it in Buddhist terms: Who are you, right? Who am I? Buddha already threw out this question right away: Is there an “I” in this body? No. 10 year old Dylan is not the same as 20 year old Dylan. 20 year old Dylan will always change, when he reaches 30. Every second I'm changing. Which one is me? Second: Is my mind “mine”? My mind keeps changing. How is that me? If it's “I”, it will not change, which I can control. If I can control, I can make myself rich. I can make myself smart. But I'm not. Or I can make myself 18 years old forever. Master Chin Kung says: You cannot make yourself 18 years old forever. You have to go on and move on with 生老病死 (birth) illness, aging and then death. So this is the reality. So there's no “I”. So the whole point is: if you benefit yourself, this is a fake self. What's the point? You, yourself is in everyone, you know. Everyone is you, you are everyone. So that's why you benefit everyone equals to benefit yourself. Benefit yourself is not. It's fake. He even goes further: A person who follows their heart and does it because it's right. They don't even think, they don't even have a plot or anything. It's real. People who follow other people to do kindness, like he does kindness, so I will do it. If you don't do it, I don't do it. That is fake. This is what he meant by following the heart. I don't care what people say as long as I see that person is in need, I do it. Because it's right. I don't do it, because people approve or disapprove. I do it because it's my duty and I need to do it. This is true. People who just follow the others, they're just like this person's doing good, so let's just join in. Then when that person stops doing it, you just don't do anything. No. You're not controlling yourself on that. He's going really deep. 無為而為者真 He's going into Taoism which is very deep. It's like: Do without doing, is real. 有為而為者假 If you do it for the sake of doing, it's fake. Sometimes doing nothing is also real, it's also good. Like say: Your children are jumping around and asking for (things and) throwing tantrums or anything. You don't do anything, you sit there, you let them chill down and calm down. This is real, this is how you educate them, tell them to know when to 收斂他的脾氣 when to reflect on themselves, because you're not replying them, their tantrum is not answered and they are educated on that day. 有為而為者假 You just do it for the sake of doing it without knowing why you're doing it. There's no thought in it, there's no purpose in it. So those are very good metrics. Just by number one: 真跟假 It goes that deep. I can't cover the extent of it. But I also want to go back to one case that Yun Gu said “Not necessarily” is 貪財妄取。 So first part of 貪財, a lot of people think people who hoard wealth or take money is bad. But there was a case, for us as a Pure Land practitioner, very close to us: ( 永明延壽大師) I think. When he was a layperson he was an official and he worked for the Treasury actually. He actually committed, not corruption, embezzlement of funds. He took the money out. Every time he calculated the cash and stuff and he took the money out himself! Oh my God! How could he do that? What did he do? He spent none of those funds on himself, he used all of it to help the people. Maybe he saw the government is not helping much. So he took out the money, like Robinhood basically. He spent everything on the people. He didn't get rich or anything. When he was caught, he was being sentenced to death basically back then when you corrupt. Even now China also has that. You get capital punishment. The Emperor has been hearing a lot of cases of corruption. But this kind of corruption was weird. A lot of corrupt people use the money to benefit their children, their own family, themselves, right? They spend big. They eat a lot of fine dinings. But this guy, he's still living poorly. After stealing so much money and what did he do (with the money)? He spent it on the people. The emperor's like: I have never seen this in my whole tenure as the ... basically of china. He talked to his judge and said when you are going to execute him, which is beheading, look at his face, if he has no sense of fear, do not execute him. He’s just like, as you can see in Chinese Drama, they tie up and take out the board and they’re going to chop. Before they chop his head off, they just see his face and he's smiling. As you can see, this is not a normal person. So as in a good way, he's the same. They were like, “Okay stop stop!” Because the Emperor also studied Buddhism. 都是受過聖賢教育的 Guys, please invite him in front of the Emperor. The Emperor looked at him and said: Why do you steal the money and give it to the people, not yourself? I'm doing what is right. Why do you not fear death? Who am I? I'm not real. So I don't mind. If I lose my life for (helping) the people, then it doesn't matter. Oh my God! The Emperor was like: Nah nah. Send him to the temple. Let him become a monk. which is our dear Yong Ming Yan Shou Da Shi (永明延壽大師). So guess who is our (永明延壽大師)? (He was) Amitabha Buddha reincarnated in this world. So he's teaching us: Don't look at the surface. This is why Master Yun Gu says: Not necessarily! There's a case behind this. This is the first part of the eight pairs of (goodness) opposites. I think I'll stop here, so that we all can continue to think about it. So far do you have any questions or anything you want us to focus on Liao Fan, topics or issues? Oh Amituofo! This thing is very deep actually. When I first read this, I thought it's just about being a good person. But what is a good person? Before even being a good person, are you sure you are 100% pure and good? Not really, right? We still need to fix, we still need to be real about things. We are always in the middle, right? A bit of good, a bit of bad. It's human. So I think Liao Fan is good in this way. He tells us what it is. Instead of what we thought it is. Not telling us like a lot of self-help books nowadays, they just say: Oh just do it. Be good. Be strong. But they didn't give you that hard look into yourself and let ourselves be real, be true. A good person doesn't sit there and say: I'm good, I'm good! They just do it. They don't say: I'm good! They just do it! They don't have the attachment and say: I'm a good person. That's the mark of a good person! If you like it, or your friends or anything, feel free to share this session with them. They can come every… What time is it in the U.S.? Right now it's 12 in Australia. That's good then, more time to... you know. I saw you in Gong Xiu (Amituofo Chanting Group) in New South Wales. I'm very happy we got online, because it opens up to the world, not just Sydney. I think this is much needed. I think it's a blessing, Covid, in a sense, it connects everyone together, brings everyone into here. Even for Liao Fan it opens up as well, for example, you're from the U.S. So thank you so much. I'll do my best. But Master Chin Kung(淨空老法師) is the one whom to go back to if you guys want to use a standard. I mean he's very smart. He's very good. The way he talked to the audience, you know, like back in China, back then in early times, they don't really understand this 傳統文化 because of the unfortunate incidents, cultural revolution. He goes back then and talks about something very logical, very everyday... he doesn't touch the 鬼神 and all that. He's focused on human experience and I just got impressed by how wide his range is. You know like we need Whitney Houston to sing eight octaves. It’s like he can reach a lot of people as well. Amituofo! All the best to you and family!
