Dear respectful fellow practitioners：
Amituofo! Today, I would like to continue to practice, to learn how to understand Buddhism. Usually for the beginners, as a teacher we always encourage them to start understanding Buddhism with the basic stuff. Although it's basic for Buddhist practitioners, we cannot look down on the basics. We must know Buddhism has very profound and deep observations and truths in it. It's different from religion commonly known in the world. This is the first thing we must understand. Buddhism is what we call an education, not a religion. What Buddha's teaching is from wisdom, high level wisdom, profound wisdom. What does it mean by profound wisdom? Everything that Shakyamuni Buddha says, what does it surround? There is always a goal. What's the goal? It is to help all beings to be liberated from suffering, not just a simple normal relief from suffering but relief from the ultimate suffering to achieve full happiness. That means you no longer have to suffer. It's not just for a temporary moment, but forever. Today if you practice Buddhism, you're not a common person, if you're able to understand and accept Buddhism. Because a person with wisdom will select this path. Why we can't fully comprehend the teaching is because we all have illness, we all have troubles, therefore our wisdom cannot be realized. There are very deep conditions that we have planted from many lives in the past only then were we able to even hear of the word "Buddha", let alone understand and actually hear it. It's not easy to practice Buddhism, it has high wisdom. Do not think everything is high, all the big sutras like the Avatamsaka Sutras or the Diamond Sutra, all the big sutras, they all start from small, the basics, because their content is profound. So today we would like to learn about analyzing very important lessons. What kind of lessons is that? Today we're learning from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, we're Buddhists, we want to learn from him, Shakyamuni Buddha is our teacher. So if you want to learn from our teacher, our master, what is the most important thing we should aim to learn from him? First, we need to have a goal. First, we need to learn how to be awakened. This is very important. Awakening means you're aware you understand but this awareness is not just simply: I'm aware because there is one condition before that it's called Right Awakening, it's different. If you write this word the whole meaning is different. So what does Right Awakening mean? we must take our time to understand this. Nowadays there are alot of smart people, talented people. Are there alot of wise people as well? Yes. Especially, in this modern world, we have a lot of very very genius almost genius level scientists, we have talented scientists, talented engineers who devise a lot of innovations and discoveries in the tech sector and the scientific sector because we are in the era of technology. This is what defines our era. If you do not follow (along in) this era you will get kicked out of the queue, you'll be left behind. So that is why it is a struggle for a lot of older people, elder people, because tech has been developed in a speed that is very fast, astounding, like even say, last two years, we never thought we would do this online and now can you imagine now we will conduct Dharma Ceremony and stuff without technologies, without the internet, without computers? We're forced to use it, including myself. I'm forced to use it every day. So sometimes when I meet those young kids, when I come across this young kid when he sees me struggling with phones he laughs at me. You're like even a kid knows how to operate a smartphone, so how can you guys be so clueless about it? I am always being laughed at in this regard. It should be that you know more than me so how come you're clueless about it? If you look at the Japanese news, a lot of their temples and their... have robots in the temples. Obviously they dress them as a monk and they even sculpt one robot after Buddha and they are like service robots, they can also talk about sutras. It's kind of like a Q&A. They allow you to ask questions and answer for you. So for example, if you have any issues, you can ask this Buddhist Alexa about your issues, ask for their guidance as long as you call the number you will be linked to the system and that system is like a call center. So this is the level of development in our technological era. In the future, even the role of monks will be replaced by robots and AI. If you do not believe in it, try it, truly. However no matter how developed technology is, if it's not well used, if it's not wisely used, it will always cause more harm than good, a very big trouble caused by technology. Mostly, because it is destructive. It's exploitative and destructive towards nature. Let's talk about humans, among humans among people, they talk about husband and wife, the closest group or family unit or family. Nowadays if you look at couples, do you think it's closer for husband and wife or closer for husband and iPhone or a wife and iPhone? I saw a case, where a lay Buddhist, he's a guy and he has a family and if his wife is not home or maybe has gone out shopping or something. It doesn't matter even if she's late, but when he lost his phone, he threw a fit. It's like: where's my phone? So here's the little fun, also a normal thing which has to be observed. But those people who devised the mobile phone like … and all that, do you think those people do not have the smarts or didn't have the wisdom? Actually they do. Those philosophers, those scientists, those… Those religious workers are very smart, they should be, they are leaders of their communities, they are innovators. Some of them might even be way above average. However even though they are very intelligent, they are very prestigious, their IQ is above average, way above average. But Buddha will not give them the title, the qualification, or as having the Right Awakening. So their wisdom, their smarts, their intelligence is not considered, not qualified as Right Awakening. But we must understand why like these people have one of the top percentile of human intelligence, but they are not rightly awakened. In Buddhism, the word “right”, right view, Right Awakening, right thought, right speech is not very easy to obtain. If you want to actually achieve this level, it's not easily obtained by anyone. So how come their wisdom and intelligence are not considered as Right Awakening? Very simply, because their heart has not been freed from afflictions, their heart is bound by their habits and desires. They are wise, they are smart but they have not severed the afflictions, they have not purified their heart, their mind, they are still entangled with things and people, like you're right, I'm wrong and all that conflicts and stuff. They still have hatred, greed, ignorance and arrogance, especially arrogance. On top of that they have wandering thoughts, discriminations or prejudice and attachments to things or people. They have selfishness, attached with desires of amassing profits and prestige. No matter how capable their mental faculties are, they're not rightly awakened. That's why, from this, we understand how important Right Awakening is. The number of people who chant Amituofo, to be honest, is a lot, but how many actually made it to the Pure Land from this earth. Because they haven't achieved the level of Right Awakening? A lot of people think that Amitabha Buddha has wondrous fortunes. They will bestow a lot of fortunes. They came for that, but they have not seen the awakening side of it, and the whole core of Right Awakening is about a pure heart; it's about your heart instead of your mind. Is your state of mind pure, clear of afflictions from clouded judgments? Is your heart pure? If your heart is pure, your wisdom is crystal clear, that means you pierce through things very clearly without clouded judgment. Only then is it called Right Awakening. Because a pure heart nurtures this kind of wisdom that is able to awaken you to the reality of everything. That kind of wisdom, that kind of use of this wisdom is called Right Awakening. The standard of Right Awakening is only available in Buddhism or available only under the teaching of Buddha. Because all six realms, all beings, extremes heavenly or in human or anything they are, as long as they are in the six realms, everything they see, everything they understand are not considered Right Awakening. Because of the reason we mentioned, the afflictions. Today you chant Amituofo, the same thing happens. It all relies on a pure heart, a chant of Amituofo that comes from a pure heart is very powerful. So what we are trying to learn from Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, our original teacher, is to gain, the first step is to achieve Right Awakening. Only when we are rightly awakened can we truly understand how to navigate out of this suffering. Without awakening, without Right Awakening, we can't get out of this puzzle. If we want to go to the Pure Land which is liberated from the puzzle of suffering, we can't go there, because we are not letting go of the affliction that bound us here, of the attachments. As long as you're within the level of Right Awakening only then are you qualified to be liberated from the cycle of life and death, liberated from the sufferings to the happiness. Otherwise, departing from this principle, even though we're doing the same thing, chanting Amituofo, worship through Buddha or listen to Dharma, it's all about fortune rather than true merits that are able to bring you to liberation, so it's all about the heart and mind. This is a very concise, short simplified summary of Right Awakening. When you hear Right Awakening or in Chinese 正覺, it means pure heart, Right Awakening equals to pure heart, pure heart means unmoved by the phenomena that happens to you outside, whether it be people or things or calamities or anything you're unmoved, only then are you considered as having a pure heart. If one achieves the pure heart or Right Awakening in Buddhism, what is the title we confer to these people? If you achieved Right Awakening in Buddhism, in this educational system, what is the status you will confer to if you achieve Right Awakening? We must be clear on that. Also a terminology, Chapter One terminology, very important terminology used. There are or kind of like titles like university that was conferred upon and this title is called Arhat. So if you have achieved Right Awakening you will be called an Arhat. Just like today, when you cultivate a study in University for a certain course towards a degree. When you graduate the first level of this study, it's called a bachelor degree, bachelor of whatever course you study. So Arhat is the same in Buddhist education. Arhat, Bodhisattva and Buddha are the same, these three are the common titles that we convert to upon achieving a different degree of awakening. If you achieve the first step of Right Awakening, you are called an Arhat. Why is one called an Arhat? Because you are no longer twisted in views and ideas, you see things clearly, your greed, hatred and ignorance does not exist, it will not come up, it's clear. An Arhat does not have entanglements with people and matters, because Arhats do not attach to the notion of the body as yourself, that means no more ego attached to bodies. So what does Bodhisattva mean? We will talk about this next time. So Arhat is the first level title in Buddhist education. I hope it's clear for you guys. The best word to define Arhat is pure heart, pure heart means Right Awakening. Why is it pure? Because they no longer have erroneous view and ideas, that means it's no longer twisted, no longer biased, they have no hatred, they have no greed, they have no ignorance, they have no afflictions and they do not entangle with peoples and matters because they no longer attach with the self From here we learn that, and experience that hopefully, Buddha and his education, the Buddhist education system, is actually different from a religious education and secular education that means both what we call religion and the secular that we are going through right now, the worldly education. So what do we actually learn from Buddha? We must be clear in this regard. Buddha taught us to (cultivate) the realization of truth, to cultivate ‘Right Awakening’. Only when we achieve Right Awakening, can we solve the fundamental problem and be truly liberated from the pain that has plagued us forever and no longer go through all of this again and again and again. Because only when you learn, truly learn, truly listen to Buddha's words and truly use the ability to learn, will you achieve liberation. That's the first … For example, if you look at our world of pain and pleasure. If there is pain, there's always pleasure, if there's pleasure, it always follows by pain. In the Pure Land, they call it ultimately bliss for a reason because they only have real bliss, instead of having a pain following it around. But over here, we have a lot of pain that follows the pleasure. From the perspective of pain and pleasure, the most obvious, the most easily observed part of suffering that we have to go through, we start from ourself, our current environment, including myself, Venerable himself, the living environment that you live nowadays, no one can avoid life and death. We can’t avoid birth, age, illness and death. Can you avoid it? No, right? And on top of these four, we have the suffering of not getting what we wish for, what we love, we can't get it. What we like, we can't get. And then the sixth one is our loved ones leaving us. There was a case where, in this form of suffering when a loved one’s leaving us: there was an old lady who laid on the bed dying and when she died, she left her eyes open. So she did not go in peace. When she passed away, her eyes kept looking in one direction, one place, because she could not let go of her most beloved granddaughter. So this is another type of suffering even until death. Then we have the suffering of encountering someone you dislike. So all of these combined with the suffering of the five... compose the Eight Sufferings of Life, no one can escape them from here. These are the Eight Sufferings that we all have to go through every day. So does Buddha have any way to help us to get out of this? Buddha told us if we practice Buddhism, if we practice the path he laid(gave) to us, which is Right Awakening, just the first step, Right Awakening, we can be free from these Eight Sufferings. For example, today in our cultivation group, some of us are aged, like 60 or 70 and above, we think about: does Buddhism help us to relieve or liberate us from this phenomena of age, of illness? To be honest, if we truly cultivate the teaching, if we truly understand the teaching and use it, you do not need doctors and medicines. Your ailment will be recovered. There are cases like that. Why? What's the reason? Including myself, we should think about it and reflect on this. What are the reasons? Because they have realized the truth, before we realize the truth, we keep asking: how did the illness come about, right? Beyond the medical, the physical observable part, I'm talking about how it arised, how it came into being and what were the conditions that led to this illness to develop and spread and what are the consequences and effects from this illness in general. Buddha told us: we can avoid illness, humans can actually avoid illness, people can avoid illness, but we need to know why. Why do we have sickness? Why do we have illness and old age? Why do we have these sufferings? Because, all these illnesses, the root of it is from our wandering thoughts that keep generating and regenerating the same conditions that lead us into illness So if you use a more common term, we're thinking everywhere, we're thinking left, right, up and down, we are always thinking, we never stop, we never rest, we're not honest in a sense, our mind is not honest. It's like the monkey in our mind keeps jumping and jumping and jumping, one thought after another. Therefore, Buddha told us as long as you have wandering thoughts even if the sage Doctor came down or some cultivated people or sage doctor like Hua Tuo(華佗) in China who was a very, very good doctor who healed a lot of ailments can't treat your problem, this kind of problem, this illness. Talking about Hua Tuo, talking about ancient China, the medical history, before the Qing Dynasty united China, there was a person behind the engineering of unification, he was called Mr. Ching who was treated as such an important figure in Chinese history, Mr. Hua Tuo華佗, Doctor Hua Tuo. Maybe not him, I think, yeah, sorry. He was in the Three Kingdoms era, sorry. There was another very good doctor but he could not treat this illness. Because he kept thinking, because wandering thought, he kept thinking about illness, his mind kept generating the condition of illness. If our wandering thought is blocking us from returning to the pure state of mind, it will always beat you in the current condition of six realms or in our realm, life and death, life and death, life and death, it all comes from wandering thoughts. The six realms arise from wandering thoughts. So Buddha, in Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower-Adornment Sutra) said: “All beings have the wisdom and virtues of the Thus Come One.” That's another title for the Buddha. “However, due to wandering thoughts and discrimination , they cannot realize it.” So the point is he has pointed out the roots of our illness in the grand scheme of life and death , in this one sentence. Using a life example that just happened in this decade, Venerable Master Hai Xian(海賢老和尚) who just passed away in 2013. He had lived up to 112 years old since the Qing Dynasty. He could climb the trees at the age of 112. The year he went to the Pure Land, he still could climb the trees and he could do all the rough work. It's farmland, by the way, it's not just a city. Even a 40-year-old could not do that, but he did all this by himself, 2013, at the age of 112. Even if you ask some of the young people nowadays to do all this in one day, the volume of the chores that he has to do in his farm, near the temple is a lot, yet he could do it. How did he achieve this level of health? His heart was pure, that's why he could do that. How come his heart was pure? Because he always use Amituofo阿彌陀佛 as the object of his thoughts, no longer allowing any other stuff to mix in. So his heart was pure. His heart only has Amituofo阿彌陀佛. Hence it was pure, because of this one thing. As long as your heart is pure, illness will not have an effect on you. It is a way to reflect for us, especially myself. It's true. Therefore, today we always say: I'm ill, I caught a cold and stuff like that. To be honest, beyond the body, the physical one is actually our thoughts as well, our mind. Because if we put our energy and mind not on our illness but on cultivation and in terms of us, Amituofo阿彌陀佛, we focus on Amituofo阿彌陀佛, our mind will be pure and focused, then we no longer fall ill, truly as long as you have a pure heart. If we look into the Tripitaka, if we look into all of the records from Buddha himself, did he mention any Buddhas that fell ill or sick in their original state? Do they appear ill and aged in the original state? No. Have you seen Bodhisattvas, the students of Buddha, the chief students of Buddha, also fall ill? No. Have you heard Guan Yin Bodhisattva, Guan Yin fall ill in the middle of his Dharma talk? Did he take the MC from the Dharma talk, because he caught a cold or headache or fever? No. Have you seen anywhere in any of the sutras that says: Bodhisattva Guan Yin, Ksitigarbha, Manjushri fell ill? No. Even Arhats do not fall ill or age. To be honest, they are no longer bound by this, what we call it the worldly law of life and death. They have been liberated, they have liberated themselves. To be honest, it's not fake, it happens, but how do we do that? What's the reason for them achieving that? Buddha and Bodhisattvas thoroughly realize the truth of this universe, how it came to be in all these conditions. So once they understand that they immediately follow their true nature, they no longer use thoughts because there's no wandering thoughts, everything they do flows directly from their Buddha nature, their true heart, their pure heart. So everything they do does not have pretensions, they do not need to pretend, they are real. We know that being natural is the healthiest thing in the world. We eat naturally, we sleep ... natural environment. So nowadays the technology is very advanced however the cause of this advancement is the destruction of nature, of the environment. If we look at this earth right now that we live in it's already sick, gravely sick, gravely ill, because we keep destroying it If we look nowadays at these Covid pandemic times, it gets more and more serious and more contagious. It keeps evolving, mutating because our hearts are not pure. All this Covid, all this pandemic, why does it mutate? It mutates in accordance with our heart, in accordance with thoughts. If our thoughts and heart turns pure, focuses on pure stuff, I can tell you, you will no longer be affected by it if our hearts are pure and clean. If you look at the Pure Land, is there any sutra that says any pandemic happened in the Pure Land or in the land of the Buddha? No. Because the Pure Land is comprised of people who have an environmentalist heart. All the residents of the Pure Land are environmentalists. Why? Because their hearts are pure, so they purify the environment. However in our world why is it in such a state? Because we are polluting it with our wandering thoughts. The root cause of our illness is because of our wandering thoughts, discriminations and attachments. It comes from that. If you want to be healthy, you must cultivate this pure heart. To start cultivating the pure heart or Right Awakening we need to start letting go of attachments that we have strongly adhered to, let go of any situation, adverse or favorable. In case of adverse conditions, something that caused us to be unhappy, we let go and chant Amituofo to replace it. Once you do that as a habit, your heart gets purified further and further, hence your health gets better. The problem of us practitioners of Buddhist teachings is we are not listening to the Buddha's advice, we're not putting in our heart. Yes we come here to attend the sessions, a lot of people might say I'm busy, I have a lot of work, I have a lot of chores or family business to tend to a lot of excuses sometimes to be honest. In this world other than cultivating Amitabha's name in our heart nothing else you do can be brought to the next one Very few people in this world can live to be 100 years old, even if you reach 100 years old it is nothing compared to eternity. In this tiny speck of our existence in this universe, why aren't we doing something that we can exchange for something bigger and infinite instead of clinging to something that cannot last? True, it is like that. We must listen to Buddha’s teachings because he's been there. If we do not listen we'll still cling to this entanglement, get entangled in these afflictions. Only from a pure heart, a heart free from all this selfishness and afflictions, entanglement, can we nurture true wisdom that leads you to Right Awakening However on the other hand if our heart is not pure, if our mind is not pure, even though we are wise and smart, Buddha and Bodhisattvas will not recognize our wisdom and smarts as Right Awakening. They will not. Because the person who attains Right Awakening, an Arhat, does not get bound by life and death, let's call it the state of cessation of life and death or Nirvana. Since you have transcended the sixth realms, since you will have achieved Right Awakening through having a pure heart, life and death are no longer a problem. All of our afflictions come from a polluted heart. If we get through the issues of life and death by achieving Right Awakening, they no longer matter. What about the rest? Nothing else can trouble you anymore. If we have solved the problem of life and death that means we're no longer bound by it, everything else is not a problem. This is what we should seek from Buddhism. Only then can we be happy. To do that, to achieve that we need to start following Buddha’s teachings, his education. However, if we treat Buddhism as a religion, we are using a mindset of worshiping religion towards Buddhism a dogmatic approach, we can never achieve Right Awakening which brings us towards the ultimate happiness and that means we cannot stop suffering because we are still lost. Religion itself, the nature of religious worshiping is being lost, call it superstitious in a way. Why is it superstitious? Emotion is the basis of religion. In Chinese there's two words: emotion and sensibility (rational). Emotions in other words are called blind faith. Buddhism does not encourage blind faith, it encourages rational, clear, precise thinking. Some religions use blind faith as a tight leash on its worshippers and the more devoted you are to that emotion, we call them, the more truly devoted, sincere worshipers. The more lost you are, the better it is. They are labeled as devoted and there is a leash so that you can’t escape. If you look at other religions, there are a lot of evangelists that try to woo disciples into the... they asked part of that religion that used to be an evangelist approach. They use that mindset to get students and then there are cases where it's very well known: "if you don't believe in me, you go to hell!" they're part of that, they always use that kind of approach, using a leash on the people and all they want is something like devotion, praying to them all the time, you give some sort sums of donations to them. This is a common problem among religions nowadays. " I'm real, you're fake, holier than thou." But to be honest, at the end of the day, none of them knows what is happening, none of them solve the real problems, hence it's fake. Buddhism is never like that. Buddhism is not about followers, how many people come and follow me. Why? Because it's all about education. Education is about teachers and students, disciples and masters. There's a very important phrase: there's only disciples who seek answers from the master, never heard of a master who asks for a student to teach. What does it mean? We'll talk about it in the next session. Only students seek answers from masters so seek teachings from the teacher, a teacher should not come to you and tell you to learn from him. Going back to the point, we need to start with Right Awakening. To be rightly awakened we need to have a pure heart, we need to learn the practice of purifying our heart, without a pure heart everything you learn in Buddhism is just planting a seed of Buddhism for the future, it does not have an immediate effect on your current condition, it will not be used to help you to elevate your current condition. Therefore Shakyamuni Buddha's appearance in this world is just to help you to liberate from suffering and the first level you have to go through is life and death and to liberate from life and death you need to start with Right Awakening, to start from Right Awakening you use your pure heart. Pure heart, in our terms we use Amitabha Buddha's name to cultivate our pure heart. This is a very simple overview on what we should seek in Buddhism. Next session I look forward to learning more, with you, about Buddhism, understanding Buddhism. I would also like to announce that this Friday I will also practice talking about the original vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, Di Zang. In the evening, around 8 pm, we will have a session on this sutra, and will dedicate our merits (together after that). So now back to understanding Buddhism, that's it for today. I hope everyone can cultivate their pure heart. A tick, put in the effort because the only person who benefits from doing this is yourself. I hope that you can have something to carry (home with you). So a good evening to everyone, to you, and may you be prosperous and healthy. Thank you so much. Amituofo! Let's dedicate our merits Let's join our palms. Use your own name. Repeat after me. May I use the merits accrued from now me a student of Buddha, (your name) ... would like to dedicate the merits of listening to this Dharma talk to all of my karmic creditors so that they may be born in the Pure Land. Also dedicate the merits to the beings of 10 directions and also dedicate them toward world peace. May the calamities be turned from big to small, small to none. Repay the four kindnesses above and relieve the suffering of those in the three parts below. May those who see and hear of this aspire to invoke the Bodhi heart and cultivate the teachings for the rest of this life then be born together in the Land of Ultimate Bliss. Amituofo.
