Fellow practitioners, fellow Dharma Protectors: Good evening to you all! Amituofo!
Today, I would like to borrow this opportunity, time from you to explain, talk about how we understand Buddhism, actually the fact that we can gather here and learn together means that all of us have an affinity with Buddha.
So, to learn about Understanding Buddhism, the first thing is we need to know our teacher, our teacher is Shakyamuni Buddha. What does Shakyamuni Buddha mean, what is his goal? What is his area of work or responsibility? What is his career or his achievements? Only when we are clear about this, only then do we have confidence, solid confidence in him. Like chanting Amitabha Buddha's name, we need to understand who Amitabha Buddha is, understanding why the Pure Land was built, only when we understand about him and his work, will we grow confidence to seek rebirth in his Pure Land.
Therefore, I would like to borrow this opportunity to explain, simply, about Buddhism, because we have a very short time, half an hour to 45 minutes, because it's quite late.
The first time I arrived in Taiwan to learn Buddhism, the first book I read about Buddhism was Understanding Buddhism. It helped me a lot. In what way? It helped me to build my confidence, to give me a sense of purpose, a goal of what I should do, work towards and how I should proceed on this path, how to guide myself going into the future where I would serve all sentient beings and what kind of attitude I should have when I'm doing this.
So the content of this book, Understanding Buddhism, talks about Shakyamuni Buddha as well. I also read about Shakyamuni Buddha's chronicle, his biography. Every time I read his biography, my tears drop naturally. There were many times when I read it, tears came down from my face, because I felt the greatness from his biography. It is because as a successor to the throne, he could have enjoyed the wealth, the powers from his father and his family. He would succeed his father to not just rule over his kingdom but also there were a lot of Brahmin who prophesied he would have a huge influence over the whole India and the world.
But as you can see, he did not choose the path to succeed his father but rather live under a tree every day, stay under the tree and get by by asking for alms from the common folks so that he could use all of his energy to focus on benefiting sentient beings, to contribute to all beings, to the society, to this country, to this world. That's where his greatness came from. That's why he's great in this sense, he didn't ask for anything in return.
Therefore, from the Sutra of Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, DiZang Bodhisattva, he has made a vow that when you mentioned about Shakyamuni Buddha, the Buddha's of 10 directions always praised Buddha about one thing, what is it?
He could be a Buddha in this era, in this world, the Saha World, it's not easy for a person to be a Buddha in this world, because a lot of Bodhisattvas know, it's common knowledge among them, because they've observed in this world, that it is very, very hard for ordinary people to be educated back to good and it's very easy for them to fall into committing bad deeds.
But Buddha himself did not give up on us. He used all of his energy and wisdom to help us to return back to goodness so that we don't fall back into that suffering cycle. That is why he's so great because this is hard. This kind of teacher, this kind of person with such compassion is hard to find.
Especially when we talk about the young people of current times, we should read the chronicles of Shakyamuni Buddha and his biography. If you read it in depth and you really understand who this person was and what he did, how much he gave up and for what, then you will naturally have tears flowing out, because we will understand how hard his work was, how thankless his work was.
If we reflect back on ourselves, sometimes when we meet some obstacles in our life, when we try and do something good, or try to do something useful, we might meet some obstacles, issues and then we feel very sad, not being understood, but if you look at Buddha's time, he had to face a lot of humiliation as well.
There was a person who swore at him actually, swore with all the words, dirty words. But he just sat there, not responding, not just not responding, he's smiling, when this proceeding, this swearing was going on, he didn't even have a sense of anger on his face. A lot of people when they get humiliated like that to their face in front of everyone, usually they would just go to the kitchen and get a knife in retaliation, trying to tell them to stop. So that is another aspect of Buddha, why he was the Buddha, why he was so great. So those are the examples we should know and I'm very interested in this as well, myself, when I started learning.
I went back to Indonesia, this university to give talks, Dharma talks, and I always bring up this book Understanding Buddhism, because it introduces who Shakyamuni Buddha was, to understand who this person was, so that we can feel his work, how his work benefits us.
So, if we want to learn from Shakyamuni Buddha today, what do we need to know: what is the biggest thing we should learn from him, what is the biggest trait we should inherit from Buddha's example? Tolerance, to be able to take in all things good and bad, just like an ocean, like an ocean he can take in all kinds of streams, water, be it rain, the mountain streams or sewage everything, he could take in everything, his heart is big. This is what Shakyamuni Buddha let us experience as a person of that scale in his heart.
When you have this broad heart, big heart, able to take in anything, tolerate everything, more than tolerate, beyond tolerate, accept everything, then your life will be more positive, more active and you will not feel depressed because of a few issues or problems.
It's impossible to have a 100% smooth path in your life, not even Buddha did, but how you treat these issues is important. You must remember, my work today, whatever situation you face today, if you have the right attitude, if you have an attitude of taking it all in with a big heart and understanding, you can convert this issue into your motivation, into energy so that you reflect and can fix where it goes wrong in yourself and others and then it becomes a positive outcome for you.
So, that's what we should learn from Shakyamuni Buddha, to be able to take in everything with a big heart, to tolerate and to take in everything, all kinds of people.
When I started, when I just became a novice monk, my biggest biggest problem that I had to face was, my biggest issue was: arrogance and temper. My temper was big, I had a very bad temper. If a person is arrogant and has a bad temper, who wants to be your friend? That's why I had so few friends, I didn't have many friends.
True, it's true. Also, because of my bad temper, I also lost a good friend of mine. So after that, I reflected, if I don't change this bad temper and my arrogance, it will become the biggest obstacle in my life.
Also, after all this transformation that I have, after learning from Buddha, all of my friends and family started to learn Buddhism, and a lot of them learned because of seeing my transformation from someone who was very angry into someone who's very calm, able to take in situations well. Even though I still have a temper, I have improved a lot since then. I have transformed from getting angry and reactive towards situations that are not to my liking into someone who felt more pity or more sympathetic rather than being angry, like this person has a lot of issues he has to face, that's why he's like that.
So once you understand who your teacher is, the example that he has set, only then do you have confidence in learning from him. So let's continue into the main topic of today.
When we're learning Buddhism, the first thing we need to know is that Shakyamuni Buddha has given a lot of methods of cultivation, but we need to learn how to choose the path that is suitable to us. All these have to be in accordance to our levels. So there are a few ways to choose the path that is suitable to you.
Number one is it has to meet your current situation, your living environment, your capabilities, number one, if you're able to learn from it. If you are not able to learn and keep up with the teachings, then you will find everything's an uphill battle, and you lose a lot of motivation and have issues.
So for example, the reason why we are choosing the Pure Land method is because it's simpler for us. Sometimes when we have issues, meet some problems, we put all our worries into this one Amituofo, Amitabha, seeking his help to give us strength to face these conflicts and issues and overcome them. So how? By increasing my wisdom, so it's easy, just have a central focus.
But if you choose something like Zen Buddhism, we have to know that sampling is pretty good. It's not because it's bad, but the standard is very high, in order to master it you need to be able to see through all phenomena and be aware of its essence so that we do not get dragged away by the surface appearance. So you need to have a very sharp observation, so it's very hard to master it in one lifetime. Other than the capabilities, this method needs to be suitable to our current living environment. Also it has to fit into our current realities that we are living In, now, this era, sensibilities of this era. Right now we are living in a very big society, without societies, without communities, we cannot survive. Say if we want to eat today where did the food come from? Where did this food provision come from? If you want to wear clothes, where were the clothes made? The fact that you can live in this world and not just survive, you can live in peace with food, shelter and safety, it relies on everyone, societies. Without this society, we can't survive.
So right now, since we are living in this setting, we need to choose a method that allows us to continue to live, that is suitable to our current realities. Otherwise, if we pick something that is not suitable to our current living environment, then it's just a waste of time. Because we can't get the results, like picking a major in University.
If we choose something wrong, is not suitable to us, hence, it's wrong for us, then it becomes an obstacle rather than a path to success for us. Alright, if we choose something that is really suitable to us, then we will be achieving success relatively easy and quick and our life will get better and better.
So if we expand this, a lot of parents, as well, always force their own children to learn what they want, rather than what the children want. They hardly communicate with their own children about what their aspirations are, right? Instead, they force their aspirations on them. Therefore, that's why it's hard to see a good relationship between children and parents because both sides do not communicate properly. Everyone is going their own way. There's no communication between us.
For example, if a young person wants to build a family, one must first find a partner. To have a partner, you need to have love, romance and beyond that, you need to have an assessment on this person’s character. Is this person reliable? Is this person trustworthy?
Only when you get more understanding towards each other, only then can you start to be able to live together and go on with this life together for a long, long time. Otherwise if one person just married on impulse for fun, or for one moment of impulse, it won't last, most of the time.
There are cases where some of the lay Buddhists they talk to me: Oh my God, you know right now, I am married and I felt very hard, painful and a lot of issues. Before he married, I asked him if he wanted to be a monk. He refused. I don't really want to go to be a monk. Right now he's already having family conflict issues. Then when he married, he kind of, faced all the troubles, he talked to me and said: “I am thinking back to that choice I could have chosen, you know this path, but it's already too late.”
So back to the point. Buddha talked about all these, you call it 84,000 methods, it’s really more than that. The whole thing is just to give you a choice. So that gives you more choices that you can pick something that's suitable to you, but you need to pick one. That's why today when we choose to learn from Pure Land Buddhism, that means chanting Amituofo. Why? because it's easier. First, the standard is: you don't have to sever all the afflictions. Other methods, other than the Pure Land, need to sever the afflictions in this lifetime.
For our case, we only need to suppress the afflictions, problems. As long as you're able to suppress, not allowing a reaction to come up, you are progressing. First, how to suppress it by putting your focus on Amitabha Buddha and then seek rebirth in the Pure Land. Then you can sort out your afflictions. That’s why there are two stages rather than one.
So that's why if you don't choose the right method, even when you choose this path that is relatively easy, we still have a lot of afflictions after learning for 10 years. Why? The more we learn, the more we chant, the more afflictions we have because we haven't mastered the method.
So this one is already relatively easy, we still take a lot of energy to learn, let alone something that requires you to cut off all of your afflictions right now, in one lifetime. Therefore, we need to choose something in line with our capability and our era and our living environment. So only when we know what to choose, and why we learn this method and why we learn Buddhism, then we would no longer be superstitious towards it. We know why, because we know the methods, we know the theory which it is based on.
We understand that Buddhism is meant to awaken us. After giving 49 years of sermon talks, what's the most important thing? What was Buddha talking about?
Everything is about the truth of the universe and our life. The universe is vast. A lot of planets in the solar system, the milky way, why did that happen? Why is it so many? If you go down to the microscopic level, to our life, what does the universe mean? The universe means, in our sense, is our environment, our living environment.
The universe includes your current living environment. Have you understood your own universe, your living environment? What kind of attitude should you have in face of your current environment? Not just the physical one, also when dealing with people, it's also part of the environment or things, events.
So, the universe is the environment, life is our self, talking about ourselves, the individual, this path of birth to death. Some people from birth all the way to death when they get old and die are still not clear about their life, the purpose of life. If you look at the common majorities, how do they live their life? Eat, sleep, wake up and go to work. When you ask them: “What's your value? What's your principle in life? What's the most important principle and value you have in your life? What's your bottom line?”
They're not clear about it. So we can summarize this kind of life as: You came into this world without a clue, you departed from this world without a clue. That's the fortune we have. No matter our cultivation level, the fortune part we have right now is that we understand we have a purpose. We have been given an option to have a purpose, beyond waking up, eating, earning money, coming back home, bathing, sleeping, and then repeating. Those are mechanical parts.
But for us, we're fortunate in this regard. We have learned Buddhism, we have learned the meaning of Buddha, himself, what example he has set. If you look at young people nowadays, a common habit is a lot of time was wasted on something that is meaningless in the long run.
Some even use their parents wealth, position and power, to commit atrocities or to commit killings, sexual misconduct or something that is pointless. For example, across the world people use very extreme drugs and the majority of them are the young people who are hooked on these drugs, intoxicants. If you have no guide, your life is gone just like that. When we understand, after learning Buddhism, that it takes a huge fortune, a lot of merits, to be able to be born into the human world, in the human body, therefore, we should not waste it.
From this, we understand, when Buddha's talking about all the sutras, it's all about ourselves, it refers to yourself, the target of his speech is you and your environment. That means your life and your universe.
If we do not get this point, after hearing all the sutras or reading all of the sutras, or Dharma Talks, then it becomes separated. Our life becomes separated from what was learned from the book, it's pointless then. So from something that's supposed to be related to our life, we treat it as something separate from us. It becomes like reading a novel. There's no benefit from it, it becomes a superstition.
Today, if you ask one person who claims they learned Buddhism, why, how do you practice Buddhism? What is Buddhism? He might answer: today, I chanted using the beads, I chanted a sutra. When I ask: Why do you learn this?
They reply: I think learning Buddhism is all about chanting and reading the sutras. Most of the people have the attitude of, looking at the statue and like I chant the sutra for him, so that he can bless me, but we must understand the sutra came from Buddha. He was the one who gave us the teaching. He doesn't need you to read it to him.
The whole point is for you to use what you learn in your life. Generate it into something useful for you in your life. That's the point of chanting. So Buddha's Dharma, no matter its scale, its depth, its level, is all related to your life, not just related, intricately tied, because it teaches you how to deal with people and challenges. What kind of mentality do you have, in order to overcome hurdle after hurdle in everyday life? Especially when you're not happy, when you feel trapped, depressed, it can help you to transform this stuck situation into something actionable, movable.
That's why Mr. Ou Yang Jing Wu, who was from the early nationalist era and he was a very famous Buddhist scholar said that Buddhism is a necessity for today's society because today if there's none of this teaching of wisdom, like Buddhism, let's not talk about others, myself, I couldn't change my habits without guidance. After learning, the only thing I realized is that I do have a problem called a bad temper. Or like after learning, I understood what Buddha said, words can bring calamities if not used wisely.
If words are used unwisely, they can bring disasters to yourself. Also, they will take away your merits, all of your good fortune that may happen to you will be taken away because of your own backward doings and you plant a lot of seeds of enmity or make a lot of enemies and then beyond that, like virtue wise, if you are not being respectful and loving to your own parents, then your own children will do the same to you as you do to your own parents. So none of this is superstitious.
Using what you get from the sutra, what you heard from the Dharma talk, you must use it every second, every moment, every minute to fix, to transform your weakness, to overcome your bad habits, to direct yourself using the teaching, to implement this teaching in your own life, that way you can guide yourself into a better life. It is like a lamp that lights up the path in front of us so that we can walk on the right one.
So this is a simple introduction of how we choose correctly what to learn from Buddhism, because it has so many options, because a wrong choice will cause you to use all of your energy with no result at all, spent, wasted your energy, basically your life is your energy. Like in university, after learning all these years, have you used it ever, or be able to use what you have learned in your life. If you aren't able to use what you learn, then you have wasted your time. Many of us have had the experience after spending so many years in an educational institution. Therefore, in Buddhism, the same thing applies.
We need to choose (our method) correctly. Correct to what? Correct to our capability, correct to our living environment and suitable to our current realities, our era. So once we understand what method to choose among the many methods of Buddhism, we also need to pick where we start when practicing Buddhism, right? How do we get real benefit from Buddhism? We must know about this as well.
Like when I first arrived in Taiwan, a lot of people introduced many ways, this is good, this method is good. I was confused about where to start, because I was looking for somewhere to start. Everything has a start, only then could you learn when you know where to start, only then can you build up and become successful. So this is what we call a right understanding and the right answer in this context is choosing where to start our journey of cultivation in Buddhism. Otherwise, people will look at you and say: “After learning so many years, you know nothing about what you learned, or you are clueless about it.”
It has become a superstition because you don't know what you're doing. There are people coming to the temple I reside in and say how they perceived Buddhism. They don't understand what Buddhism is from what they see on the outside, it feels like that, superstitious and all that. So, therefore, right now, we are talking about what all of these names and statues of Buddha mean. What does the name and statues and their post of Buddha and Bodhisattvas refer to? What are they trying to symbolize? Otherwise, every time we pray to Buddha and Bodhisattvas, we do not know why we are doing it, what we are trying to gain from it.
If you ask one of the Buddhists: Why are you praying to the Buddhas? We need to be able to answer it. This is what we call, in Buddhism, we call it expedient means. Or using a modern word is using a highly sophisticated art to educate, an artful education.
Buddhism since its inception, 2500 years ago, has developed into an art form, it talks about using art to educate the masses.
Using technology, for now, we have movies, music and all that, to express the educational content of Buddhism. In the old days, I watched a movie about the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China, Master Hui Neng. I read his sutra, the Sixth Patriarch Sutra.
I learned about him from this art format, from this media and I felt a sense of respect and reverence for it. Therefore, this is one example of how art was being used to educate, and this is necessary. It's necessary for us to know how they educate, and how we learn using these techniques.
For example, Bodhisattva Guanyin, Bodhisattvas Ksitigarbha or Di Zang no matter their image, name or offering the ceremony, offering flowers, water, or fruits. What are they trying to symbolize? What are they trying to tell us by doing this? We are doing this, to remind us in our daily life, to cultivate the virtues, each of these actions or each of these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas represents. They all symbolize certain virtues we should learn.
So, what kind of virtues? For example, to summarize them, it teaches us to be gentle, to be kind, to be respectful, to be frugal and also let others go first when it comes to our daily life. Beyond that, it is the precepts of No Killing, No Sexual Misconduct, No Stealing, No Lying, No Slandering Words and No Intoxicants.
Those are all about the conduct of our daily lives, help us to regulate our conduct, restrain ourselves. Right now, in our daily life, we have to use these behaviors to live with other people. If everyone has no good manners and lack of conduct and lack of restraint, it becomes hard to deal with, life becomes harder for working, family, everything.
So, if you look at the world, people nowadays, most people, how are they behaving? Lots of arrogance or lots of bias, lots of like tendency to control others, disrespect easily, to be disrespectful to others, not giving other people space, not just other people, strangers, but to their own family, parents, siblings and teachers.
So, lacking this education, this is the consequence and one very solid example, a visual example is food in the canteen, school canteen, university canteen.
Of all of the kids and young people that go to school, see how many of them waste the food given to them. If you look at society at large, how many people are actually cultivating the virtue of patience towards others instead of trying to get ahead of one another. So the basics of virtues is to let everyone be more kind towards one another and respectful towards one another. The elders who require care and love will be taken care of.
So these symbols help us, remind us to bring our compassions, our pure mind, to cultivate a pure mind and also a joyful outlook of life and giving hearts in our daily life through daily practice, daily cultivations. By doing this every time, we get used to being kind, get used to being gentle and get used to being good. Otherwise, if you don't understand why they have this symbolized way of education, you will become superstitious, which is do it for the sake of doing it. We don't know why we are doing this.
People will say you are superstitious and bring people down a wrong path. They know we are not productive towards society by just offering flowers, water and fruit because you want to idol worship some statues made of wood, clay or gold. Those are just materials. Why are you doing that? It is because we don't understand what it means, it looks like that, doesn't it?
So, now, we are learning about understanding Buddhism.
One of them is in offering incense, when we are making the offerings. What does offering incense mean? It has a meaning, everything has a meaning. It means, we are receiving the Dharma without giving any doubts. Right now, the biggest biggest problem of learning this path of enlightenment, what is the biggest obstacle for Buddhists? The biggest obstacle is not greed, hatred, ignorance, it is not about attachment to the senses, desires, power and fame. Those are not the biggest obstacle actually.
The biggest obstacle is doubt, suspicion, the tendency to suspect easily. For example, you are chanting Amituofo and then the following thoughts arise: Did he actually mean it? Is it for real? Can I really be born in the Pure Land? Can I truly be blessed? If you don't even have a basic confidence in the teacher, how can you take in all of his teachings and how can you build up confidence?
So learning from sages’ teachings, like Buddhism and Confucianism, they all start from confidence in the character of the teachers, confidence in the law of Cause and Effect: Do good will reap good, do bad will reap bad, that’s the iron law. If we doubt, (it) becomes like a foundation that you cannot stand on. “Oh, those are the techniques used by people to control the masses or are used by people to scare them from not doing bad.
Even worse, some people think we only live once, there’s only one life and I am already here, so I can do anything I want without restraint. How can we live a happy life like that?
So returning back to understanding why we offer incense? It's not to make Buddha happy or make a Bodhisattva happy. It's not to give fragrance to them. No. It's reminding ourselves, it’s all about you, it’s all for you.
They are doing all this for you to understand, to learn, to be confident in his teachings, to strengthen confidence, to be kind and to be a fragrance towards people around you.
When you light the incense, when you smell the aromatic smell of incense, you must remember that everything I say, everything I do, my character has to be as warm and as fragrant as incense. That means being kind, you always benefit other people, always care and be considerate for them. On the other hand, I do not want to be someone who harms or everything I say, everything I do is harmful or hurtful towards them. That's why we light the incense.
So when you light the incense, the first thing you should think about is I must get my speech out of my mouth, to prevent it from becoming a sword that harms (most of the time is) people close to you. On the other hand, we need to remember when we smell this fragrance of incense, we must remind ourselves how much kindness you have received since you were born. In Buddhism, it is categorized into Four Kindnesses to repay. First are your parents which goes without saying. Second are the teachers who gave you wisdom and gave you the ability to see the truth.
Third is your country. Countries that allow you to have a society that's peaceful to grow. The last one is the sentient beings who provide everything you need in your life. That's why we have the ceremony of offering incense.
Second is the offering of flowers. What do flowers mean? Flowers mean cause, seeds. When you look at the flower, you think of the cause. The common conception of offering flowers is that it will make you look good or you will become beautiful later in this life or in your next life. Most ladies heard of this common saying that when you offer flowers, you offer Buddha the flowers, you will look more dignified but it's not the actual meaning, it's not the ultimate meaning of it.
So, when you look at a lot of Dharma ceremonies, a lot of women are giving flowers because of this understanding, but the actual meaning of offering flowers, in depth, when we look deeper is to cultivate a good cause. Why? If you look at society, there are some people born into poverty while other people are born into wealth, into positions of high power, great power. It has everything to do with the cause they have cultivated. Some people fall into the realm of animals, into the realm of hell or hungry ghosts. It's also because of the cause they cultivated in the past.
So, in simpler words, reminding yourself of Cause means preventing yourself from creating the cause of your sufferings or bad deeds which is the cause of suffering, your speech, your actions and your thoughts.
So when you remind yourself through the offering of flowers, you remind yourself that your deeds, your attitude has to be the same as the Buddha that you offer the flowers to. My cause must be the same as Amitabha or any Buddhas or Bodhisattvas that you are offering to.
That's the point. To remind ourselves, in our living environment, everything is also impermanent, flowers are impermanent, they wilt very quickly.
Flowers should also remind us that everything in our life, everything we have, the relationships that we have and all that, will change, as time goes on. This is the impermanence of life, one of the facts. We should not get too attached to it from this understanding. From here, this small example, we can see how Buddhism overtakes all forms of education in the world.
Other than flowers and incense, we offer water. The offering of water is not mentioned on this slide but it means that calm, clean water is when it's not moved, it's pure and it's equal. Equal or flat means do not be tainted by greed or hatred, that means having a pure heart, do not be discriminative, which is being equal in your heart.
So from this example, we understand that all these offerings of flowers, incense, water, or names of Buddhas, statues of Buddha and Bodhisattvas, they're all to remind us.
Bodhisattva statues represent the virtue you cultivate. When you complete the virtues, this is what Buddha accomplished of virtue looks like through the image of Buddha.
So now I have talked too long, I was supposed to talk for half an hour, till 9 o'clock, but we have extended beyond that. I hope that our Dylan should remind me of the time, it should be 45 minutes instead of one hour.
So next week, next Wednesday, we'll continue with: where do we start when learning Buddhism. Which door do we enter in Buddhism so that we can achieve success?
So now I would like to wish you all a good evening and good health. I also wish that you be happy every day, be positive and be optimistic no matter what happens, be able to see through, see through as much as you can, because life is impermanent. It changes everyday, so there's no need for clinging to it and having a burdened or heavy heart.
No matter how unhappy the situation is, you should always, always remind yourself to keep going with your chin up! Do not be burdened by it.
Looking at my life, I don't have a very smooth and happy situation. You think I'm just relaxed? No, I have a lot of problems and all of them are not always according to my wishes, most of them are not, but what I can do is change my attitude in face of them so that I can keep going, alright? Be positive!
Thank you so much. I hope to meet you all again next week about learning Buddhism. Next week, we will continue to learn Understanding Buddhism together, your participation also gives other people confidence in learning this. So thank you, good night. Amituofo.
Let's dedicate our merits. I'd like to take this opportunity to dedicate the merits. I will read it, you guys can follow. I hope that we can receive the blessings from the Buddha and Bodhisattvas. May the merits and virtues accrued from this work. I, use your own name, would like to dedicate the merits of listening to the Dharma to all the karmic creditors of our lives so that they can all be received by Amitabha Buddha into the Pure Land.
I would also like to dedicate the merits to beings from all directions, everywhere, so that they can be liberated from suffering and achieve ultimate happiness.
Repay the Four Kindnesses above, and
Relieve the Sufferings of those
in the Three Paths below.
May those who see or hear of this,
Aspired 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.
Namo Amituofo.
