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 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,
then
we will 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 has 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 proceed with this path,
how I guide
myself going into the future,
where I would serve all sentient beings?
What kind of attitude should I have
when I'm doing this to benefit
all beings?
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.
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 has not chosen
this path to succeed his father,
he 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 have or use all the energy
to focus on benefiting sentient beings,
to contribute to all beings,
to 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 Buddhas 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
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 to be educated
back to good and it's very easy 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 people,
the young people of current times,
we should read in depth the chronicles
of Shakyamuni Buddha,
and his biography.
If you read it in depth, you really understand
who this person is and what he did,
how much he gave up
and for what,
then you will naturally
have tears flowing out,
because we understand
how hard his work is,
how thankless his work is, sometimes.
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 get 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,
just went, swore with all the words,
dirty words.
But he just sat there, not responding,
not just not responding,
he was 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
in the 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 why,
that is another aspect of Buddha.
Why is he the Buddha, why is he 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 to introduce
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 will learn from
Shakyamuni Buddha today,
what we need to know:
what is the biggest thing
we should learn from him,
what is the biggest trait
which inherit
from Buddha's example,
tolerance, 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 experiences as a person
of that scale in his heart.
When you
have this broad heart,
big heart, able to take in anything,
tolerate, more than tolerate
beyond tolerate,
take in everything,
then your life
will be more positive.
More positive, more active,
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 you face 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 have,
you can convert this issue into
your motivation, into energy.
So that you can reflect, you 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 have to encounter was,
my biggest issue was:
arrogance and temper,
my temper was very bad.
If a person is arrogant and has a big 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 I reflect, 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 my friends,
my 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 temper,
but
I have improved
a lot since then.
I have transformed from getting angry
and reactive towards situations
that are not to my likings
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,
his example that he had 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 for 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, why are we choosing
the Pure Land method 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 me 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 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 are not getting 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 in 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,
with shelters and with safety,
it relies on everyone, societies.
Without this society,
we can't survive.
So right now, since we are living
in this society, 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 to us,
then it becomes an obstacle rather than
a path to success for us. 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 forced their own children
to learn what they wanted,
rather than what the children wanted.
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, first
find a right (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? Right?
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
already 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 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's 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 affliction
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.
First, how to suppress it by putting your
focus on Amitabha Buddha (Amituofo)
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
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 he talking about?
Everything is about the truth
of the universe and our life.
Universe is vast. A lot of planets in the solar
system milky way, why did that happen?
Why is it so many?
If you go down to
the microscopic level, to our life,
so 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 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.
He is still
not clear about his 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 part we have.
No matter our cultivation level,
the fortune part we have right now
is we understand we have a purpose,
we have been given an option to have a purpose,
beyond waking up, brush, eat, earn money,
come back home,
bath, sleep, and then repeat,
... and repeat.
Those are mechanical parts.
Before us,
we're fortunate in this regard.
We have learned Buddhism, we have learned
the meaning of Buddha, himself,
what example he has.
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,
something that is pointless.
For example, (across) the whole 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, the human world.
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 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 separated 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:
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?
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 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,
deal with 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.
For that, 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 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 failure, 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.
Everyone has the experience
after spending so many years
in an educational institution.
Therefore,
in Buddhism,
the same thing applies.
We need to choose correctly. Correct to what?
Correct to our capability,
correct to our living environment,
suitable to our
current realities, our era.
So once
we understand what to choose,
among 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.
He doesn't understand
what Buddhism is from
what he sees on the outside,
feels like that,
superstitious and all that.
So, therefore, right now, we are talking
about what all of these names,
statues of Buddha mean.
What does the name and statutes
and their post of Buddha and
Bodhisattva refer to?
What are they trying to symbolize?
Otherwise, every time we pray to
this Buddha and Bodhisattvas,
we do not know
why we are doing that,
what we are trying to gain from this.
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慧能大師.
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 is the precepts 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, everywhere.
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,
trade daily cultivations
by doing this every time,
get used to be kind,
get used to be gentle,
get used to be good.
Otherwise, if you don't understand
why they have this symbolized
way of education,
otherwise, 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,
bringing people down a wrong path.
You know they are not productive
towards society, 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 reborn 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,
Buddhism and Confucianism all that,
they all start from confidence in the
character of our teachers,
confidence in Cause and Effect:
Do good will reap good, do bad will reap bad,
that’s the iron law.
If we use doubt,
everything becomes like
you cannot stand on anything.
Oh, those are
the techniques used by these
people to control the masses, or
are used by these people to
scare them from not doing bad.
So everyone should do that.
Everyone should just fall into that
doubt be into one another,...
Even worse, some (people) think: I already
live here, I only come to this world once.
(there’s only one life)
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, right?
It's not to make Buddha happy,
or make 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 and also to be kind, 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 give you wisdom and give
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 this ceremony,
offering incense.
Second 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, they heard of this common
saying that when you offer flowers, you
offer Buddha the flowers,
you will
look good and 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,
some 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 ghost.
It's also because of the cause,
the cause they cultivated
in the past.
So, in simpler words, remind yourself of
cause means, prevent yourself from
creating the cause of your sufferings
or bad deeds,
which is the cause of suffering,
speech, your action, your thoughts.
So when you remind yourself through
the offering of flowers, you remind
yourself of your deeds,
your attitudes, and it has to be
the same as the Buddha that
you offer the flower to.
My cause must be the same as Amitabha
or any Buddhas or Bodhisattvas
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.
Also remind us that everything you live,
everything you have,
the relationship you have and all that,
it will change, as time goes on.
This is the impermanence of life,
one of the facts.
We do not
get too attached to it
from this understanding.
From here, this is a small example,
we can see how Buddhism overtakes
all forms of education in the world.
Other than that,
we offer water, the offering
of water is not mentioned on this slide
but it says that water, clean water is
when it's not moved, it's pure,
one thing, it's equal.
Flat means do not be tainted by greed
or hatred, that means 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, and the water,
or names of Buddha,
statue 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.
Now I have talked (too long), I was supposed
to talk for a 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:
I need to keep going
with my chin up, no problem!
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 all lives
so that they all can 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!
