Chapter Three Where does the High-level Realization Come From?
You don’t understand when the Creator’s feeling will come upon you. When you are ready to receive it, it doesn’t come. When you are not prepared to get it, it appears. You are always bombarded by surprises.
Therefore, the team in charge of transcription must have this kind of alertness. A Buddhist practitioner needs to have a kind of quality, which is awareness! Do you know what the highest level of awareness? Alertness! It is as keen as the sense of smell of a police dog. We say that a dog’s nose is more sensitive than a human’s nose. We humans lack that kind of sensitivity. As this sensitivity is inefficient, we always appear dumb and slow, and we cannot keep up the pace. We always miss the chances to act, as well as to receive! What we constantly fall behind is this. Therefore, one cannot attain Buddhahood if he is slow. Slowness is the manifestation of the habitual pattern of laziness.
We must act vigorously and speedily. I always promote vigorous and speedy action. The reason I discussed the story of HMS Coventry is to tell you the importance of this quality. As far as one’s alertness is concerned, if he takes a rather crucial role, it is related to life and death of many people. Let’s take an example of the cruise member who was on duty on the HMS Coventry. If he had been absent minded for a little bit, that military ship would be destroyed immediately, causing several hundreds of lives! Look, if you are absent minded for a little bit, there is a chance to make such a big mistake. Is it serious? Even though in our daily life, if we don’t pay attention to our propensity of laziness and try to correct it, it will bring about mistakes one after another, risking your individual safety and harming the interest of others. Therefore, we need to act vigorously and speedily. This kind of style must be nurtured.
Everyone has a different personality. Some are quick tempered; some are slow-tempered. It doesn’t mean that we must be quick in every act. No, it is not that. It is that one needs to be able to act quickly when it is necessary. You must have this kind of quality. It will be needed, right? Therefore when I am ready, you are not ready yet; when I am at work, you are not there yet. You are short of that awareness. You miss things. My inspiration is waiting for you who arrive late. I am being pushed by you in that way. Therefore, it would be good if we could take shorthand. That is handy because we lose a lot of things. That will give many who are not here a chance to hear these lessons. Many lessons are common in their contents with general meanings.
I frequently give lectures and you frequently demand lectures. You want to hear me speak to you alone. You want to hear all my lectures. You want to hear my special talks. Do you know how much energy is required to give a lecture? Why don’t you give a lecture some time? Stand in the positions of others! Everyone, male or female, all have heart. When you hear my coarse voice striving to speak here, you have no empathy. No, you don’t have that. I have to speak over ten thousand words every day. Sometimes I have to speak more than ten hours a day. Think about it. Who can stand that? Because you have never had this kind of experience, you don’t know what that is like. This is what you are unaware of. Therefore, if we can provide each other some support, letting me look after my throat and make me the machine live longer, it may benefit more people! If my voice were gone, even if an inspiration comes, it would be no use since I can’t speak. I could only blink my eyes but none of you would understand it! It is like what I have discussed, scratching itches. Donkeys scratch each other. But they possess the nature of realization. They don’t need language. I say that is "Chan"! Animals have this kind of quality, but we don’t. If I don’t talk but just use my eyes, what can you understand? What can you learn? You don’t understand even when I speak. Even though I use language to communicate with you, this kind of communication is limited by the hindrances in your heart. You must adjust your feeling to the state of understanding and empathy. Then, you can understand my words. Otherwise, it is in vain! I talk about it; you interpret it based on what you think. Although you hear me, you don’t understand it. My speech is useless to you. Why do we do something useless?
Then, you should be alert! If one is sloppy, his every minute, every second, and every day of life would be in confusion. Even if the cause and condition of enlightenment appears, he wouldn’t know. Do you understand? It is like the one who has no keen perception. He tries to meditate. But as soon as he starts meditation, he starts snoring, with wanton and illusory thoughts. What do you think? When an inspiration comes, can he recognize it? Can he have any inspiration? When you are absent minded in class, what can you hear? What can you know? If students don’t pay attention to the lecture a teacher is giving in class, when the class is over and the teacher is gone, what have they heard? Has the class not taken place? Is that event meaningful? It is meaningful to some but has no meaning to many. To them, it is as if the class has not occurred, right? Therefore, spiritual consciousness is very very keen and alert. A spiritual cultivator should not be slow, dumb, foolish, and lazy. It should not be like that. But there is the interim in which one will appear dumb and slow. It is a necessary stage. We know that when one has cultivated himself to the Arhat state, he will not be active anymore. Great love is concealed. He has no love. He is not concerned about others. But he won’t offend others and doesn’t want to exhibit himself. He knows his place. He likes to be alone and keep his personality intact. It is hard for him to assimilate himself into a group. The Arhat state is like that. However, the Bodhisattvahood is different.
So far as our lesson has proceeded, some followers asked these kinds of questions: Is the tendency of not getting involved in others’ businesses a kind of laziness? Is it passiveness? I told them, "This isn’t it. This is a stage. This stage will change, too." But at the stage, you must be alert and can’t let go of yourself; that is, you can’t let that emotion of passiveness develop and expand within you. Therefore, the lesson of spiritual cultivation is that you accomplish what you need to do. It is done when you have done things. And I will do my share. When it is the right time, I will tell you what and how you should do. What I tell you is only for you, not for others. Everyone has different causes and conditions so everyone’s lesson proceeds at a different pace. As far as general lessons are concerned, common doctrines will be taught. But when it comes down to a specific individual, and when a problem is going to occur, the spiritual master must have the ability to detect it, and so will hit you right there. He will remind you, no matter what kind of method he adopts, which is just to stimulate your alertness. He may appear rather fierce, or even rough and nearly violent. That is for reinforcing the effect and making your memory react to a large degree. Otherwise it is easy for you to miss it and not to take it seriously. It is very easy for ordinary people to be like that, so careless. Alas, the cause and condition will be gone. When something is occurring or an inspiration arrives, you are not aware of it. Then you say, "No, there is nothing." Of course. It is gone already.
Therefore, the learning of spiritual consciousness is not the lesson for ordinary people with ordinary methods and attitudes. It is absolutely not enough to apply the methods of learning any social or natural sciences. Those are not the concepts of executing Dharma either. Those are passive lessons. Dharma is different. The learning of Dharma is a series of voluntary lessons. You must be willing and realize things by yourself. You have to be willing to endure suffering. You must observe all the time your inner feelings, your own state of mind, and your attitudes created by external causes and conditions. You need to know what it is doing and thinking. Do you know? Therefore we always feel in low spirits. Why does the mind get absent? It runs away through six senses—the spirit is not guarding the home. It is similar a cat going fishing, trying to catch dragonflies this moment and going after butterflies next moment. The energy will be gone and so the person will look dumb and slow. This kind of person is useless and can’t take up big responsibilities.
However, the issue of enlightenment cannot be solved even by a king. Look, the lesson of working on enlightenment is not that simple! Have we ever been a king? Therefore, some mundane achievements and experiences can nurture certain qualities within us. If these qualities can be explored and organized and then developed, they can become the preparation assets for spiritual cultivation. That is a good thing.
But as we usually just do ordinary work, it is difficult to nurture this kind of alert consciousness. This consciousness is extremely important! Ordinary people think that eating is not related to spiritual cultivation, working is not related to cultivation, and sleeping is not related to cultivation. A true cultivator doesn’t differentiate walking, resting, sitting, and sleeping! You can’t ask others to keep an eye for you. You have to keep an eye on your own lesson. Your heart is only known by yourself. It is your own business to understand yourself, not others’ business. Only after you understand yourself can you understand others through understanding yourself. This is the necessary procedure to achieve realization. I have said yesterday: our long-time problem is self-deceiving, not facing the self. As we try to avoid facing the self, we don’t understand ourselves. It has existed for a long time. Therefore, when we feel we understand ourselves, in fact we don’t. It is the same when we think we understand others. We feel we understand others and know them but the fact is we don’t. You always think he needs this or that, and you can help him solve whichever problems, in fact it would be better if you don’t help him. It turns out more chaotic, messy and terrible with your help. When someone is full, you force him to eat more. Somebody has leftover in his bowl, but you tell him not to refrain himself, and pour more food into his bowl before he has time to tell you he is full. How passionate you are! You know yourself can’t take more food. But you don’t know whether others can or cannot.
Li-zhung discussed an issue with me today. He watched people getting food. He felt that all of a sudden everyone’s true quality showed up. Some just cared about themselves, like a bomber. There is always enough rice, but sometimes there are not enough vegetables. It can always do to have more or less vegetables to go with rice. However, when there are not enough vegetables, we just place ourselves in first priority. We put a lot of vegetables in our bowls. We don’t care whether the people after us would have enough to eat. Of course, the majority of us don’t have this quality. But one with this quality always complains how unfairly and nasty others treat her and other people don’t understand her. And so she wants to leave the mountain and run away. I told her, "Get lost quickly. This place doesn’t need you. Don’t think yourself to be precious. Why do I want you? You are extra! You live just for gratifying yourself. You are never concerned about other people. You don’t think of anybody in your heart. You are not aware of how much your father, mother and other people care about you. You always feel that other people don’t treat you nice, which is because you want too much." A person with a lot of wants suffers most and very unlikely feels satisfied.
I would like to say, "One can become satisfied if one has no wants". This is the concept of Lao-tsi’s "no desire for any reward". I said yesterday that "the method of no desire for any reward" is very important to people who cultivate the Way. Look, in a group of monks or nuns, some possess such low quality and complain the most. Isn’t that funny? We don’t understand our thoughts and behavior and don’t know which aspects of them are right or wrong or what we will bring to others and ourselves. This is originated from no understanding. Therefore, no matter what other people do, you still don’t understand what they have done and what has happened. You can’t understand those feelings. You just complain. Your long-time suffering is due to this. Even being treated in the most special way, you still complain. Why is it like that? Is the Creator wrong? Is He unfair? You have to love others! If everyone is stingy and reluctant to give others a convenience, how can anyone get a convenience since everyone is part of a group? Where can we find a convenience? Who can give us a convenience? If everyone is a giver, everyone will be given by others and get a convenience. People today don’t care about others and then complain that the world is so cold. They don’t want to look at what they are doing. How do they care about others? How do they give others a convenience? They don’t want to study feelings and so don’t understand feelings. Therefore they don’t respect and appreciate feelings, which are all lost.
This world is not full of sufferings, and not short of anything. We suffer because we put ourselves in suffering! We look at the world from an extremist view. We have lost the understanding, acceptance and recognition of the concept of a complete whole. We are attached to our own view, which is only a single perspective! This is the quality of a blind man trying to know an elephant by touching it. You can’t try to understand the world in such a way. So you can’t understand life in such a way. You can’t even try to understand yourself in such a way. One who pursues perfection doesn’t reject anything. Therefore every cause and condition at any instant moment is the mercy of God for you. Think it over carefully. There are hints within it to enlighten you. Don’t look at it with the sense of discrimination. Look at it from the perspectives of an observer, a neutral role, and the soul. In this light you won’t be deluded by emotion. Your inner brightness will manifest. If you are furnished with subtle and alert consciousness, you may learn something you’ve never known, which is enlightenment.
You have to be ready at all times. You don’t know when that ballistic missile will be fired at you. No one will call you to inform you: "Be ready. I am going to shoot." And then it is fired from the other side, and it hits this side. Is this called a war? If we are informed that karma-hindrance is going to manifest soon, we will be in a good state of readiness. We won’t respond in panicking. No, we won’t. We will be very peaceful. In fact, it doesn’t matter if karma-hindrance is manifested or not. We must be ready. In this world, every manifestation is not due to the trick of the Creator. Instead, it is because we are making fun of ourselves. In every moment, the good or bad that is manifested in front of us is the retribution of our own act. That is the ration distributed by the Creator based on our behavior before that moment, which is absolutely fair and reasonable. Do not complain about that it is too much or too little. Your complaint won’t change anything.
Even one who is very perfect and high-level must submit himself in this way if he wants to pursue a higher stage. Do you know Jesus Christ? He was earnest, wholehearted, and persevering in imparting the Truth. He was a pure devotee of the Creator. When he needed to sacrifice his life, however, he complained. He asked the Creator, "What did I do wrong? Why did you want me to drink this bitter wine?" Everyone else would complain more upon facing that moment. He was also a human! Do you know? All living entities eat the flesh of other living entities but never eat their own flesh. Don’t they know the pain? Therefore he was in pain and complained. He thought that he should not be treated that way. He had devoted himself, always living for the Creator. As he was always in devotion, why did he get treated that way? But Jesus Christ was such a smart person! He was truly smart, not falsely smart. The state of being in which he was situated, let me tell you, was the state of enlightenment. However, that enlightenment belonged to a certain order. I have told you before that I think there are three orders of enlightenment, meaning three platforms. We often call the first one incipient enlightenment or enlightenment. Next is called the sudden-enlightenment. The last one is thorough-enlightenment. They are three different platforms. In fact, Jesus Christ’s state of being at that time had not reached the platform of sudden-enlightenment, still short of it. However, his life was nearly the end and the last moment came. The Creator gave him that length of life. He must finish his lesson during that time. What do you think he could do? It is similar to that he should have scored three points, but he only made 1.8 point and was short of 1.2 point. What could he do? He was nailed on the cross and his life was almost done. But he was still complaining about the unfairness. Yet at the moment of his complaining, he suddenly realized that he had the desire for reward and tried to negotiate with the Creator with his devotion. He realized he was thinking about that the Creator should treat him the way he wanted because he had done things for Him. That was not the attitude of a servant to his master. No.
Do you know what the perfection of life is? That is to truly know about the self and truly understand the self. What is truly knowing about the self? Do you know your identity? You always request so much. Do you know your identity? Do you know why those things happened in your life? Do you know? If you don’t know, it proves that you don’t understand it. As a person who doesn’t understand it, how do you engage yourself in its pursuit? What do you think is useful to you and non-useful to you? What is good? What is bad? You don’t have the ability of discernment. All those pursuits you have done are meaningless. The most expedient method waits there for you to take. Sometimes we might worry that the Creator might forget about us. Are we still on the list? It won’t be like that. If you are always ready and waiting to receive, you will be the last one he might forget. But you have forgotten to wait there to receive it. You have forgotten all about this matter. You are not ready. Your pocket of reception is closed, not open. What can he give you? The Creator never does extra things. There are manifest and non-manifest aspects of His sixty-four kinds of qualities. Do you know? If the TVs in our homes are not turned on, no one is using the TV in his house, or there is no TV, what is the point to build a TV station here? Do you think it is possible? Is there a TV station in Sahara Desert? Or water company? Or bus station? No! Why? The Creator says there are no such needs in that place because there are no people there and so no use. He never does extra things.
We also understand that we shouldn’t do extra things. However, all of us are doing extra things or those things that are unrelated to us or are not truly beneficial most of the time. We spend our precious time, bodily energy and spirits in those things. We are merely pursuing our conceptual ideologies. It is not that those things themselves are very important, but it is our conceptualization that ties us up and leads us to get engaged in the pursuit of unnecessary things. After reaching a goal, we feel unsatisfied again. We continue to pursue. We want to have a lot of money. However, not one of millionaires is free from worries. It is not because he doesn’t have money. He worries about his money. Do you understand? People worry about having as well as non-having. How to distribute the wealth at the time of death? Eventually he worries himself to death. When you have nothing, there is the feeling of non-having. When you have something, there is the feeling of having. After eating, you need to prepare to have excrement. That must happen. Everything once started will have an ending. When there is a cause, there must be a result of it. The manifestation of material world follows this kind of law. You can’t change it.
Therefore the meaning of life lies in knowing of the self and understanding of the self. But we don’t know where life comes from, at where life starts, why it is like it is, and why it ends at last. We all think that we can be exceptional and death is a matter for others. Therefore we forget about that death may come at any time. We are so forgetful. It seems death is far far away. We are busy in satisfying our pursuits. This is how things go. Gradually we turn into a person who doesn’t understand the self. Then, we try to understand others based on this kind of level. Think about what it is like. How do you get along with others? Will there be harmony in terms of your status, your approach, and your relationships with others? All of us live in a place without understanding. There is no understanding in our feelings. There is no harmony in our surroundings. Therefore we complain when our expectations are not met. Even Jesus Christ had that kind of complaint when he was nailed on the cross! He was a great saint! What about us?
I have said that Jesus was still Jesus and a saint was still a saint! Although he was near the end of life, in such a short moment, which lasted only a few seconds, in such a least bearable time…. Although never being on that cross, we have a kind of acute device within us that can make us feel and understand it. We don’t need to try it in person and can understand how unbearable that pain is, right? People who have experienced the opening of energy channels know the feeling of the opening of energy channels, which is worse than death. Although not dead yet, we are afraid of death. It proves that all of us understand a little about death. If it is not true, why are we afraid of death? That fear itself is also the manifestation of our incomplete understanding. Therefore the attitude toward that pain shows our confusion about life and the Creator. Jesus was in this state at that moment, but he immediately realized that he was bargaining. He realized he was a servant and so should not question the Creator or demand the Creator. No! This act itself is an offense. Now he finally understood it. Because of still having this offensive quality, he should suffer the sanction of offense at the last moment of his life! The Creator let him understand this truth at the last moment of his life and complete this lesson. Then his life ended perfectly. The great Jesus understood this truth at the last moment of his life that lasted only a few seconds. At last he said, "Lord, now I understand. I submit unto you!" Jesus resurrected at that moment! Although death fell on him, his true life resurrected. His life ended perfectly!
If it were not Jesus, let’s think: who would have such a great determination at the last moment of his life and complete that lesson? How long does it take to use ordinary methods and ordinary causes and conditions to complete that lesson? Was that the fierceness of the Creator? Who can see that was the mercy of the Creator? Who can see it? Who can see it? And what does the Creator try to reveal to the people in this world with the cruel treatment to His child? What does he try to tell us? What do we see? What are we aware of? Many great saints have come to the world to enlighten later generations. Their lives usually didn’t end in a nice way. Do you know those spiritual masters like Socrates, Milarepa, etc.? The people who understand the Truth are always in danger of being killed by the mundane people of the time.
Therefore, we need to learn to be obedient. We are not here to play around with our lives, but to complete our lessons in our lifetimes. We must appreciate our time as well as our causes and conditions. Otherwise, we will be muddleheaded, wasting time away. When time has passed and causes and conditions have passed, the lesson is still there. And our life quality has not been elevated. The lesson of understanding life is not finished. We will have to come back again! It will repeat until the lesson is done. This is the cause of transmigration. It may be worse that some may fall down in their lives. This is the tendency of almost all the living entities. Therefore there are six destines of transmigration! There is such a small chance for people to become a human again after they die! It needs the aggregation of a lot of causes and conditions! And a lot of time! Buddha always says that: living entities will reach Buddhahood at last. That is right. It is not much to spend billions and billions of years!
Therefore when we have the human form, we should, by using the human body, strive to understand the relationship between the mind and the soul, the relationship between the sense-objects and the six senses and how to handle the relationships between ourselves and others, and to realize things in them. Why is the occurrence of everything destined? Why can’t we decide it? As we can’t change all this, is it reasonable to live in complaints? Is it smart? We should wake up!
Millions and millions of people don’t pursue the truth of life. We are the ones who pursue this. We are only one thousand-millionth of the population! As we proceed in this lesson, however, we show the quality of ordinary people. It often times happens. For the sake of eating and gratifying personal wishes, we become the servant of our senses and false ego. We regard the thieves (the senses and false ego) as our father. It is so pitiful! These subtle lessons occur everyday. Perhaps the cause and condition of enlightenment would come. However, at that moment, we may not be ready. Alas, we will miss the lesson. There are not many causes and conditions of enlightenment that the Creator arranges for every Buddhist practitioner, who is like a student taking a collegiate entrance exam. He studies hard for twelve years just for that moment. It is not an easy thing. What do you want? If you miss it, you forever miss it.
As you don’t know when the time will come, you can’t listen to yourself. You are led by your mind. You need to listen to a spiritual master, because he knows your causes and conditions! Do you know why a Chan master hits his disciple’s head with a plank at a certain moment? You feel it is funny when you hear the word clubbing. You don’t know that is violence! How does one feel to be hit by a plank? Only the one who got hit knows it. You have never been clubbed before. But have you ever hit your head on a door? Do you know that feeling? But you did not get any realization when you hit a door. It was a wasteful act. You just knew the pain. Your realization was pain. Then you might hit again. Sometimes you hit a door with your head several times a day. Then, we may understand that the body isn’t ours. It belongs to the Creator. It’s done when it’s destroyed. We don’t need to take responsibility. And the door is not yours, too. It belongs to the Buddhist Hall. So you hit as hard as possible since a carpenter will fix it.
Therefore that alertness must be very subtle and quick responding. We need to maintain ourselves in this spirit all the time. Don’t be muddleheaded and in a daze. One in a daze will lose his awareness! It seems that you are always not ready or can’t live gracefully. Therefore once you exhibit that kind of passive quality, I will punish you heavily. To a Buddhist practitioner, that is the last thing he needs.
I have said to you to get rid of grossness, laziness, doubts, emotional outbursts, and the propensity of non-persistence. The elimination of the five qualities is important for one who wants to attain perfection in this life. It won’t work if one drifts away from this. To observe Five Precepts is the lesson of a rabbit. No matter how well one observes Five Precepts (not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to tell lies, and not to drink intoxicants), he can’t compete with a rabbit. You must remember what was discussed by me that in fact it is impossible for us to observe the Precepts perfectly! "Furnished with the observance of precepts". Who can be furnished with the observance of precepts? How can one be furnished? The first precept "not to kill" cannot be done! When Sakyamuni was alive, he went on alms-round. Every Hindu household cooked food. None of them drank water or ate food without cooking. Were there no bugs in the water? How many bugs would be killed when water is boiled? Who could repay the lives? Don’t monks eat that kind of food? Didn’t the Buddha eat that kind of food? Isn’t there any bug in the air one breathes in? Aren’t vegetables a kind of life form? Every grain contains life. How can one not kill any life? It is not such a simple concept.
When Buddha Sakyamuni came down to the world, he promoted no killing of anything live, which was his mission as an incarnation of the Creator. It is because the Hindus in India abused what was said in Vedic scriptures that one could sacrifice animals to the Creator and so killed a lot of innocent lives. Therefore the Creator is afraid to say anything. Buddha is afraid to say anything. Once He says something, people will abuse it. They are not responsible and act according to their whims. Then, they blame it on Buddha. This is why Sakyamuni denied Vedic scriptures. The Hindus don’t understand this. Therefore they deny Buddhism. They say Buddhists don’t believe in God. Sakyamuni at his time did not recommend the Creator to his followers and did not discuss the knowledge about the Creator. Therefore none of Buddhists knows the Creator. They just know the Limited Boundary (the topmost state of being one can reach in the conditioned world). Therefore the religious system of Buddhism doesn’t have perfect views, which are absolutely imperfect. The Limited Boundary is the platform of Impersonal Brahman. Therefore in the thoughts of many Buddhists, the goal of spiritual cultivation is to achieve a state in which nothing exists at the end. They think that is Nirvana! Regardless of whether they have attained that platform or truly know that sensation, they sound like they understand scriptures very well. In many scriptures they also see that many high-level Buddhists do not mean that. If there is nothing, how does that sensation exist? How does that clear understanding exist? That clear understanding truly exists. Why is there nothing? Therefore, one who has obtained the Way does not worry that you are not smart enough. He worries that your smartness is not thorough. If we are not truly smart, we may be smart for our own good!
Therefore self-perfection and our final refuge lie in raising our realization. The realization we have now is that we don’t do things we should do and we have no awareness when we need to. Do you understand? The right and perfect enlightenment that the Buddha had cultivated is also a certain stage of realization. It is still a platform of realization. Therefore, we discuss realization today, we discussed realization yesterday, and we will discuss realization tomorrow. Our lesson cannot drift away from this spiritual consciousness. It is seen in the details of our daily lives. All is the lesson as well as the cause and condition for spiritual cultivation. Don’t neglect it. In this way, we will gradually furnish our realization. I have said in my Triplet Poem that "the marvelous enlightenment will arise when the consciousness is furnished", right? The soul is in charge when one is constantly in the state of consciousness, where nothing exists but clear knowing. Do you understand that? (Applause.)
When you try to understand me, don’t speculate based on your thoughts. Remember that! Don’t have a preconditioned idea before you look. You will be wrong at whatever you look at. Your idea has no foundation. What do you think of me? Is there any foundation of your thought? Looking is looking. Knowing is knowing. Realizing is realizing. (They are three different things) Not knowing is not knowing. These should be the issues that concern you. You should be concerned about them. Is it O.K. that you are not concerned about them? If you are not concerned about those issues, you can leave. It is more reasonable and valuable than anything else that you should set your mind on me! Some spiritual master dresses herself with beautiful clothes and put make-up on her face on purpose, which seems to violate the dignity of Buddhist tradition. You can’t look at that with your own mind. We don’t understand spiritual masters. Unless we become a spiritual master, we can’t criticize spiritual masters. We should not criticize or judge a spiritual master, thinking he should be like this or should not. How can you understand this issue? To you, he is always a myth. You don’t understand anything, but he understands everything. You do everything wrong, but he does everything right. This is absolute! What I have just said is an absolute truth. Do not think that you might be right for a little. Let me tell you: "That’s bullshitting! Other than that your fart is stinky is right, you won’t be right." As a non-liberated soul, you are confined by your conceptions. You won’t be right by any luck. When right or wrong is in uncertainty, there is no right or wrong. Do you understand? Sometimes we don’t see anything but our eyes are open, which is due to absent-mindedness. Has that ever happened? In the same surroundings we don’t see something or hear something. It is justified to say that that thing has not happened to us! Therefore, the state of non-realization is like that.
A non-liberated soul is in this state of false-ego, the state of non-spiritual consciousness, and the state of conceptions. All is under the control of the three modes of nature. Therefore it is very very necessary to develop the quality of deference. But it is very very difficult to develop the quality of deference. You repeat being scolded and repeat forgetting because you like to demand and accept things based on the conception of false-ego. When we accept things based on the conception of false-ego, we will select what we want and abandon what we don’t want. We think whichever is not good and so we don’t want that. That vegetable is bitter, therefore not good. This is why children are picky about food. It may happen what you don’t want to eat is what you need, right? What we think the worst or the last thing we want may have the most necessary elements we need. But it is turned down by us. It is needed but it has been thrown away. We will suffer losses. In this way we repeat suffering losses and wasting our lives away.
Therefore I like the ones who have served in the military. They act resolutely. They are deferent. They recognize their wrongdoing and are willing to be reprimanded. Has a soldier never been reprimanded? Can it work? Senior soldiers will punish you harshly. You will almost faint after being slapped hard. You don’t know that the Five Laws of Chan School are very strict. In the Gao-min Temple at the upper reach of Yangtze River, Master Xu-yun got clubbed. His skin was torn and his flesh gaped open.
We have to overcome our own mentality. We need to learn to be humble. In this way, we could obtain the maximum outcome by being at the lowest place. The ocean gets the most because it is situated at the low level. Everything flows to it. You should have a mind as broad as a valley. If we can be inclusive, we will be fruitful. The children who are picky about food won’t put on weight. That is how things go. When we are ready, the Creator will give us. When we are demanding, the Creator will ignore us. It is because nothing is given based on our want. The Creator has said that he wants to give, but he has never said that he wants to gratify your greed, right?
Therefore you don’t know how to handle your relationship with me. Brother Tan asked me questions again after a lecture. He was scolded by me. Do you know that? Why? It is because we will neglect our position whenever we are attached to our own mentality. Then, there will be collision, as well as an offense. In this light, our feelings will be polluted. They will be mixed with bad things. Those things are not Buddhist relics. They are not diamond. Those things are like sand in rice, which are things you must avoid.
Therefore, a disciple should understand the appropriate behavior and a disciple’s duty. A saint has told us that in front of a spiritual master, you should be prepared to be defeated by him at any time because you will never conquer him and you are always the one who fails. You will gain pleasure and satisfaction from failure. However, we constantly possess a thief’s mentality, attempting to win over a spiritual master. That is impossible. Stop dreaming!
What is association with a spiritual master? The Bhagavad-gita clearly tells us that it is to satisfy the requests of the spiritual master one hundred percent. In Chinese words, it means to be deferent and to satisfy him, right? But we always discriminate between things, thinking that we need to satisfy ourselves. This is our insufficiency. Of the five great elements required on the path of attaining perfection in this lifetime, there is an additional point, which is association! This is very very important! It is because in the entire process of spiritual cultivation, if one drifts way from his spiritual master, it means that one drifts away from the issue of spiritual cultivation.