Tonight, Kheng shared with the
rest two of his recent dreams. In his first dream, he was with Acho Rinpoche
and Shao in the same room. Acho Rinpoche requested him to go outside of the
room to take care of the traffic controls. He hesitated because he knew there
was an ocean of sentient beings out there, too much for him to handle. In his
second dream, he saw Acho Rinpoche showing both his hands, with the little
fingers burning in flame. Acho Rinpoche told Kheng, “This is the kind of pain
one will need to endure when he aspires to help the sentient beings to break free
of the cyclic existence of the Six Realms.”
Later, Acho Rinpoche explained the
meaning of these dreams. The first dream implied that the numerous sentient
beings are just innumerable and one will just continue to reach out to them
life after life. The second dream implied that when one aspires to bodhicitta (aspiration
to help the numerous sentient beings attain enlightenment), he must be
prepared to endure the tremendous pain that will ensue beyond his
imagination. Master Lu fell very ill recently for the same reason of helping
the numerous sentient beings by taking over their great sufferings in the form
of fatal illness, at the risk of losing his own life. Such is the spirit of
bodhicitta and the spirit of Mahayana. A cultivator who strives for his own well
beings including those of his family will certainly accomplish the desired outcome but
that is not the true purpose of a Buddhist cultivation. The true purpose of a Buddhist
cultivation is to help the numerous sentient beings, related and not related to
oneself, to break free of the cyclic existence of the Six Realms. A true
cultivator does not take interest in just striving for his own benefits or for
only a small group of people related to him.
Acho Rinpoche
shared a video clip that he saw on the Internet. There was a cultivator who had
recently completed her 10,000th round of fire puja. However, she
finally realized that only the 10,000th round of fire puja was applauded
by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas because that was the only puja that she did for
the sole purpose of dedicating the merit to her root guru who fell very ill in
order to help the numerous sentient beings. Acho Rinpoche also reminded us that
although there is a set of expedient methods in Buddhism that was designed to entice
some of the people to the initial path to enlightenment including “wealth
creation method” such as helping one winning a lottery, a Buddhist teacher should not
promote such practice as it will increase the sense of desire in a person
and lead him to a spiritual downfall. The true purpose of a Buddhist cultivation
is none other than helping the sentient beings break free of the cyclic
existence of the Six Reamls inherent with the numerous problems, and attain the
ultimate state of enlightenment – Buddhahood. The fruit of enlightenment is
totally unrelated to the secular wealth. Recently, someone requested the blessing
of the 17th Karmapa Urgyn Trinley for wining a lottery, so that the
former can help the propagation of the Buddhadharma. The wise 17th
Karmapa told the requestor that one does not need to offer financial help to propagate
the Buddhadharma as he can readily help through other means. Actually the irony
is that, after one strikes a lottery, he may not even be interested to help the
propagation of the Buddhahdarma anymore.
Lastly, Acho Rinpoche talked about
the succession issue of a sect. Usually, a sect will vanish gradually after the
passing of its founder who could not find a qualified successor in time. A qualified
successor must be someone who has attained the same state of spiritual
accomplishment as the founder in order to be able to sustain the continuity of
the sect. Also, if the successor is too young, despite the fact that he is a
reincarnation of another enlightened master himself, he will not be able to
take over the heavy responsibility of a spiritual head in time. That is the
reason why some of the Buddhist sects disappeared quietly after the passing of
their founders.
Reported by Sun-Moon KFS on 11-06-2019
