Spiritual Guide（修行要依止善知识）

Venerable Yan Pei was a very famous Buddhist monk of the Mahayana School. He wrote many books on Buddhism. I just read one of the articles that he wrote entitled “How to befriend a spiritual guide”. The topic seems insignificant but there are some very good points mentioned.

Anyone who aspires to practice Buddhism must befriend a spiritual guide, for the teachings of the Buddha are too broad that you will not be able to just learn them completely on your own. There are some people who think that they do not need a teacher - “I can just read the sutras on my own and I can still attain enlightenment.” However, it is in fact nearly impossible for one to do so. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are extremely rare in this world. Almost 100% of the practitioners must learn from a spiritual guide.

A spiritual guide may not be a Buddha, a Bodhisattva or your teacher. He can be anyone who could guide you along the path to enlightenment, who is already ahead of you on the path. They would have read many sutras and applied the teachings in their practice. As they are already ahead of you on the path, they already learnt what should and should not be done. They could teach you and guide you on the path to enlightenment. They can therefore be called the “spiritual guides”.

A spiritual guide is very crucial in the practice of Buddhism. One should befriend the spiritual guides and learn from them in order to accomplish his practice. In the practice of Tibetan Buddhism, a spiritual guide is even more important - a practitioner must find his root teacher and learn from him for the rest of his life; he can then be assured of his success in cultivation.

Venerable Yan Pei asked, “Why are there so many practitioners around us and yet so few have attained enlightenment?” Because most of the practitioners, when they befriend their spiritual guides, fail to truly learn from the latter; a practitioner could make mistakes out of his own lust, hatred and ignorance that prevented him from learning.

There are a few key points on befriending a spiritual guide: faith, reverence and humility. First, a practitioner must have faith in his spiritual guide. Second, a practitioner must revere his spiritual guide. If you do not befriend your spiritual guide and do not revere him, you will get nothing out of it. Third, you must learn with humility from your spiritual guide.

Buddhism teaches us to reflect inward to realize our own shortcomings and negative propensities, and do not point our fingers at others. A good spiritual guide will point out your problems; if he does not do so, he is not a good spiritual guide. If you want to accomplish your practice, you must reflect inward and practice “The Eight Stanzas of Mind Training”. If you keep criticizing others of their shortcomings, you will fall into the evil path. I certainly have my shortcomings too, so I am still learning to improve myself all the time.

The key point of practice is the training of our own mind – reflect inward and watch our mind, do not look outward for the mistakes of others.

The Samaya Bond (三昧耶戒)

Grand Master mentioned an Australian master in his book entitled “Vision Beyond A Thousand Miles” (千里之外的看见). This was an exceptional master who was diligent in his practice and a long time practitioner. Grand Master conferred him the title of a vajra master and gave him the name for his chapter. He printed many sutras, especially the “The Root Vows of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha Sutra”. Later, he built a big temple in Melbourne and was ordained as a monk. He taught Buddhism and helped many. He suddenly died at a very young age, causing many to feel a great sense of loss.

Some students asked Grand Master why did he end up dying so young? Grand Master said that he had broken his Samaya Bond. What is Samaya Bond? It is a spiritual bond between a disciple and his root guru, principle deity and dharma protector. It is a precept that cannot be transgressed. One who does not uphold the Samaya Bond will not succeed in all his practices. Especially so for a Vajrayanist who should never break the bond for there is no one who can help you if you have, including the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

But Grand Master continued to say that had he been willing to chant Grand Master’s heart mantra once, or recite the name of the Buddha or the name of Grand Master once, or just give Grand Master a call, Grand Master would have been able to help him. However, he was unwilling to do so. Maybe he had heard too much negative criticisms about Grand Master in the past that he decided to leave the True Buddha School. He had stopped believing in Grand Master and therefore broken his Samaya Bond, and he ended up losing his life too.

How inconceivable is the practice of Vajrayana! I feel that the most important thing about spiritual practice is to avoid transgressing the precepts. We must uphold the precepts carefully, especially the Samaya Bond. We should maintain the purity of our practice, for “heaven is watching over what men are doing.” The heavenly beings are watching us all the times. Every action and every thought of ours are being monitored closely by someone above – giving us marks. "Good deed – good!" "Bad deed –let’s record it and sort it out one by one." This is the reason why we, the practitioners, must abide by the precepts very closely and practice the purity of our action, speech and mind.

You know well that I have never thrown my tantrum and I have never pointed my finger at others or scolded anyone. Why? Because I do not wish to create bad karma, for I understand the inconceivable power of karma. An evil thought, the moment it is harbored, has created a bad karma. That is something which I will never dare doing. You can criticize me, scold me, spit at me, slash me, hurt me etc – it does not matter to me. “Forget it…forget it… ” I will do what the Tolerance Deity (one of the past re-incarnations of Sakyamuni Buddha) did – just keep silent. I will not retort for I do not wish to and dare not create a negative karma. So, if you want to succeed in your practice, you must maintain the purity of your action, speech and mind. Reflect inward – this is a key practice.

The Ten Great Aspirations of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (普贤十大行願)

I feel that the aspiration to enlightenment is key to spiritual cultivation. The Aspirations of Samantabhadra represents the true practice of the path to enlightenment demonstrated by Sakyamuni Buddha. Both the aspiration and its actualization are an integral part of spiritual cultivation. Without aspiration, you lack the will to reach enlightenment for the sake of helping the sentient beings, and you will therefore never attain enlightenment.

First, you must aspire to reach enlightenment. Next, you must actualize your aspiration. This is the spirit of the Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra. The Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra are well known among the Buddhists. The Ten Great Aspirations are also known as the Ten Great Kings of Vow or The Oceanic Vows of Samantabhadra. These Ten Great Aspirations are a common quality found in all the practitioners who aspire to attain Buddhahood; there is no Buddha who lacks any one of the Ten Aspirations. Only when one has perfected the practice of the Ten Aspirations, he would attain Buddhahood. So, I wish that you would bear in mind the Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra from today onwards and apply them in your practice.


The Ten Great Aspirations of
Bodhisattva Samantabhadra

1. Revere the Buddhas
As a student of the Buddha, we must revere all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

2. Sing praises of the Buddhas
We should try our best to sing praises of the Buddhas, informing the rest of the sentient beings of the inconceivable merits of the Buddhas.

3. Make offerings
We should practice offering widely, including helping those in need.

4. Repent
We have committed bad karmas during our numerous reincarnations in the Six Realms of Existence. No matter what, we must repent all our past mistakes. There is no one who is born a Buddha - no one! So, we must repent our past mistakes. Repentance is a key practice.

5. Rejoice in Virtuos Actions
The merit generated from rejoicing in virtuos actions done by others is tremendous. It sounds easy but hard to practice. Why? It is easy to sing praises of others when they did a good deed, for you don’t need to even spend a single penny to do so; it is that easy! However, man is stingy and does not easily rejoice in the good deeds of others. Instead, he will feel jealous about the accomplishment of others in their cultivation or mundane tasks, and he will feel jealous about the good looks of others etc. Because of the jealousy in man, rejoice becomes a difficult task. Rejoice is a very important meritorious act. We must eradicate the jealousy in us and celebrate the success of others. It is an easy task but most people could not do it; this is the biggest hurdle in our cultivation.

6. Turn the Wheel of Dharma
When there is a Buddha in our era, we should request Him to give the teachings. The world is lit with hopes when a Buddha is here giving the teachings. When there is no Buddha living in this world, this world will fall into the darkness of hell.

7. Praying for the Longevity of the Buddha
When you recognize an enlightened Buddha among us, you should request Him to stay in this world perpetually. When the Three Realms (Desire, Form and Formless Realms) are deprived of a Buddha, you could imagine how sad it is. So, we must request the Buddha to stay in this world perpetually to help and guide the sentient beings.

8. Learn from the Buddha
You must learn from the Buddha the teachings of enlightenment. The worldly teachings are no other than lust, hatred, ignorance, love, enmity, passion and worry, which are the root cause of your perpetual cyclic existence in the Six Realms of Existence. So, you must learn from the Buddha the teachings of enlightenment. What should you learn from the Buddha? Learn from the Buddha the Three Perfect Teachings i.e. disciplines, meditation and wisdom. Disciplines or precepts are crucial. Abide by all the precepts and do not transgress any of them. I have repeated many times that one should not transgress the precepts, no matter how small it seems. Do all meritorious acts, no matter how small they seem. Sometimes, you might come across someone and you would happily greet him, “Good morning! Om Mani Padme Hum.” It will make the other party feel happy. This is a small meritorious act that should be done.
On the contrary, do not do any bad deed no matter how insignificant it seems. For instance, when you are feeling bad, you might give others an unfriendly glance, or show others a mean look. Such bad acts, no matter how small it seems, should be avoided. An insignificant bad act may roll like a snow ball, becoming bigger gradually, and you will end up creating a big negative karma.

9. Be accommodating
Try to be accommodating to others, helping to fulfill their wishes. Try to look at things from a more accommodating perspective, think positively, and avoid thinking negatively. No matter what happens, do not just look at it from a negative perspective, “He did it, targeting me!” No! No matter what he did, even if he did it with such motive, we the cultivators, should not harbor such mentality and think negatively. Instead, we should act compassionately and embrace him with a magnanimous heart.

10. Dedicate the merits
We should dedicate all the good merits generated from our meritorious acts and the cultivation of the Buddha Dharma, to all the sentient beings in the universe, wishing them well and happy – ending their cyclic existence and sufferings.

In summary, the Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra are very crucial. All the Buddhas in the universe, of the past, present and future attain Buddhahood only after accomplishing the Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra. There is no Buddha who has missed out any of the ten aspirations. We must therefore follow the Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra, and actualize them in our practice.

X-Tour: Tibetan Highland in Sichuan, China. '2009

End 2008, during our tour in New Zealand, Celestial Master Zhang personally descended in New Zealand, extending His invitation to us to visit Sichuan, asking me to bless the pitiful sentient beings there and free them from their collective karma. On 12 May 2008, Sichuan experienced a disastrous earth quake – Wen Chuan Earth Quake (8 richter scale).

Early 2009, the relationship between Beijing and H.H Dalai Lama has degraded further. When my enthronement ceremony at Horthan Monastery in Qinghai looked set to be delayed further, Danzen Daji Rinpoche from the Gelong Monastery in Shiqu, Sichuan, invited me to the opening ceremony of his newly restored monastery. So, again, 22 of us set off for the tour in a hurry. From 17 to 29 Jul 2009, we created a new chapter in our X-traordinary Tours by visiting the Tibetan Highland of Sichuan/Qinghai.

When we were planning the tour with our friend in Chengdu, Zen (our tour guide of our Chengdu Tour in 2006), a Dharma Sister of ours, who was an epidemic specialist from our neighboring country, sent us an email advising us to cancel our plan. Reason being, the world was facing a H1N1 pandemic. People worldwide was worried and felt lost. Kan asked me for my opinion. I told her, every X-traordinary Tour was full of challenges but they were all finally resolved through the blessings of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and the Dharma Protectors.

Zhou, a Dharma Sister from Shandong, China, decided to join us in the last minute. She had to take a different flight, Air China, as our flight, SilkAir, was already fully booked. She arrived in Chengdu 12 hours before we did.

When our flight was approaching Chengdu, I took my rosary out and started praying to Grand Master, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, invoking their blessing for Chengdu. At the time, Dharma Brother Hong from Australia who was on the same flight, ‘saw’ Jade Pond Golden Mother and Acho Rinpoche descended from space, blessing Sichuan by showering the rain of nectar, cleansing Sichuan. They were surrounded by many female deities who were showering flowers around them. Later, our flight pierced through the layers of rain clouds, finally landing safely at the Chengdu Airport.

When I just stepped out of the airport, I felt the cool and refreshing air outdoors after the rain, gently caressing my face. Zhou came to the airport to meet us. She told me that she just found out that Chengdu had already suffered from draught for several months, with a high temperature of 32ºC. It was hot and humid. However, just 2 hours ago, there was suddenly a heavy downpour which lowered the temperature to 22ºC. It happened just like other X-traordinary Tours - the weather would just change unexpectedly. This time, Zhou had her first hand experience in witnessing a sudden change of weather. She had earlier changed to a pair of shorts before coming to the airport in view of the hot weather.

So, the 22 of us ended up walking pass Mount Qing Chen, Dan Ba Stone Houses, Jia Ju Tibetan Villages, Natural Garden, Dao Fu Residential Houses, Unishya White Stupa, Mani Piles, Vast Grassland, Origin of Yellow River, Sacred Qing Hai Lake, Taer Monastery etc. The whole journey spanned over 2,000 km in distance. We also stayed at high altitude in the Highland City of Shi Qu, at 4,200m above sea level, and crossing over a 4,824m point above sea level at Mount Ba Ye Ge La. This time, high altitude syndromes such as panting, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, fever etc became one of the main themes of our tour.

The most unbelievable story happened on Dharma Sister Bing. She was the last to join due to some earlier work commitment issues. And our itinerary kept changing all the time. When our coach finally entered Xie Wu, a town in Qing Hai Province, we stopped by a small restaurant for lunch. Bing came forward and asked me if she lived here in her past life because every street and house in the town looked so familiar to her! Although she had never set foot in Qinghai, this place kept appearing in her dreams. Although the house had been renovated, it remained vivid in her memory. With my blessing, she found her great grandson from her past life, Sonam Lama, a Buddhist monk of the Sakya. The touching moments of a reunion crossing over two different lifetimes could only be truly felt and understood by the individuals involved. Bing knew that the reunion was being arranged by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, or she would not have such paranormal experience. “Although I had never set foot in Qinghai, Qinghai came to me in my dream every night… This was my most favorite song entitled Dreaming of Qinghai Every Night. The lyrics of this song kept ringing in my mind…..

The most interesting character of this tour was A Peng. He was my school mate in my secondary school. We reunited sometime back at our alumni. He came to know about our plan for the tour and he wanted to join us. In Tian Quan, there was a landslide blocking our road ahead. So, we decided to just stop somewhere nearby for our dinner, while waiting for the road to be cleared. We took pictures around the area and caught the images of the amazing round lights filling the sky on our cameras - the Mandala Lights. At first, A Peng did not manage to capture those lights with his expensive camera when others did. He was very curious about such a phenomenon. Later he told me, “Don’t be superstitious! Those are just reflections from the dusts in the sky.” I only smiled to him and continued to walk into the small restaurant nearby. Strangely, the “dusts” miraculously disappeared after I stepped into the restaurant. A Peng asked me to go out of the shop for photo taking again. This time, the “dusts” reappeared. So, the “dusts” seemed to be spiritual. The “dusts” seemed to be surrounding me during the whole photo taking session. After studying it for a long time, A Peng finally came to me and said, “A Leng, I’m sorry! I think those are not dusts but an unbelievable paranormal phenomenon.” At a later stage when we reached the Dzogchen Monastery, one of the six main monasteries of the Nyingma, A Peng captured more of such Mandala Lights with his camera. He finally firmly believed that those are not “dusts”. Another Dharma Brother Jin even captured the Mandala Lights in motion in Ganzhi Town, in broad daylight.

Jin also joined us for the first time. He was a disciple of Venerable Jing Kong. He read a few of our books on X-traordinary Tours but was doubtful about the stories. He had been to Tibet, Qinghai Lake, Taer Monastery, the Silk Road, the Vast Grassland in the past. But he found those places too commercialized and was losing his interest in travelling. However, this time, he found this tour truly memorable. He shared his feelings with many people after the tour, “This tour was truly unusual! Every thing that I saw, heard and felt during the tour will change the rest of my life!” Besides, he also saw the changes in A Peng, Zen and Ben - changes in their outlook of life and finding their long lost childhood innocence.

Ben was the assistant to Zen. He was not very close to us at the beginning of the tour but we became closer each day. Soon after, he even started sharing our books on the Paranormal Tours with almost everyone he met during the tour. Due to his good efforts, a female waitress at a restaurant where we had our lunch near Qinghai Lake came to me for blessing; and Shi, our tour guide at Taer Monastery, came to me for blessing by asking me to touch her head.

How unusual was it? How inconceivable was it? How did one change from a non-believer to a strong believer? How did one change spiritually and physically? It was the blessing of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and the Dharma Protectors. It had nothing to do with Acho! May I ask you, the x-traorinary readers, to join us, a group of True Buddha practitioners, for this X-traordinary Tour of Tibetan Highland in Sichuan!

Lotu Robe (Acho)
6 Aug 2009

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/BuddhaEyeAlbum/China2009#

Garbage Truck (垃圾卡车)

H shared a story with the rest:
A car suddenly came from nowhere, nearly clashing with a taxi on the road. The driver of the car did not apologize to the taxi driver, instead he scolded the latter. But the taxi driver merely gave a friendly smile and waved to the car driver. The passenger in the taxi questioned the driver, “The car driver was at fault. Why did you treat him that way?” The taxi driver answered, “ Beware of garbage truck! A garbage truck refers to a person who is overwhelmed by his negative emotions, who is ready to throw them onto others. If you quarrel with him, you will end up being another garbage truck.”

Acho Rinpoche:

None of us wants to be a garbage truck. However, our true nature was obscured by lust, hatred and ignorance during our many rounds of re-incarnations in our past life.

In Grand Master’s book entitled “A Transcendental Book” (通天之书), he mentioned that he went to hell one day and the Hell Lord showed him a few doors. Through one of the doors, he saw the remaining 15 Large Lotuses out of the original 18. 3 of them already withered. For the 3 Large Lotus Bodhisattvas lost their way in the secular world, fallen prey to the worldly temptations and ended up in hell.

From this story in the book, we could tell that even for the Bodhisattvas who were suppose to come save the sentient beings, they could end up being defiled by the latter instead. They ended up collecting the emotional garbage, and finally fell. They might not have realized their falling, although it was clear to the those around them. When a person collected too much emotional garbage, it will become noticeable to others around him. But the person himself will not notice his own problem because he would always think that he was right and tend to be defensive; he will not accept any advice from others.

When you have collected too much emotional garbage, your behavior will become weird and noticeable to others. How do you tell if you have collected too much emotional garbage? When you become unhappy, dissatisfied, argumental and always insist on your own points of view, those are signs of falling. But you will never notice it! So, a practitioner must learn to be humble.

Grand Master also mentioned in his book that many people thought that they did very well in their cultivation and achieved good spiritual responses, but they had actually ended up enlarging their ego and stop listening to the advice of others. Grand Master said such people did not achieve a true spiritual response, although they too claimed to be able to dream of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and even see them while awake. Unfortunately, they have actually fallen due to their lack of humility.

A practitioner must be humble and never think high of himself. It will be easier for him to pass the tests with such mentality. There are just too many temptations in the world today. I wish that you would practice well and surpass the realm of evil - finally savoring the fruits of enlightenment.