BOUNDLESS HOMAGE TO BUDDHA
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“Boundless homage to Buddha” is an old topic, but it is very basic and very important.
Those, who are going to follow Buddhism, must build up the foundation and understand the basics, especially about paying homage to Buddha. If we do not have reverence for Buddha, we would not be blessed, so it would be easy to have the wrong view about Buddhism, leading to superstition, even heresy. And in order to have the solid foundation we must build up the great reverence for the Buddha. Therefore, though the topic is very old, it is never enough even if we discuss about it again and again.
Reverence, fear, or love that rules human beings cannot be defined adequately in words. We often say we love someone, so really “What is love?” It is difficult to describe love accurately and thoroughly. But we would realise that when we love someone, we would miss them when we are away from them; we would be happy when we see them and we always want to help them. In general, we want to do whatever that brings happiness to the person we love. So, if we behave like that, it is love but we cannot define the feeling adequately.
Similarly, respect or reverence cannot be defined either. We could only rely on our expression to know who we would respect. When you meet someone, your emotions rise up; or you want to bow to them, these are the signs of respect.
All cultures in the world would have the same view about this matter. When facing a respectable person, we all want to bow and kneel down in front of them. No matter where we live in this world, we would always act like that. Never would we say “How are you?” when we meet a respectable person. We only say so with our friends in this informal way. As for the person we respect, we just want to bow, kneel and pay respect to Him. This happens in any culture in the world.
Why is that? Because when we bow, we appear to be shorter than the person, we want to show him that we are very ordinary while He is truly great. We take a bow in order to express what could not be expressed in words. It happens exactly the same in any language, in any country. Everyone is similar in this way, in their sub-consciousness. It means, everyone in any culture would bow in front of someone, if they respect the person.
Another expression for the people we respect is that we want to listen to them and take their advice because there are many valuable things that we could learn from them. No one would respect an ignorant person. We only respect people who are much more superior than us. We would respect those people, who have compassion for all beings, and highly intelligent. We would want to listen to every word they say, we would want to learn everything from them.
Besides, we also would always want to follow their advice, because our actions would benefit others. So often when they give us advice or teach us, we would always obey and would never argue back.
To sum up, there are four signs of respect o reverence:
– The first sign is that we feel emotional, but light and happy when seeing
them.
- The second sign is that we always want to lower our heads, kneel down, and bow to them. It is an expression saying that we are too insignificant comparing with them.
- The third sign is that we want to be taught by them.
- The fourth sign is that we want to obey and follow their teachings.
The four signs above demonstrate our reverence for someone. When we meet a respectable person, and these signs displays, it means definitely we have respect for that person, without any questions.
Who will we have reverence for? Normally, the one we respect must be better than us on two aspects: talent and ethics. These two qualities must far surpass us.
For example, when we were a Grade-5 student, we met a Doctor, we would respect the Doctor immediately, because we knew their education was much better than ours. When driving on the road, seeing a victim of an accident, we stopped to take them to the hospital i.e. we were good people. But, also in that same case, not only another person did the same thing like we did, but they also contacted the victim’s family to offer help and support. We just took them to the hospital and we thought that we were good enough, but when we saw the other person’s great behaviour, we fell what we did was nothing compared to their actions. If we compared our morality with theirs, they were much better than us. That was why we should respect them.
Or when we were together with our friends, we often enjoyed playing games, drinking and playing cards, just for a little bit of fun. But if we knew about someone, who was living an extremely pure life, and never would engage in ordinary things, without doubt, we would respect them. Their ethics and pureness would be beyond our level.
We should respect those people who possess two qualities: talent and ethics.
However, deep down, we would have more respect for ethical people. The great Goethe, from Germany, once said: “Facing a great mind, I bow. But facing a great heart, I kneel down.“
For those with great mind, we respect and bow, and that would be sufficient. But for those who are compassionate, who spread their love to all beings on Earth; who always would be pure, we would be willing to kneel down to pay respect. Therefore, for those two types of people, those who is talented and those who is moral, it is quite clear that deep down in our mind and heart, we would always have more respect for the ethical and pure people.
That is why everyone pays homage to monks. In life, even though we are wealthy, have high education degree, or are well-known in the society, we still pay homage to monks even though they are quite ordinary. Some even may just have finished Year 12, or grew up from a poor family. However, when meeting them, we still pay homage to them, and consider them to be greater than we are, and we would bow to them.
Why is that? Because they are much more ethical than us and they practise the Dharma more than us. They might not have the degree and education like we did, but we still have reverence for them enormously, simply because they are more ethical and pure than us. It is quite natural really. Nothing or no one actually forces us to behave like that. The fact that we respect monks is very natural and normal. When we meet someone who is greater, and more ethical than us, even though they might not have the same skills, and talent like we do, we still respect them more than others.
On the other hand, if we can comprehend the differences or the gaps between our ethical level and others’, our respect for them would be even more.
For example, for a person, who did not understand much about music, then he would not fully appreciate when he met someone who has a Doctorate degree in music. But we would admire the Professional immediately because we do know a little bit about music. And because the music area is so complicated and extensive, that is why we would admire those who were trained professionally in this area. As for people, who were not aware of the knowledge gap between them and the professionals, it would be hard for them to admire the professionals and appreciate the opportunity.
Or a person who just started learning about Buddhism and not yet comprehend its principles and prayers, they would not be able to fully admire a true spiritual practitioner with twenty years of experience. Yet if they have practiced and understood the severe hardship of cultivation, they would view and perceive things differently. Because they would have understood that each moment of the practice was each moment of attempting to offload greed, hatred and delusion from the mind; each moment of sitting in meditation was each moment of back fatigue, leg pain, and many strenuous things. Because they understand Buddhism principles in depth, they would naturally respect those who have practised for a long time. The respect derived simply of the fact that they understand the knowledge gap between them and those with extensive experiences.
So, to be able to respect someone, we would need to understand their wisdom and greatness; otherwise, we would not be able to appreciate the differences, then we would not be able to truly respect them. We should focus on the word “understand”.
Again, to be able to respect someone, we must understand and appreciate their greatness. If we did not understand them and appreciate their greatness, we would not be able to respect them fully. Therefore, we must be knowledgeable and be wise. Foolish people will not respect anyone else since they do not know about the differences between them and others. If they meet good people they do not know how good these people are and if they meet bad people they do not know how bad these people are either. Maybe they are grateful only if someone give them money or treat them kindly. When we have wisdom, though he does not give us money, or even does not teach us anything, we still respect them because we understand how great they are.
Therefore, we ourselves must be wise and be ethical to be able to respect someone else. This is really not easy. And to pay homage to Buddha, we must have strong ethics and be highly intelligent. Those with low morality would never truly, fully have reverence for Him. They might pay homage Him just because of their superstition or fear. We must be highly intelligent to pay homage to Buddha without any questions and boundless.
So with two people who are equally intelligent, would they respect each other? As we have said before, to respect someone, we must realise how great the other person is. What happens if they are just as good as we are? For example in the case of two doctors or two pop stars? Would they respect each other? It is common that they envy or hate each other. Or in the case that two monks who have the same sublime morality, would they respect each other? Or as for the two superior Buddhist monks with sixty years of cultivation in Buddhism, would they respect each other? The answer is Yes!
We now should be able to understand the difference in the above examples. Same talent, people would not respect and even would be jealous of each other. But people with the same level of morality would respect each other. Therefore, we must understand one key thing that only ethical people would be able to respect someone else. Without ethics, it is hard to respect someone, and it is easy to be jealous of others. We know that respect is a noble quality of human being. That is the reason why our ancestors, long time ago, tried hard to educate children to respect adults in order for them to cultivate ethics. If a child did not respect any adults, he would become useless or even become a threat to the society and the enemy of himself when he grew up. It is true that the worst enemy in our life is ourselves, because without ethics, we would not understand others’ greatness and would not be able to respect them.
We just did a very brief analysis about respect and yet we can appreciate how important and essential to have respect for others. The education for our children from an early age becomes extremely important. Understanding this prerequisite, we can ensure that our family would be provided with the appropriate education, as well as a leader can direct the country towards a specific culture or religion. If we do not educate children to respect adults, their future, the country future would not look good. Learning about politeness, obedience, being humble would be valuable lessons of life for every child. Particularly in Buddhism, we are still kids, so we need to learn more and more about Respect and Reverence.
Now, let’s talk about the “cause and effect” factors of respect. In our analysis, we find that moral people would always respect those who are better than them. Why would the two Venerable at the same rank pay homage to each other? Because they both think that the other is better than them. A virtuous person would always feel that he/she is not as good as the other; hence, the two Venerable would easily have reverence for each other. If only one of those Venerable felt inferior to others, then only one of them were ethical, not both.
Therefore, naturally, ethical people have respect for others; and unethical people do not. We should consider this matter when assessing our soul and mind. If we have respected others since growing up, then we became ethical people. You should assess if you still respect your teachers; or does your respect for parents remain unchanged, when you are getting older? If you ran into your teacher, would you still say hello to them or you would think they were just the village teachers who taught us 5th grade, now we were in college so we could ignore and look down on them. As Buddhists, we must not behave like that. We are forever indebted to our parents for their giving birth to us and to our teachers for their teaching, we must, therefore, respect and love them all our life.
When reading the article about Good People Good Deeds in the newspaper, would we respect those people mentioned in the paper? If so, we are ethical. If not, try to practice Dharma more and more because that means we have not yet acquired ethics. And without ethics, we, surely would likely to do bad deeds and would have a miserable afterlife. Therefore, knowing if we have respect for someone or not, would help us assess our ethics. It is quite simple but very sufficient.
There are a lot of people, who have high social position, who would never respect anyone, because they think they have power hence others should praise and respect them instead. We must realise that they are bad people. Only when they ignore their power and position and respect others, then we can say that they have ethics. They could currently be a President, a Prime Minister, or a General Secretary of a country, but only when we know that they are have ethics, we then would believe that they shall take the country development to the next level. However, if they do not have ethics, and they abuse their power, we would know that whatever they do would not benefit the country.
According to the Law of Cause and Effect, if we respect someone for one of their great qualities, we would likely get the same result. If you respected a dedicated teacher, you could become a good teacher later on. If you respected a scientist, its would be also very likely that you became one. Or if you respected a musical talent, you would likely to have the same talent later in life. Furthermore, those who have admiration and respect for others with compassion, calmness and ethics, it could contribute towards building up great personality and morality for them later on. Our soul would be improved day by day, we would gradually become more ethical, and generous. That is the result of the Cause and Effect Law.
We should always assess ourselves and whatever we are lack of, we should respect others who have that quality and are better than us.
“Escape from The Suffering Cycle” is the story about a secretary who lived in a temple but he was very ugly. His master asked him to be remorseful to the Medicine Buddha. He kept bowing to the Medicine Buddha and at the same time admired the beauty of Buddha’s appearance. In his afterlife, he became monk
Ngoc Lam with a very beautiful face. What he did to achieve this result was that while he was repenting in front of Buddha, he just focused on paying homage to Him, nothing else.
However, those who thoroughly understand Buddhism would not care about ordinary things; they would just pray for superior things. That is when we show our deep reverence towards Buddha and admire all of his superior qualities. Keep doing that would help us gradually acquire such qualities. Even in this miserable world, if we honored a Saint, or a true Master of spiritual enlightenment, our personality could be improved day by day. Our soul and mind could be more tolerant, be more gentle, less angry, more compassionate, and do more good deeds and understand Scripture thoroughly. We could slowly acquire these qualities naturally.
We mention this to you today, to remind you that you must pay homage to Buddha before adopting Buddhism. That is the seed, the basic merit for you to achieve enlightenment later on. If we do not pay homage to Buddha, we would never succeed in cultivation and would never achieve holy quality. Our practice without holy qualities is like planting a tree without the seed. Without these great qualities, we are just narrow-minded, selfish people and will be forever in reincarnation.
To escape from the endless cycle of birth and death, we must acquire great qualities. We could only achieve that from our hard cultivation. However, it is fundamentally important and essential that we must pay homage to Buddha. Those who worshipped Buddha in a former life would easily practise in the following life because the qualities have always been there. And even more fortunate for those who met Buddha in their previous life, they would become an Honorable Monk in their afterlife. Their tremendous homage for Buddha had helped them succeed in their cultivation journey.
We do not know if we would be fortunate enough in this life to meet a real
Buddha, so let’s sow those seeds. Now that Buddha entered Nirvana, so who should we worship?
It would be a bit awkward to say that Buddha is here, in this temple, because it is just a statue. However, when looking at Buddha statue, we would be able to visualise the appearance of Buddha when He was on earth. So, this is where we worship Buddha and this is where we would bow our heads to pay the absolute reverence to Him.
But one would argue that it is just a statue, so it is difficult to pay homage to Buddha. Nothing could be compared to the moment when we kneeled before Him. If Buddha was really sitting here right now, it was certain we could not do anything and could not think of anything else but Buddha. We could abandon everything and wanted to follow Him. And at that time with profound reverence for Him, we just wanted to listen to every word of His teachings. Nowadays, because our reverence for Him become less and less, we sometimes walked by the statue without showing respect to Him.
Those, who consider Buddha statue the real Buddha, would bow their head everytime they walk by, such people are blessed. Due to their great reverence to Buddha, they would get a lot of blessing. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our ordinary life, even though Buddha is there, we would not be able to pay homage to Him completely, we always are too busy with our daily chores and routines.
Therefore, paying homage to the real Buddha is worth much more than when we do the same to a Buddha statue. If you had an opportunity to meet a real Buddha, a bow in front of Him would have been worth a million bows compared to when you did the same in front of a Buddha statue. Thus, having born in
Buddha’s time was an incomparable fortune. We were unlucky to be born 2500 years after this time, because we have no opportunity to show our great reverence to Him. It is a great misfortune for us now, which could not be expressed in words.
But today, let’s make up this misfortune by understanding the following things:
Although Buddha entered Nirvana, He always thought of all beings. He would always be at our side to protect and bless us whenever we think of Him. Therefore, we should pay the absolute reverence to Buddha regardless if He is here in person, or in a statue form. Whenever seeing a Buddha statue, we should think that Buddha is living amongst us. He sits there smiling at us as the greatest Father, the greatest Master, and his compassion and love would never stop. If we would always think so, our reverence for Him would gradually rise up and we would have great blessing. This could be the compensation for our time, which is not
Buddha’s time.
You would be able to have the most noble quality, if your reverence for Buddha would never change regardless what people would tell you about Buddha . In contrast, those who have not yet achieved the above would be affected by others’ sayings about Buddha. They then would eventually lose their reverence for Buddha.
Therefore, it is not good that we would adopt Buddhism just to follow our ancestors’ routines without knowledge of Buddhism. If there was someone who knew about your lack of understanding about Buddhism, they would be able to convince you to follow other religion. And because of our limited knowledge about Buddhism, we would easily follow the other’s advice. For those, who would easily gave up their religion, it means they did not have noble qualities. Only those, who possessed noble qualities, they would always pay homage to Buddha, regardless. If you would only think of your own benefits when adopting a religion, you would be just an ordinary person.
This is a story happened during Buddha’s time. There was an Anathapindika who offered and served the Three Precious Ones fervently. He always had tremendous reverence for Buddha and did many good deeds. However, due to his bad karma, from previous lives, he had suffered from two disastrous events in his life. The first disaster was that someone borrowed his money and did not return. The second disaster was worse than the first one. A huge amount of gold that he buried near the river was washed away by a flood. Hence, he became poorer and poorer.
A Goddess, taking refuge at his residence, was upset because of his negligence and that he saved everything for Buddha and the monks. One night she appeared and said bad words about Buddha. She said that because he followed Buddha, it resulted in these disasters for him and he would continuously have bad luck. But it was unfortunate for her that he had became Scrotapannas, so his reverence for the Buddha would never be changed. She was asked to leave and had to find other places to stay (that story was mentioned in the Dhammapada with title “When the Goddess regrets”).
Those, who have saintly qualities, always have reverence for the Buddha without doubt. However, to be able to achieve these saintly qualities we must first start honoring Buddha extremely and infinitely. We would be able to achieve good qualities later on in our life.
All of us, who are sitting here today, probably are thinking that we are all ordinary and insignificant people. We believe in Buddha and we want to escape from the ordinary human condition full of hatred and delusion. We do not want to be kept in the cycle of rebirth. Therefore, we desire to become a saint someday. But to convert an ordinary person to a saint, we need to build up our reverence for Buddha, the greatest Master, the greatest Saint of all times. This is an extremely important factor which would determine whether or not we would succeed in our cultivation path.
However, if we do not understand the greatness of Buddha, it is quite difficult to have the enormous reverence for Him. When we come to a temple, we worship and pray to Him, it does not necessary mean that we have the deep reverence for Him yet. That may be due to our superstitious beliefs; therefore, we would just pray for our own benefits. Those, who profoundly pay homage to Him, must always remember, understand and practice His teachings.
So, to be able to worship Buddha, we must understand His merits and wisdom. Without comprehending the above, we are all just superstitious. To do that, we have to learn, listen to and practice His teachings, and always assess ourselves and our progress. Buddhism is the religion of reality; it means you must experience it to believe it; it is not about, you hear about it, then you expect to believe it. When we ourselves experience magical things in Buddhism, we would gradually understand more about Buddha. The more we understand about Buddha, the more blessing we would have.
I have to stress again that we have to understand about Buddha in order to pay homage to Him, to help our cultivation. Those, who could not fully pay homage to Buddha yet, would always be ordinary. We make a comparison between two people, one gives a few dollars to a poor person and one sacrifices himself for everyone. Who should we pay homage to? Obviously, the second one. And our Buddha is that person. His countless number of lifetimes were full of compassion and equanimity. In His countless number of lifetimes, He always sacrificed His lives for all beings. So He must be The One we should all believe in and pay homage to infinitely.
If we have ever helped a person in danger, they would never forget and appreciate it very much. It could be a patient who needed a heart surgery; or a seriously ill baby; or a sick elderly. If we have helped so many people, that was great, and we could be considered to be respectable people. But it is nothing comparing to The One who has sacrificed His lives for all beings. Such person is extremely holy.
Our Buddha is The One. In a countless number of His lifetimes, He had been the embodiment of the animals or human beings, sometimes a poor man, sometimes a king. Of whatever he had embodied, He had always been tolerant and had lived for all beings. A saint with an infinite number of lives like that is worth everyone’s absolute reverence. Our reverence for Him should never change and never end.
Let’s assess ourselves. We would still care for the people around us but sometimes it could be just superficial. Sometimes we even was not aware when our mother was sick or our neighbors have been miserable. For those, who cared deeply for others, they would be aware of any situations about anyone. They would be willing to help those in need. We should always respect them. We could be selfish, and when our ego was high, we became opportunistic and manipulative. We only wanted to friend with those that could be benefit us; the rest we could just ignore. In deed, this world still is full of miserable lives.
Our Buddha is completely the opposite. Throughout His countless lives, from being an ordinary person to being a Saint, all beings resigned in His heart; He always loved, understood and took great care of all beings. Because all beings’ karma was so bad, He vowed to influence and help all beings in His countless lives. That greatest merit could not be expressed adequately in words.
All of us are still very ordinary, we still have anger, bigotry and hatred. Even though we may not have followed Buddha in our previous lives, Buddha would never abandon us if we regret, repent and cultivate. Buddha would always guide us through each of our obstacles resulting from our bad karma in many lives. And those who have had affinity with Buddha in so many generations, and had done may good deeds, Buddha would always be at their side to guide them through life. For Buddha and the Sages, their love for all beings is unconditional and boundless.
Let’s image a scenario occurred in India more than 2500 years ago. You were then an Indian peasant living in Buddha’s time. On your way to the field, you met a monk, who was holding a bowl and was coming from the opposite direction, whose glory shined and his face was very beautiful. His posture was like a great and powerful leader. He walked leisurely on barefoot on the rough village road. Because you did not know he was Buddha, you passed by him without greeting and acknowledging him. However, when you fell over, he came to help you stand up, you would have felt the love from him. That love was more passionate than the love of a mother for her son. His love, His compassion for all beings spread across the whole universe. We can only use your imagination to feel this because His love could not be described adequately and accurately in words.
How about us? Even though we really love someone, our love for them usually is not completely selfless. Because of our egos, we really love ourselves. When you can comprehend the concept of being selfless, you would be able to pay homage more and more to Buddha, for His boundless devoted love for all beings.
In addition, Buddha could thoroughly understand all things that are happening around, even each individual person. Therefore, each and any of His action is absolutely incredible to help all beings. With ordinary people like us, our general understanding is poor, therefore we could not completely satisfy ourselves and each other. But Buddha is different. He understands how human beings’ mind works, he understands all about the past, future, actions and habits of all beings. He even could recongnise the hatred, ignorance and selfness of each individual. Moreover, he could also know about the vows we have taken, the good deeds we did, and the mistakes we made. Therefore, He always provides direction to us on our cultivation path. He is forever the perfect protection for all beings.
In our life, nothing is happier than when we meet a person who could love and also understands us completely. Sometimes, the love and sympathy given was just as little, but we still felt happy. It is luckier if we met a philosophical soul mate, who would know about our strengths and weaknesses to help us improve ourselves. When we made a mistake, our soul mate would be able to give us advice and help us move on with life. We would love them very much and respect them as well.
And in deed, Buddha is worth millions of times. Buddha understands us deeply, and helps protect us against bad karma. That is why, even though we have caused many sins in life, and while others did not forgive us, Buddha would willingly tolerate our sins. He would listen to each word of our repentance and would sympathsize for us. Each time we bow to Buddha, we understand that Buddha accepts all, forgives all, loves all, and always gives us a chance to correct our mistakes.
Buddha’s love for us had always existed, from thousands of years ago.
When Buddha was still living on earth, a man , who made a mistake, was very remorseful and he bowed to Buddha: “The Blessed One, I am a theft, a murder full of sins, but please be merciful to forgive and help me”. Buddha did not punish the man, and he would never punish anyone. He always was merciful and taught us to be better. Buddha’s forgiveness, merci and love for beings is thousand times more precious than when we were with a soulmate. He is the only one. So regardless how long we would be on our kneel in front of Buddha, and how many times we bow to him, it would never be enough.
Buddha is aware of not only this world, but also others. His attention also covers all, and absolutely everything from everywhere; from hell to heaven, from the lowest level of heaven to the highest level of heaven. Thus, even the King of Heaven still had to consider himself just a disciple of Buddha.
All kings were usually terribly busy to run a country, or a world in this scenario. In fact, kings were not usually happy, whether they rule the human beings world or they rule heavens. We should also question a king’s integrity, if he had time to think about himself. Running and managing a family is difficult, let alone running a country, a world. So a truly great king would have no time to think about himself.
Let’s consider the current times, and our own leaders. Their schedule is always full i.e. meeting other countries’ Prime Minister. They would be exhausted even though they kept smiling and interacting happily with other guests. Why was that? It was because during the day, he would take care of the diplomatic matters, and during the night time, he would take care of all of issues for his country. Please remember, to lead a country, you must be extremely hard working.
And Buddha already knew that. He knew how busy a king would be. The bigger and the more powerful the country/the world is, the busier the king would be. In our world, our leaders would be much busier because of the complexity in this society. As for Buddha, He knew all, absolutely all, from past lives to future lives. He already knew these things very well.
However, Buddha was not the God who created this world. There was no such thing. Things happened for many reasons. Buddha would never use his power to interfere into human being’s lives. That would just make things more complicated, and it could potentially cause issues that human beings could become less independent, and could not manage their own lives. This is the key difference between Buddhism and other religions.
For example, when we were about to take a business trip, we went to a fortuneteller to get a lucky charm. The fortuneteller called for support from the spiritual world. We got the charm and we carried with us during the trip. Everything went smoothly during our trip. The lucky charm was working for us well. This is a type of psychic, which we in reality preferred to use to interfere with our daily lives, which sometimes work out very well for us.
However, this is very dangerous thing to do.
Firstly, we would rely on the lucky charm, thinking good things will come to us. With that thought in mind, we would not bother doing good deeds, help others. The disciples of a fortuneteller or a master in Tantric Buddhism often use lucky charms to intervene lives. They rarely believe in the law of cause and effect, so they do not care much about doing good deeds; neither cultivating ethical principles because they always rely on supernatural world to help intervene lives. This reliance would not help them in this live or their future lives.
Secondly, we would be forever in debt with the spirits who lived in spiritual world, who helped us. It could be hundreds or thousands of spirits that we would be debt with, but we would not be aware of that. When asking for a lucky charm, we would only know that we paid the fortuneteller for the charm, but we would not know about the fact that it would involve many spirits in the spiritual world. These spirits would not be as ethical and kind. In future lives, we would have to pay back the debt to these spirits, and that could bring a lot of difficulties and challenges in our lives.
Thirdly, we would also be in debt with all others, who were influenced by the spirits, to agree and help us while doing business with us. If we could not pay the debt in this life, then we would have to do so in other lives.
So, the intervention of spirits from the spiritual world to our lives would only create disasters and create much more debts in your life as well as gradually make you lose your ethics. It is difficult to explain, however, we must understand that abusing powers, abusing help from spiritual world would not do any good for us. Therefore, Buddha would never use His power carelessly. He teaches and blesses us to do good deeds. When we are miserable, He would use powers to support u because He could tell if in the future we would be able to good deeds. All Buddhists must remember: we must do good deeds in return to those praying and help we asked from Buddha.
For example, when we prayed to Buddha, and asked for help to sell our house quickly. If Buddha granted the wish, we could sell the house quickly. What we must do then? We must do good deeds to create more blessings for ourselves, to repay for that praying. Remember that we should not abuse our blessings. Many people wonder why they could not enjoy the result of their good deeds. That was because they asked for many things many times from Buddha, so for each of the praying, they must do good deeds to earn that blessing.
Therefore, Buddha would rarely want to use His power to intervene lives, because He would want us to earn our own blessings. We must understand this principles to understand the greatness of Buddha. Sometimes we may find that Buddha does not respond to all of our praying immediately. It is just because He wants us to be educated, to be able to deal with challenges ourselves in order to live better.
Going through misery and suffering only would help us improve and become a better person.
The same is for Buddha. Buddha would want us to be challenged, to be educated and to cultivate. If we just lived in happiness all the times, it would be difficult for us to be matured and be a good human being. Therefore, it is quite common for people who were brought up in rich, wealthy family without too much difficulty and challenges would not become good person. Those, who always have to face challenges in life, would always have compassion and sympathy for other human beings, and would always want to share with others.
In the recent Vu Lan ceremony (this ceremony is held annually on the 15th of the 7th month of the lunar calendar. The main objective of this festival is for the people to express their gratefulness and appreciation to their parents) we discussed the topic of “Our love and gratefulness for Mother Earth” we talked about how the Earth was formed and how beings came about to live on Earth. By now, we would be able to understand the law of cause and effect and it would help us avoid the misunderstanding that life was created by God.
Buddha is extremely powerful. However, He would never want to show off His power. We pay homage to Him, not because of his power, but because of his selflessness, and his ability to reach the highest level of meditation. Those, who have egos and always want to show off themselves, would be quite ordinary.
Respectable people really consider themselves nothing, in comparison with others. Why? It is because Buddha or Arahat after being in full meditation, they would not think of themselves any more, but would think of the whole universe and all beings. We could never be like that because we still have our egos full of ignorance, selfishness and jealousy…
A saint would be selfless, and he would have the greatest compassion and wisdom. He would love all, know all, and influence all. However, because He loves all beings, he would not use his power to influence lives. If He did so, it would have causes a lot of problems for beings.
A selfless saint like that would never show off their love, but would love all beings immensely.
A selfless saint like that would never show off that he knows all, but he actually knows all events, from the past, current, the future.
A selfless saint would never say he has the power to influence everything. He would not want to use the power in that way, as it would cause a lot of issues for beings.
These are the people who we should pay homage to.
“Star Trek” is an American scientific film, which was about a spaceship from Earth and it was hijacked when passing through a planet. These hijackers did it just to help their princess to live another day because their planet was too crowded to have a place for her to live, even though their technology was so advanced and they were able to feed everyone on that planet. They could produce the elixir to help their resident become immortal. That was why their planet could not accommodate the growth of its population. Nobody died, nobody left, just more and more residents.
So the question is: Is it good for human beings when our scientist announced that they found a medicine which could help human being stay forever young? It is probably good. However, the Earth would be the same as the other planet in Star Trek movie. Human beings would have to fight for a place to live. Therefore, sometimes, we thought of a good idea, but it may have bad impacts later on.
So, using magical power to help people satisfy their desire really would cause issues and troubles for the people themselves later on. Many people often wish that they would stay young forever. But they would definitely change their mind later on. If we always stayed young, it would be very awkward later in life, as our children would get older and they would not be able to respect us, as we did not age at all. So it is quite natural that we wish we would be normal again.
Again, throughout the stories and examples above, it is proven that sometimes something seem good, but it can cause a lot of issues and troubles. So it is best to comply with the law of cause and effect. Saints can do absolutely anything but they would never take advantages of their powerful abilities.
We should also consider another aspect, when we pray to Buddha, please remember not to pray for ourselves, but for all beings. We should pray that we have compassion to all living beings. Or we should pray that we would be modest, considerate and would live in harmony with all friends and family members; as well as respect and listen to advices from older people. We should pray that to Buddha for it and He would be able to grant us our wish, to help other living beings.
Saints would not show off the fact that they do not make mistakes, even a small one, and they are so pure. A saint might be in a human form, but His mind covers all being living in the whole universe. Buddha would never say an unnecessary word, would never have an unnecessary gesture, would never have an unnecessary eye contact, and would never have an unnecessary smile. He completely is able to control himself.
For example, we often are not aware of our movement or reactions. That means we are not able to control ourselves completely. Buddha is totally different. He would sit at the right place at the first time; he would put His hands onto the right place at the first time. When He looks at someone, His eyes are full of compassion without any redundant expression. When He smiles, it means the big deal. Also, He never said superfluous word. Each of His word is worth saying and listening to. Although Buddha does not seem to have a sense of humour, He rarely talks or smiles but all beings around Him would always be filled with joy and always be happy with His immense compassion for us.
Ordinary people like us, probably would never be able to appreciate fully
Buddha’s greatness. Since we cannot fully appreciate Buddha and his impacts on all beings, we sometimes do not pay homage to Him wholly; therefore, we did not help educate more and more people about Buddhism. The truth is if without
Buddha’s guidance and direction in life, human beings would have been filled with ignorance, hatred, stupidity and stayed in the cycle or rebirth forever.
Amongst all of the Rulers who have appeared on the Earth, only Buddha is the absolute greatest. We are so proud to say this without any hesitation. Even the United Nations has chosen His birthday as the day of Culture and Religion around the world, known as the VESAK day. They did not choose other Rulers’ birthdays. From the past to current times, we could say that there was no other Leaders/Masters as great and perfect as Buddha. His perfection was not only expressed in the appearance but also resulted from the royal family with great virtue, supreme wisdom, and magical powers. All of these qualities created an extremely great Leader and Master, Buddha.
However, there were many other Rulers who were very modest. They knew that they were not perfect so they had referred to a Greater One, who we often referred to as God. These modest Rulers considered themselves as just executor or the servant for God. These Rulers were commended and an example was Jesus
Christ. He was so modest that he said He helped and taught human beings on behalf of God.
We do not really know if God was really living in the Heaven or Saint was really living amongst us, but if they still have egos, they would still be quite ordinary and their intelligence would still be very limited. Buddha was born on Earth. He achieved the highest level of cultivation; he was selfless and lived a flawless live. He was perfect in every way, and there would not be enough words to describe His perfection. We would be extremely lucky to be His disciples. We should always treasure this happiness from this life, bring with us to our afterlives, and vow to follow Him all the times to a successful cultivation .
Recently, there have been some Rulers claiming to be the best, but His people and His own life was very unstable and always was in trouble. They often used tricks to to entice, seduce other human beings to follow them, even though they knew they are were not capable at all. It would be an evil thing to claim that you were great at what you do, but in fact you were not. This sin could cause us to be reborn in hell, and we would not be able to escape. We all must be very careful about this.
Buddha already taught us about the Law of Cause and Effect; Buddha also taught us about compassion and how compassion is the foundation to build a world of peace and happiness. Today, the world is full of troubles; wars and death were the result from the fact that people committed sins, people were devious and did not love one another. If people loved each other; if people were compassionate; if people stopped committing sin; if people were afraid of the law of cause and effect as Buddha warned, this world would have been filled with peace, purity and joy.
Nowadays, so many world leaders have discussed how to build a peaceful world. But due to lack of compassion and education about the law of cause and effect, family separation, pains and suffering would still exist in this world.
Currently, there are many powerful forces that want to rule the world. They quietly and secretly create weapons of mass destruction. They always wish to find an absolute power to rule the whole world. The do not know that when they go against the law of cause and effect, it means they go against nature and it would result in bad consequences. Even if a country was so powerful, and could evade other countries, chaos and internal wars would still exist, peace would never be achieved. It would never last long.
Only compassion and ethics are eternal values for people, and world leaders should look for those values in order to find a solution that benefit all human beings. They should not look for personal power. We must remember it. If we once would be blessed to become a leader, we should try our best to contribute towards building a world full of peace and happiness as per Buddha’s teaching.
Meditation is the most important thing. The world today is full of chaos so meditation is the precious remedy. In ancient times, people were not stressed or rushed into making decision, as it took time to gather information. If you wanted to know about something, you had to investigate it for days, months, even years and that was very normal. You had to use horses or boats to travel, therefore travelling to find information took a lot of time. Nowadays, people just need to use the internet i.e. Google to know everything. Digital technology connects the world, therefore everything is so close and everything could be processed very quickly.
So we thought that with the current advanced technology, we would have a lot of spare time. Instead of meeting someone in person, a phone call would help us do that. It only takes two hours to fly from the North to the South of Vietnam. We then often think that because of technology, we would have much more spare time and our living standard is come higher. Is it really true?
We have to keep in mind that, the more advanced technology we have, the faster pace our life would be, the busier we are, and the more stressful we would become. Fast pace of life requires us to use lots of brain power, so people would need to mediate more and more. Meditation helps us balance our psychology and and relax our mind. In other words, we need to purify our mentality. Let me explain this concept in more details. Meditation will help us to get rid of the unnecessary thoughts, help us purify our mind. An ordinary person would be full of hatred, greediness and stupidity. Meditation helps our mind to get rid of our egos, remove evil thoughts to purify our minds.
As Buddha said: “There is no class when our blood colour is the same red, and there is no class when the taste of our tears is the same”. Lives are worth the same, all sufferings are the same, too. That is equality. Buddha teaches us equality so that we can treat all creatures the same, we can treat other human beings in the most appropriate and satisfactory way. Although in deed, human being are different in their own way i.e. different merits, different appearance, and different mind … but Buddha brings us together to live in harmony and with compassion. Despite our differences, we are always equal in reincarnation, and in this temporary life we are the great believer in our great Father, Buddha. Thanks to Buddha, people can live in harmony.
Therefore, Buddha’s teachings are so great that we would never be able to measure and express in words.
Like the sound of the waves of the sea,
I commenced using beautiful words,
From the immemorial to the future,
To praise Buddha’s countless blessings.
The more we understand about Buddha, the more reverence we have for Him. Our praise for Him cannot be expressed in words. In this world, there is no other who is greater than Him. He guided us through life to understand the truth i.e. the suffering of human beings’ lives. We should not ignore His teachings, and we should share them with others throughout our life, whenever we can.
It is quite unfortunate for us if we do not fully appreciate and do not wholly pay homage to Buddha. Let’s consider and try to understand to have the enormous respect for Buddha.
The more we understand about Buddha, the more we would pay homage to
him.
The more we pay homage to Buddha, the wiser and ethical we would become.
The wiser and ethical we are, the more successful we would be in cultivation.
The more successfully we cultivate, the more we understand about Buddha.
The more we understand about Buddha, the more and more reverence we would have for Buddha.
The more reverence we have for Buddha, the more improvement we would make to our ethics.
The more ethical we are, the more successful we would be in cultivation.
The more successfully we cultivate, the more we understand about Buddha…
Due to the above rotation, we must pay homage Buddha wholly and completely, and everything else will fall into this cycle.
Having said all that, only Buddha can understand other Buddhas. Even Arahats cannot totally understand Buddhas, let alone ordinary people like us. So we should only try and try to understand Buddha and appreciate Him as much as we can. We do not hope to understand completely about Buddha, even if our understanding is still limited, it would still help us enormously in our life.
So, we must educate and train ourselves to pay homage to Buddha, and always have that reverence in mind. Everyday we have to bow to Buddha and remind us to earnestly worship Him until the moment we feel that we would sacrifice everything for Buddha. That would be when we would have the absolute reverence for Buddha. When we are at that stage, we would be able to spread it around. Others would be able to have the same level of reverence for Buddha like we do. If only we, all of us here, pay homage to Buddha, not others, that would not be enough. Only when others are touched because of the way we live and pay homage to Buddha, and they would join us to bow to Buddha, it means we have the unequivocally reverence for Him.
We once said that everything in life is just temporary. We could not keep everything with us forever when we live. Thing comes and goes. And when we die, we could not bring everything with us, either.
So, the only thing we can always have with us, life or death, is our unequivocally reverence for Buddha. In life, we can lose everyone e.g. reputation or assets, but not our absolute reverence for Buddha. As long as we keep paying homage to Buddha, we would have everything. With that thinking in mind, we would not be afraid of losing anything. And with that in mind, we would live generously and in harmony with others; there is nothing to fear and nothing to lose; because we already have everything with our unequivocally reverence for Buddha.
Since we have the unequivocally reverence for Buddha, we would be able to live in harmony with others; we love our country; we love all beings around the world even though we do not know everything. Unlike other religion, they would teach you to only have love and pay homage to their Gods. Our reverence for Buddha would always accompany and support us in our life. The more and more we pay homage to Buddha, the more we love our country and our people. That is the true and unequivocally reverence for Buddha, no limitation and without any skepticism.
Moreover, Buddha mentioned about many other Buddhas in Buddhism, so we can believe and have hopes. He did not mention that He was the only one. Buddha praised other Buddhas and His Arahant disciples. This does not fall into the concept of polytheistic or monotheistic religion. Why is that? Because in polytheism, they worship many Gods, each of them has different character, power and personality e.g. God, who has power to destroy; God who has power to create lives; God who has power to make rain; God who has power to bring sunshine, etc.
Buddhism is very different in that regard. Although there are many Buddhas and and Bodhisattvas, in fact, all of Them is just One. All would have the same character, the same quality, and They all are selflessness and compassionate, and their love would cover all beings in the universe.
We should, by now, understand that, in addition to Buddha’s invaluable teachings, Buddha is also the respectable Father protecting us from suffering, comforting us when we are miserable, and guiding us on our cultivation path. Buddha always support and save our soul from ignorance, hatred, greed and sin.
We are grateful for Buddha’s guidance, and our appreciation cannot be expressed in words.
Everyday, we should kneel in front of Buddha with our most reverence for Him. If we can do so, we would be able to have more blessings. The more blessings we have, the less bad karma for us would be. We would have committed sins in our past lives, and we could only lessen our bad karma, only when we can do more good deeds in this life; and only when we pay homage to Buddha and kneel in front of Buddha everyday.
And when we are blessed, our life would become more pleasant. We would be more knowledgeable to be aware of our mistakes, errors as well as the wrong and the right. With that intelligence, we would be able to know what is the right thing to do. We would be respected by others. Our advice for others would be
appreciated. We could also easily control our mind and emotion. Regardless of what we do, we would also head towards Buddha to practise Dharma. Once we have the unequivocally reverence for Buddha, no evil spirits would be able to influence us. Therefore, our reverence for Buddha would be the most important factor in helping us strengthen our minds and improve our cultivation.
Please remember that: Having boundless homage for Buddha is the most
basic but important obligation in cultivation. We must do everything in our power to understand Buddhism principles and have reverence for Buddha boundlessly and infinitely. Only when we achieve that level of understanding about Buddha and having the boundless homage for Him, we would not care about life or death. And only when we achieve the above, we would be able to love all beings, love our country unconditionally and infinitely.
Namo Shakya muni Buddha
