IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BENEFIT FROM ALL OUR BLESSINGS
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“It is not possible to benefit from all our blessings”-
This statement has been passed down from our Patriarchs, Highly Honored Monks to the present generation. Today, we will thoroughly disseminate this statement to ascertain its meaning. Once we gain understanding of this statement, we will be able to avoid many mistakes in our life and our application/practice will be more seamless.
What is blessing that it can determine our fate? Why is this person kind and gentle but poor and suffering? Why is that person cruel but wealthy?
In reality there are many ironies. There are some people who can be hot tempered and brash but at the same time are so generous and caring. These people, in their next life, will remain hot tempered and brash but wealthy. On the contrary, those who are nice but rarely do charity or perform good deeds will remain poor. They neither harm nor help anybody.
Therefore, it is quite complicated and difficult to use blessing to measure a person. Only if you were enlightened, and you could see people’s true nature and karma throughout their past lives, you will find that blessing influences on people’s karma in an extremely mysterious way. Let’s take a look at Major-General Le Ma Luong example – Hero of the Vietnamese
People’s Army who has just become a Buddhist today – who talks about his fierce battles, among which there was one battle where all but 17 soldiers from a platoon of 150 remained alive. Even when a grenade exploded right in front of him but did not kill him, he still managed to survive with just one eye and shrapnel scars on his body; he did not understand why it could be so. It is believed that people like Major-General Le, are people of great fate.
People of great fate are those who, in their previous lives, regularly ate vegetarian, avoided taking life and helped others. That is why in this lifetime, they are blessed with great fate. They are able to walk in the path of danger and remain unharmed. Over the past few days Luong has stayed in the temple , eating vegetarian food. We have advised him to try practising eating vegetables because he is getting old. He has promised to try when he returns home. This means he has not eaten vegetarian previously. However, it is almost certain that a person of great fate such as he must have been a vegetarian in his previous life. This is a truth.
Therefore as Buddhist practitioners if we often eat vegetarian food, in our next life we will not die in vain full of regrets. It is difficult to rationalise this because the answer lies within our past lives. It is often said in war that it is the bomb shrapnel that avoids us but we cannot avoid it. This is entirely based on the good deeds of our past life.
In fact, a person’s fate is determined by the amount of blessings/good deeds accumulated from their past lives, and in battle it is the person who has more accumulated blessings who will always be the victor. We need to understand that the law of karma is a totally different concept from what is just and unjust. In our present life, our winnings and achievements are dependent on the blessings we inherited from our past lives; similarly the blessings and good deeds we accumulate in our present lifetime will dictate our blessings for our future.
Our Patriarch in his teachings of: “It is not possible to enjoy all our blessings”, explains everyone living has inherited some blessings from their previous life. Some inherit more blessing than others that is why there are people who are very wealthy, healthy, and physically attractive as opposed to those who are less fortunate (e.g. sickly, poor, deformed etc).
In saying this, some would question “how do we know how much or little blessings has been accumulated?”
The key answer to this mysterious question is to assess whether we currently lack or are in excess of blessing/good fortune. For example, if you want to buy a motorbike at the price of twenty million dong and at that time you have one hundred million dong available, we can safely assume that you can afford the motorbike without any concern. This indicates your fortune is in excess.
However, if you only had ten million dong at the time but you are confident that you can buy it, then by some means you are able to raise the funds to buy the motorbike, this also means that you have excess blessing/good fortune.
Another example is someone who is wanting to build a house costing more than a billion dong but they have only saved just three hundred million dong. Through their certainty and confidence in the project they commence construction, and find that at each phase of construction funds become available or circumstances will turn in their favor in order to complete construction without delay/issues.
The meaning behind these examples lie within our spiritual and self belief that it is meant to be, therefore we will have a sense of peaceful calmness and confidence to proceed although we may not have the means to initially. This strong internal self-assurance is a clear indicator that you have adequate blessings.
When there are instances when you want to do something but feel worried, unease and have to rely on somebody else to do it, you should cease that plan because your internal spiritual self is telling you that your blessings or good fortune is insufficient. If you persist to go ahead, it is most likely to fail. So when you feel that you don’t have enough blessing or good fortune to move forward consider looking for another way, stop or pause to rethink, and reconsider your goals to avoid wasting your blessings. This will be a safer option.
In addition, when you are being praised or recognized by others, you will naturally feel happy but as long as you remain modest about it, then this is fine. However, if a feeling of self-importance emerges, your blessing will near its limit. It is important to always remember that when we achieve something but feel arrogant about it, it means your blessing or good fortune has reached its limit, which means you will descend down the path of failure.
Using another example from Major-General Le, who has delivered thousands of speeches about his military career and has had many newspaper articles and songs written praising him. One could question whether his blessings has run out? In truth, when asked, he does not know but when I was sitting in front of him, looking into his eyes, I did not see any indication of arrogance and I knew that his blessing was still strong. Whenever he mentioned his comrades, he would cry inconsolably often losing his voice. This showed that his heart was full of compassion, love and lacking self importance. This is a clear indicator that his blessing and good fortune is abundant.
Similarly, let assume that you are very wealthy, wherever you go people admired and respect you. This makes you happy and is not considered dangerous but if a haughty pride emerges in your mind, be prepared for your blessings to disappear. Our Masters can see through this easily while ordinary people like us cannot; but the instincts in our spiritual mind and self can help guide us to recognize the availability of our blessings as well as the danger of haughtiness.
The story of National Adviser Ngo Dat is an excellent example of the dangers of a haughty and arrogant mind. He was a genuine monk. When he was an apprentice monk, he was able preach so charismatically that even the elderly monks held him in high regard. He was a person of extraordinary wisdom. When he grew up, the King invited him to the capital and honored him as National Adviser – Teacher to the King. He was revered and respected by the whole kingdom. This denotes that his blessings was in immense abundance.
As a gift the King made a flat wooden bed of special sandalwood for him. The bed produced a pervasive scent in his room. One day, when sitting on that bed, a feeling of pride arose in his mind and later, he felt seriously sick.
This story is mentioned in the Tu Bi Thuy Sam book and has regularly been told by elder monks to remind their students about the danger of a haughty mind.
Therefore, when we are gifted with a privilege we must be careful to remain modest, otherwise, that privilege will eventually be lost. For example, a Buddhist practitioner committed to perform Buddhist responsibilities. He made great efforts in fundraising as well as offered a lot of money and food to the temple. He created a strong impression on others. But later he became too proud and thought that he was the most efficient follower; the temple would not be able to achieve so much without him. Later a chain of events occurred that made him leave the temple, which meant that he could not continue to be a devoted Buddhist there anymore. This symbolised his blessings had expired.
In summary, for those people rich in blessings, everything favorable comes effortlessly. For those lacking in blessings, we should be much more modest. If we knowingly abuse our limited blessings than we must be prepared for bad karma. The ordinary person often commits this sin. These sinful circumstances often occur when we have to play dirty tricks to acquire our goal or we have to compete or fight over others to obtain what we want.
In life, there are so many things for us to fight for: money, power, honor, love, etc. For example, in a family dispute over a deceases estate, relatives will often play tricks, or persuade others with sweet words and provide big promises in order to gain the assets. These examples are demonstrations of intentional greed and abuse of one’s blessings. The people mentioned above will have severe karma to repay because their actions have influenced outcomes which were not achieved through their good deeds or blessings.
In the above, we have discussed examples of exceeding one’s blessings intentionally, but what about instances of when one exceeds one’s blessings unintentionally? The following example aims to help us understand these instances. There is an apprentice monk who serves his teacher very diligently. His teacher is a Honoured Monk, so wherever he goes, he is warmly welcomed and respected. Being his travel companion and apprentice, the monk benefits from his teachers blessings: eating the same food, traveling in the same care. Therefore, the monk is said to be unintentionally benefiting from unearned blessings.
In the event the monk comes to realise that he is unintentionally benefiting from unearned blessings, he must committed himself to the teachings of Buddha, practise living the teachings of Buddha, serve his teacher more diligently, and appreciate all those around him in order to compensate for the blessings that he has benefited unintentionally. If he relies on his relationship with his teacher to feel self-important, arrogant and starts to look down upon others than he will quickly lose his blessings and will not be success in his Buddhism practice.
Alternatively, a descendant of the royal family, who often boasts about their lineage to everyone they meet, has actually already benefited from all their blessings. But he was still trying to live on the merits of their former social standings. This is called “living on past glory”. As a result, because they have utilised both inherited blessings and benefited from unearned blessings, their children will live in poverty to re-balance the karma.
For that reason, Honorable Monks often teach us to never overuse our blessings but always consider ourselves inferior to others and joyfully help others to maintain our blessings longer. If we have an origin of royalty, we should live simply and modestly. Should someone ask us about that origin, we should reply that things were long time ago, and now we are just commoners trying to live usefully and do good deeds. By doing this, we avoid the sin of relying on our lineage to over benefit on blessings.
We have many kinds of blessing, among them is the blessing of blood line or family. Why does that blood line often produce talented descendants while their ancestors were of ordinary status? For example, their ancestors were just farmers, who then became businessman, who became landlords and then their next of kin became powerful. Let review the case of King Le Thai To: his father was just a landlord but he came to be a king – King Le Thai To. In this example, his blood line accumulated many blessings and good fortunes for their next of kin to prosper for many generations. The Ly Dynasty was foretold they would rule for only 8 generations.
Therefore, inherited blessings from our ancestors are predestined to be up and down within a certain period. Why is this so? The explanation depends on whether our ancestors lived moral and ethical lives, that will bear them children with great virtue. But how do we live morally and ethically?
First, you must have a pure intent, meaning you live to be kind and humane. They think about achieving great things for the betterment of mankind and do not think of their individual needs. Most importantly, when attending a temple, they never pray for their individual benefit instead they pray for all of humanity. These people have great virtue and often deities will reincarnate into the family blood line because they can read the pure intent of these people.
The important point here is the intent. Anyone with selfless intent, will have children or grandchildren who will be significantly successful. For this reason anyone wanting their next of kin to succeed and be outstanding characters, must live morally and ethically virtuous lives. Remember when praying, you should pray for the world, for our nation, for humanity and not for ourselves.
Also, value every life, be modest, live in harmony with others. If you are able to live following these guidelines, deities will choose to be reincarnated into your blood line. Alternatively, you could be reborn in to another family and bring about glory to that family.
But how many generations will deities be born in to the family? This all depends on how much or how little virtue you have. If you have great virtue, gods will be born and reborn in to your family for ten, twenty or even thirty generations. These families will produce eminent heroes who perform extraordinary things. If their blessings are modest, their family will succeed for approximately three generations and then go down.
The amount or strength of our blessings are dependent on our application and practise of Buddha’s teachings to truly improve ourselves, thoroughly believe, eliminate selfishness, greed, anger and ignorance; open ourselves to love and compassion for all people and other living creatures. The more compassionate we become the more virtue we accumulate, which will in turn benefit our next of kin for many generations. Buddha taught us to open our heart to love all beings. Therefore, we should pray earnestly to be able to fulfill this compassion whenever we kneel down in front of Buddha.
Every time we meditate to achieve peace in our minds, we should imagine our compassion is covering all beings. If we can do that, we will accomplish great virtue for ourselves. This virtuous charisma will be bountiful and our descendants will benefit from many great achievements in their lifetime.
What about those monks who achieve great morality and virtue but have no children? They will have talented followers and their doctrines will definitely be succeeded and developed. However, only very genuine practitioners and believers of Buddha’s teachings will accumulate virtue.
Superficial or false practices, and pretending that you are genuine will be unsuccessful in accumulating blessings. For example, if a person often visits temples but his mind is still full of selfishness, dishonesty and he pretends to be gentle and virtuous with a hope that other people respect her. Such person will not have morality.
Continuing on, let us discuss the blessings of the nation. What does it mean to create blessing for a nation of people?
There are two ways this can be done. Firstly, it is dependent on the virtue of the nations ancestors. Secondly, it is dependent on the blessings of the present day occupants. We believe that our ancestors, from the King Duong Vuong, Lac Long Quan, King Hung to many other generations of heroes etc, lived virtuously and accumulated a great amount of blessings. However, it is the present day occupants ability to live moral and virtuous lives that will mandate the blessing of the nation. If each person practices good deeds or perform charitable acts, then the blessings to its people will also increase. It is this blessing (not trickery or civil unrest) that will encourage the nation to become wealthy and prosperous.
Seeing our children live in a rich and prosperous country, we ought to teach them to perform good deeds, to be compassionate, to love and help each other, and from a young age to teach our children to practice conscience in their hearts to become learned behaviour. We must teach them to rid themselves of selfishness, aggression, envy etc…we can do this by reminding them daily to “not live selfishly, to consider how the impact of your actions will affect others, to treat your friends equally and fairly”. We ought to repeat this over and over to carve it into their hearts to fight against selfish tendencies that could have transferred with them from their previous lives.
If all Vietnamese children are taught this virtuous way of living, they will all succeed in their adult lives. Which will mean our country Vietnam and all its children will be prosperous. In contrast, if the children cannot learn to live a moral and virtuous way of life, than they will fail in their endeavours and if they fail as individuals the nation as whole will fail.
For this reason, if we want our children to live in prosperity and for our country to be equal with other countries, to help other developing countries, and contribute to world peace; we must teach our children very carefully. We must shape their morals, enable their voice, teach them how to present themselves, never allow them to lie, to speak in an disrespectful manner. We must teach them to be courteous, to respect each other, to live decently and selflessly. It is our responsibility to continuously educate them. If the Vietnamese people all raise their children to live in this moral and virtuous way, then thirty years later, these children in their adult lives will succeed and our nation will be peaceful and prosperous.
We will explore how one should live when they have succeeded and have been blessed? For example, if we are attractive, earn money effortlessly, lead a comfortable life etc we can assume that we have been blessed.
The two different personalities are: a good person who knows they have been blessed will often fear that they will lose their blessings, however a bad person who knows they have been blessed will over-indulge in their blessings.
So when a wealthy person enjoys their lives by in a wasteful way, it is clear that this person is blessed but is a bad person. Alternatively, if we live a comfortable life but fear we will lose our blessings, than we should actively perform charity, help other people, live modestly and simplistically. We should not be wasteful of money, be thankful for every grain of rice we eat, and be conscious of every drop of water. We too do not use much of electricity for our nation is short of electricity. We also limit ourselves in traveling by car or motorbike minding that gasoline pollutes the air. In our daily hygiene, we do not use a lot of soap or detergent. We would rather our body or clothes being a little dirty than killing rivers with detergent. If we leave the rivers around us dirty and smelly keeping our body and clothes clean and scented , we will be severely guilty.
Why are all of the rivers in large cities filthy? Because the city-dwellers use too much soap and detergent. They poison the waterways by dumping tons of detergent into the rivers and drainage system every year. They look fresh with sparkling hair and velvety clothes but they live on the black and nasty channels and rivers. The whiter they are, the blacker the rivers become.
People, who have great blessing, are good natured, and economical towards themselves but are always willing to help and share their money with other people. On the other hand, those who are blessed but are ill-natured will know how to self indulge. Relying on their money, they use the resources around them wastefully. These people withhold life from others and seize all social facilities for themselves. They destroy not only their own lifetime but also the whole planet.
For these reasons, as Buddhist practitioners we must try to deeply understand karma. Although we are blessed, we must be frugal, consider our water sources, the air quality, of the many people around them and poor homeless people. We must endeavor to live sparingly and where possible, provide help to others. We accumulate blessings daily but how does this compare to Bodhisattvas?
The blessing of Bodhisattvas is immense. They are not worried by material things and are only concerned about extending their blessings. In our minds, ten years of charitable deeds and good will is sufficient accumulation of blessings because our knowledge is limited, and our intent is limited. However, to Bodhisattvas, ten years is insignificant . They pray for all beings for not just ten years but for ten million lifetimes. Their eternal good deeds are immeasurable, their wisdom is boundless and their virtue never-ending.
As mortal beings, with mortal hearts, our limited wisdom allows us to create the illusion of self-righteousness. Believing that we have performed a few good deeds we can’t help but boast about it to others, this is inadvisable since Bodhisattvas performs countless good deeds and never talk about it.
Nevertheless, if we are too afraid of losing our blessings, we can unintentionally become selfish. For example, on the death anniversary of a man’s father, his friend comes with some offerings, but he rejects and says:
“Thank you for your kindness but I cannot receive your gifts because I am afraid that my father will lose his blessing if I accept them”. In this situation, to be afraid of losing one’s blessing is selfish because we do not open our heart to accept loving sentiments from others.
If we are State Officials, people will often try to take advantage of this by trying to offer bribes, in this instance we ought to reject them. Rejection out of probity is the right course of action, however in sentimental relationships, we should accept kindness of others and share it with those around us.
For example, if a Buddhist give offerings but we reject all the offerings out of anxiety of losing our blessings, how would the Buddhist feel? That is why all Buddhist offerings will be accepted but for not individual use. Instead the monks will manage the offerings, and work out carefully how they will be utilised, or distributed, and we will seek consultation for important matters.
Many people have come to the temple to help preparing for the holy and sacred Vesak with the participation of more than ten thousand people absorbing themselves in warmest atmosphere. Some give rice, vegetables, others offer blankets… to make the ceremony successful. A solemn ceremony in the fully sacred atmosphere like this will help reinforce and enhance everyone’s spiritual mind. Therefore, we accept your offerings because we are not afraid of blessing deficiency because all of the offerings will be presents to all of us and more importantly we dedicate to our Fully Beloved Buddha.
When we come here with all our heart, contributing towards the ceremony’s success, we do not live for ourselves anymore because if we live for ourselves, we will preferably stay home. All of us have come here from all over the country to pack in the midst of mountain full of frost and mosquitoes, eating meagerly without a bit of facilities because of the fact that we are all Buddha’s devotee, and have the same desire for Enlightment. Tomorrow, in the Flower-Offering Ceremony, each of us will hold a flower coming to Buddha’s Statue in the main hall and offer the flower with all our reverence and noblest prayers to our Fully Beloved Buddha.
We do not benefit from all of our blessings, but we should not be afraid of deficiency. In life, if we live modestly and kindly to others, we should consider that as happiness; we should not afraid of running out of blessings, otherwise we can become selfish.
We should be carefully spend money, protect our reputation and modestly accept compliments from others. We should utilise these privileges to help others, not for our own benefits. Whatever we do in life, we should devote towards Supreme Bodhi.
In summary, when we are determined to go on the way to Supreme Bodhi, always keep in mind how much or little blessing we have, and we are bound in the cycle of rebirth i.e. past lives and next lives. Sometimes, we are born in celestial realms to be a Devalaya, thanks to abundant blessings. However, with little blessing, we have to be reborn in this earthly world and have to work and fight for fame and wealth. Those who know common sense will try to create blessings to return to the heavenly world. Those who are ignorant will generate evil karmas to be reborn as animals or even fall in Hell without knowing when to come back.
The cycle of rebirth is filled with bitterness and hardship whereas the Enlightenment is really the most peaceful and tranquil destination for us to stop wandering forever. Therefore, we have to devote all our heart to the ideal of Enlightment by all means. We have to initiate Supreme Bodhi mind.
We are not allowed to enjoy the blessings we have, but have to spend all on mediation. We have to live economically, simply, always treat people kindly and spend most of our time on meditation. Every day, we sit cross-legged collecting mind, observing the whole body, seeing that this body is temporary and the breath is coming in and out, gradually our mind will go into pure tranquility and clear awareness. This ensures that we are going on the spiritual way leading to Deliverance and Enlightment.
NAMO SHAKYA MUNI BUDDHA
