Ven. Gangxiao: Dharma Lecture — Benefiting from the Buddha-Dharma

Benefiting from the Buddha-Dharma — People often say the Dharma is hard to encounter, yet here we are — we've encountered it. From here on, all we need is faith, receptivity, and practice. What does it mean to have faith and receive it? To deeply grasp the profound meaning of the Dharma. What does it mean to practice? To act in accordance with the Dharma — do what it asks, refrain from what it forbids. That's enough.

But what do we actually do with ourselves day to day? We drift through the bitter sea of birth and death, yet we have a remarkable talent for self-adjustment — we can find amusement even in suffering. There's a joke about four beggars who took shelter from a heavy snowfall in a pile of cow manure. In the countryside, people raise cattle, and cow manure has a warming quality, so country folk pile it up outdoors and spread it as fertilizer when planting season comes — "farmyard manure," free of chemical pollution. The snow was coming down too hard, so these beggars dug a hole in the manure pile and crawled inside. But manure is loose, so they upended their begging bowls on their heads to keep it from falling into their hair. Hiding inside was boring, so the four of them composed poetry to amuse themselves. The first said: "Clad in dung, a bowl upon my head." The second said: "From heaven the goose feathers ceaselessly fall." The third said: "Here we enjoy a life of ease." The fourth said: "Let's see how the poor folk get through this." Now that is finding joy in suffering.

The Buddha said life is suffering — meaning that in truth, there is no happiness in life. Because there is no happiness, because it can't be obtained, people crave it more than anything. Yet they can never attain true joy, so they settle for relative pleasures within absolute suffering, or even fabricate happiness out of thin air. Otherwise, how could we go on? Nan Huaijin once said: never let poverty and sorrow arrive at the same time. To keep living, we simply must find some pleasure in being alive. That's why Shakyamuni Buddha called our world the Saha World — in Chinese, "the world of endurance" — meaning the beings here possess a tremendous capacity to endure. When we Chinese speak of ourselves, we say bearing hardship is our virtue.

The three poisons — greed, anger, and delusion — constantly stir up trouble in our hearts and minds, driving us to create karma, and that karma brings suffering. Yet we Chinese can endure suffering. You may be able to strike me down, but I can take the beating.

Look at people today — it's truly moving how much effort they pour into pursuing pleasure. Some toil endlessly for livelihood, fame, and fortune. Look at those old farmers and how hard they work during the double-harvest season. This year during the double harvest, two or three people in Ersheng and Qiao'an collapsed from heatstroke right in the fields. All for the sake of making a living. You see descriptions like this in books all the time: before dawn, someone is waiting at the bureau chief's door. What for? Fame and profit — maybe a promotion, maybe a construction contract. As the saying goes, nobody gets up early without the lure of gain. Then there are those who suffer for mere vanity. There's a comedy sketch called "Just Say the Word and I'll Help," performed by Guo Donglin. To earn respect at his workplace, he buys train tickets for others — carrying his bedding roll, standing in line all night, managing to score two sleeper berths. He catches a cold from the chill and cracks that it was "a night of romance." Why endure all that? For an empty reputation: so people will say young Guo is a fellow who gets things done. A monk and a great man were drifting on a river in a boat. The great man asked, "How many boats are on this river?" The monk replied, "Two — one for fame, one for fortune." The great man laughed heartily.

For the sake of livelihood, fame, and fortune, people can endure tremendous hardship.

Then there are those who endure for exams. Take that final year of high school — that's truly eating bitterness: rising before dawn, studying past midnight, even dreaming about studying. No pretense there. But once the exam is passed and they get into university, all the tension drains away. Especially in the first year — nobody studies, everyone goes wild. But then look at those preparing for graduate school — another round of all-out effort. I had a fellow townsman whose tiny room had English vocabulary words pasted even on his mosquito net. When I first arrived and didn't know the customs, I went to see him hoping to bond as fellow townsmen. As soon as I walked in, he pulled out an English dictionary: "Open to any page and test me." I flipped to a page at random and he immediately began reciting. I was truly impressed. But he looked so haggard, so utterly exhausted. For the sake of his education, he bore it all.

There are also those who exhaust themselves trying to go abroad. Take our Ven. Kuanrong. To process his paperwork, he talked until his lips were raw and ran until his legs were sore, yet the Religious Affairs Bureau still held things up at every turn. "Dama Zi" was handling the matter and just refused to process it. Why? Something had happened in Dama Zi's family at the time — I don't remember whether his backyard caught fire or his wife lost money in business, and I'm not sure of the timing. In any case, he was dropping hints that he wanted some money. Eventually he was given four thousand yuan. At the time, Dama Zi said it would count as a "donation" to the Religious Affairs Bureau — a temporary loan, he called it. Of course, that was just to make it sound nice. After the paperwork went through and Ven. Kuanrong returned from abroad, he went to Dama Zi to reclaim the money. He called him up: "Director Ma" (he was actually a deputy director), "that money you borrowed should be returned now, shouldn't it?" Dama Zi was dumbfounded: "What money?" Ven. Kuanrong said, "Don't play dumb!" — "I'll play you a recording." It turned out that during the conversation when he'd handed over the money, he'd had a small tape recorder in his pocket. Now Dama Zi was stumped. He said, "That was a donation to the Religious Affairs Bureau — a receipt was sent at the time!" — "Who ever saw a receipt?" Ven. Kuanrong, being cautious, had gone around the entire academy asking everyone. Nobody had received anything! Later, Dama Zi produced a fake receipt, claiming it was a counterfoil. But Ven. Kuanrong was far too sharp to fall for that. How it was ultimately resolved, I'm not entirely sure, but I imagine most of the money was returned. This is what people go through to get abroad — scheming endlessly, pulling tricks without end.

Some pursue wealth. Look at those in business — how busy they are all day long. But let them be busy, let them be tired — their hearts feel full. Some pursue official positions. Officials are constantly entertaining and being entertained — exhausting too. Most officials have stomach problems. Why? From all the eating and drinking. In a comedy sketch performed by Zhao Benshan, there's the line: "Lunch hosting, dinner hosting, and finally the stomach has prolapsed from all the hosting."

Some people are driven by sheer hatred, and that resentment alone is enough to carry them through a thousand hardships. This is a staple of martial arts novels, where some characters live their entire lives for revenge. When they were young, their family met with calamity — wiped out by an enemy — and only they managed to escape by luck. So from childhood, a seed of hatred was planted in their heart. It's the power of that anger which lets them withstand every severe trial, until at last they master peerless martial arts and exact their revenge. And then the novel ends.

Jia Pingwa wrote a novella, published in Dajia, called "Manufacturing Sound." It's very well done. A half-crazed old man, all for the sake of a single tree, goes to the municipal government offices every day to petition and file complaints, insisting the tree is rightfully his. For years, nobody resolved the matter. The old man kept himself alive by scavenging garbage around the municipal compound, showing up every day to petition. Eventually, a deputy mayor couldn't bear it anymore. The man was, after all, something of an eyesore at the government compound. So he gave the word: the tree is neither an ancient specimen nor a rare species — just give it to the old man. The following year, that deputy mayor happened to visit the old man's hometown in the countryside and asked to meet him. He told the old man the tree had been given to him and asked whether he had any other requests. The township chief called the old man's village, only to discover that barely a month after receiving the tree, the old man had died. It was the drive to win that one breath of vindication that had kept him alive.

Some people can only go on living for love. There's a short piece called "The Gecko's Love" — a gecko, somehow, had its tail pinned by a nail, and another gecko came to bring it food every day. But later I noticed a problem with the story: a gecko's tail can detach, and after breaking off it grows back. So the article is actually unreliable. Yet the very first sentence declares: "This is a true story." Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Claims of being "true" are often false — if something is genuinely true, there's no need to insist.

There are countless other situations like these. Honestly, how much genuine happiness is there in any of them? Yet people spare no effort, working diligently and conscientiously — truly practicing what is hard to practice and enduring what is hard to endure. Take Xiao Liu, a temporary worker at our Buddhist academy. After a falling-out with his girlfriend, he smashed his own hand with a rock until it was covered in blood. Would you do that right now if someone asked? Even if someone said, "Chop off your hand and I'll make you an arhat," I still wouldn't do it. These so-called pleasures are, in essence, not happiness at all but the feeling of pleasure — what we call vedanā. Indulging in them actually creates new karma and leads to rebirth in the three lower realms. Yet people are willing to enjoy a little pleasure now, even if it means falling into those realms later. "I don't care if it lasts forever — I only care that I once possessed it."

But within the World-Honored One's teachings there is genuine joy — truth. If you rely on it and practice accordingly, even if you suffer now, you will be happy in the future.

This is essentially an entirely different attitude toward life. Suppose there's a pile of apples. Person A always picks the best one to eat. Person B always picks the worst. Now, no matter how you eat them, this pile is too large to ever finish. Person A, eating only the best, can only go on for a few days. Person B, eating only the worst, can also only go on for a few days. It's a metaphor, of course.

The fruit of the Buddha-Dharma is "bliss" — the bliss of nirvana, which is satya, truth. Once you attain this bliss, you are forever secure and at peace. This differs from worldly happiness, which is merely a feeling — vedanā — and is subject to change.

So all of us here should listen to and study the Dharma. The Buddha once gave this analogy: suppose a person's lifespan is one hundred years, and each day three hundred spears pierce his body — three hundred strikes a day. Throughout those hundred years, day after day, this continues. Only after enduring all that suffering is the True Dharma expounded for you. Even so, you should willingly endure it, because the True Dharma awaits.

I think the logic here actually holds: if you're struck three hundred times a day, every day, you might grow numb to it. If one day goes by without being struck, you'd feel unsettled — as the folk saying goes, "Three days without a beating and the kid's up on the roof tearing off tiles." He needs to be beaten once a day. He's grown so accustomed to it that if a day passes without a beating, it feels like something's missing.

In Greek mythology, there's a story of a god who committed an offense and was punished by Zeus: he had to roll a great boulder up a mountain. But whenever the stone reached the summit, it would roll back down on its own. The god would have to roll it up again, day after day. At first he found it maddening, but eventually he discovered a beauty in the motion, and so he became joyful — pushing the stone up the mountain every day while singing.

So with three hundred spear piercings a day — at first it may be agonizing, but gradually you'll discover that those piercings follow a certain rhythm. The beauty of that rhythm will draw you in, and you'll feel exhilarated.

There's a book called Fearful Symmetry whose second chapter opens with these words: "An architect wakes up to find himself locked in an unfamiliar room. He rushes to the window and looks out — here catching a glimpse of a tower, there a column — and realizes he is trapped inside a magnificent edifice." At first he's terrified, but then "his passion for his profession overcomes his fear. Everything he can see is so beautiful that he is mesmerized. At the same time, he feels challenged: he wants to deduce the fundamental design of this great building from what he can observe." The architect, filled with ambition, forgets his suffering.

We are the same — imprisoned in the great house of the Three Realms. Some haven't awakened yet. We feel suffering now, which means we're beginning to wake up — and that's a good thing. Why is it good?

Any doctor knows why human beings have pain nerves — they're protective. If you had no sense of pain, your hand could be cut off and you wouldn't even know it.

The Buddha said that if, in order to hear the Dharma, one must willingly endure three hundred spear piercings every day — since such a great price must be paid — then upon hearing the True Dharma, one will certainly practice accordingly. Only when you've paid a price do you understand something's worth. But you also need wisdom. The elder Nan Huaijin once recounted something: in the early Qing dynasty, there was a sect in northern China called the Li Men. They had a secret mantra called the "Five-Character True Word," said to be incomparably efficacious. But it couldn't be disclosed casually — when transmitted, no third party could be present. This was called "not transmitting when six ears are listening." After learning the mantra, one was not to recite it aloud ordinarily. Only when great calamity struck should one recite it loudly. Nan Huaijin begged for a very long time before they finally told him: "Guanyin Bodhisattva." So we should take note: you've paid such a great price, and the Buddha tells you only that life is suffering. Would you feel disappointed? If you lack wisdom, you truly would — you'd think enduring all that suffering wasn't worth it.

In The Biography of the Venerable Milarepa, the great master studied under the guru Marpa, who was extraordinarily harsh with him — nearly unbearable.

In truth, if you simply follow the Buddha's words and practice accordingly, you can attain eternal peace and security. The suffering of the hells, after all, is hundreds and thousands of times worse than three hundred spear piercings a day. When you look at it that way, we really must entrust ourselves to the Buddha-Dharma and practice it faithfully.

Think about it—if someone wants to know where their past life was, there's really no need to look. Our past lives were spent cycling through the six realms. We've already suffered plenty. Now we have a method to escape suffering—why aren't we putting it into practice? Think about it: if we don't exert ourselves now, in the future we'll be reborn somewhere where we can't hear the Dharma, and we'll have missed our chance to escape suffering. Even if you knew that in a past life you were president of the United States, nobody's going to give you that seat back now.

Think about it again—it's actually quite fortunate that we were born into this era. In the Dharma-ending age, far too many demons manifest as Dharma masters, placing obstacles before the Buddha's teaching. I remember saying once that we should respect the true Buddha, but we must overthrow all those counterfeit Buddhas that have been remodeled by others. A layperson wrote me a letter saying, "For thousands of years, who has dared to forge a Buddha, to remodel a Buddha?" I can't be bothered to respond to questions like that. Why? Because these people are lazy and superstitious—they don't read the sutras themselves; they only look at those superficial vernacular commentaries written by other people. But those vernacular commentaries are the remodeling of the Buddha, the makeup applied to the Buddha! It's precisely these things that prevent you from seeing the true Buddha. So those who truly damage the Dharma are Dharma masters; those who truly destroy the Buddha are Buddhists themselves—they're superstitious about their masters and don't trust the Buddha. They put the Buddha's image up high and think, "It doesn't concern me, so why bother?" The Buddha is too lofty and not as approachable as the bodhisattvas, so honestly speaking, Guanyin Bodhisattva's standing is actually a bit higher than Shakyamuni's. Bodhisattvas are still too lofty, so they revere the patriarchs. When the patriarchs of old become too lofty, they revere today's great monks. Whether those old patriarchs were actually so lofty is debatable, but out of respect for the great, everyone says they were. These ideas are all obstacles blocking our way to the World-Honored One. "We must sweep away all noxious pests!"

The World-Honored One was originally an approachable and respectable person, but one with great wisdom. Yet we insist on remaking him into an unattainable great deity—rational Buddhism is turned into superstitious worship. The sages of all ages have been lonely; the World-Honored One himself was pitifully lonely in his time. We Buddhist disciples of today are also pitiful—we rarely hear the World-Honored One's teachings directly. We need to think about this: we take refuge in the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha is gone now, of course—not literally gone; the Dharmakaya Buddha is everywhere, the Sambhogakaya Buddha is still teaching bodhisattvas, and the Nirmanakaya Buddha has entered nirvana. The Dharma? The three baskets and twelve divisions of teachings still exist. The Sangha? They exist too, but they're hard to encounter, because the Sangha is a community living in harmony, and as Chairman Mao put it, "Wherever there are two people, there's contradiction." That's roughly what he meant.

What do we do now? We've heard the Dharma, so first we revere it, then we apply ourselves diligently. Why? To seek escape from suffering! At this point we need to keep our heads on our own shoulders and absolutely must not be led astray by others. If you know a little something and run outside talking about it, that won't benefit others—it will only inflate your own pride. When your pride grows, it causes others to slander the Three Jewels. That's harming yourself and harming others.

Buddhism speaks of "benefiting oneself and benefiting others," with benefiting oneself placed before benefiting others—and there's reason for that. The Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra (the Candragarbha chapter) has the original text, and the Dharmapada does too. You can go look them up.

If we call ourselves children of the Buddha, hear the Dharma, but don't keep the precepts—if you study Buddhism but turn it into an academic subject—well, as Wang Yangming said, "To know but not to act is the same as not knowing." These people are even more pitiable than we are. Here's an analogy: if we break the law, we should be judged accordingly. But if you're a judge, or a lawyer, and you break the law—now that's "knowingly committing the offense, with the punishment doubled." Hearing the Dharma and not keeping the precepts is like a judge or lawyer breaking the law.

Studying Buddhism is extremely rare and precious. We must constantly guard against adverse conditions and instead actively seek conditions that support the Dharma. Why must we always be vigilant? CCTV has a program called Animal World, narrated by Zhao Zhongxiang—it's truly captivating. You can watch: a certain ram in a flock is fighting and brawling, acting all impressive, but when a tiger appears, the whole flock scatters in terror—and that ram is no exception.

Look at real life too: on a long-distance bus, there's just one bandit—just one—who can subdue everyone on the bus and rifle through every wallet. One hundred virtues cannot offset a single evil! That's why we must always be on guard. Buddhism has a saying: a single spark of hatred burns down the forest of merit.

When listening to the Dharma, one must respect the Dharma. The expression of respecting the Dharma is practicing the Dharma. Most people nowadays do respect the Dharma, but their way of showing it is putting the sutras on a high shelf, not placing Buddha images in unclean places, and so on. Of course, these aren't nothing—but they're not the most important. The most important thing, actual practice, is absent. Some temples go to great lengths to acquire a complete Tripiṭaka, but once they have it, they reverently place it in the library and don't let anyone read it, declaring sanctimoniously that sutras are meant for veneration. In reality, only practicing the Dharma can free us forever from the sea of suffering. At this point we need to be psychologically prepared: studying the Dharma is hard work, it won't be comfortable. Within cause and effect there are two situations, which correspond to two stages of practice. One is suffering as cause, happiness as result—this is the ordinary being's realm. Practice is very difficult; look at The Life of Milarepa. The other is happiness as cause, happiness as result—this comes after attaining the skill of meditation, and then there is joy. But we should remember that studying the Buddhist Dharma is not for the sake of attaining pleasure, because "joy" is just one kind of "feeling." What is joy? Joy is not pleasure at the level of feeling; it is the temporary name given to the cessation of all suffering. I see there's a certain master running a program called "Learn Buddhism Lightly and Easily," and quite a few people study with him. One can't say his method is bad, but it does have considerable drawbacks.

After all this time listening, can we sum up the Dharma in one sentence? We can: "Dependent origination is solely the knowing faculty" (缘起唯能识). As long as you grasp this, that's enough. Once you grasp "dependent origination is solely the knowing faculty," you'll understand what's really going on with that commonly quoted saying, "Bodhisattvas fear the cause, ordinary beings fear the result." So what does a bodhisattva have to fear? A bodhisattva is one who awakens sentient beings. He makes us awaken, yet he's said to fear planting that cause—fear what, exactly? Fear of forming this karmic connection with you? But it's a good cause! What's there to fear? Bodhisattvas don't actually fear planting causes~~because bodhisattvas already have the ability to make discriminating choices. They work only on the side of "capacity."

We need to understand that dependent origination is solely the knowing faculty, so don't pursue "results." The moment you pursue them, they've already moved far away from you. Then why don't we seek results? Just as the saying goes: ask only about plowing, never about the harvest. Just apply yourself diligently at all times in the threefold training. Don't think about—what shouldn't you think about? Don't go thinking: "I'm working hard right now, so my suffering will end any moment." At that moment, keep "dependent origination is solely the knowing faculty" firmly in mind, constantly observing your present state of mind, your present situation—do what needs to be done.

For example, if I'm a farmer, I look and see it's autumn—time to turn the soil, so I turn it. When it gets cool, it's time to plant wheat, so I sow. When it's time to fertilize, I fertilize; when it's time to water, I water… nobody asks, "If I do all this, will I get a harvest?" This is what the old folks say: "If man doesn't cheat the earth, the earth doesn't cheat man." If you just work faithfully, work according to the way—how could you fail to harvest? The old folks all know this truth. Sometimes you're really unlucky—you've worked hard for a whole year, and just as harvest approaches, a storm or hailstorm ruins a whole year's labor. The old farmer is heartbroken—but after the heartbreak, he goes right back to doing what needs to be done. He never says, "I'm not doing this anymore."

Another example: let's say we're heading to Mount Jiuhua. You need to recognize your present situation clearly. Right now I'm still on the fifth floor, so what I need to do now is walk down the stairs to the street. Once I realize I'm at the street, I should take a vehicle, so I ride to the station. I recognize this is the station, so I take the train to Nanjing. I recognize that I'm now in Nanjing, then take a boat to Chizhou, then a bus to Mount Jiuhua… If I can't recognize my present situation, I'm on the fifth floor trying to board a train—that won't work~~ These are all obstacles blocking you from seeing the World-Honored One.

The Dharma is "dependent origination is solely the knowing faculty"—you must hold onto this firmly, with no ambiguity allowed. The Dharma speaks in terms of "capacity" and "vow." Otherwise, if you read the Buddhist scriptures, you'll be completely bewildered. All the sacred teachings are provisionally established—you must remember this too, otherwise you'll think the Buddhist scriptures are full of contradictions everywhere.

For example: sentient beings are limitless—where is the limit? If there's a limit, it must be finite. Kṣitigarbha's great vow: "Only when all sentient beings are delivered will I attain bodhi." This sentence doesn't make sense. It's possible no one has ever thought about it—they've just handed their thinking over to others. This sentence has problems; it doesn't make sense.

Another example: the merit of reciting the Buddha's name is limitless, but the Pure Land school also says one must cultivate the threefold merit. This sentence also doesn't make sense.

Also: Guanyin rescues those in suffering and difficulty, but I have a splitting headache today—I'm suffering terribly—why doesn't he rescue me? If you say it's because my karmic obstacles are too heavy, then there are times when even Guanyin can't save me.

How do we resolve these issues? Actually, these issues aren't issues at all! Why? Because you've turned capacity into object. Guanyin Bodhisattva, Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, limitless sentient beings—all are transformations of consciousness.

Once we see this, the positive function of the Dharma becomes apparent: in an instant you decide between good and evil. So we who study Buddhism must constantly make vows. But look at people in the world today—as soon as something comes up, they say, "Go with the flow." That's complete rubbish. In Henan dialect, this would be called "仰半脚 (lying flat) 尿尿儿, 流哪儿算哪儿"—just letting things flow wherever they go. In Anhui dialect it's "脚踩西瓜皮，滑到哪里是哪里"—stepping on watermelon rind, sliding wherever it takes you. These are all laziness, all failure to understand the meaning of studying Buddhism.

The Dharma is supreme, and this supremacy has two aspects: one is supremacy of meaning, the other is supremacy of language. "Meaning" is expressed through variations of language; "language" refers to either "text" or "sound." Text refers to a specific category in the analysis of dharmas, and sound has an even broader meaning. The Dharma has both text and meaning. What the Buddhist scriptures express is a unique mode of thinking, a way of thinking not shared with other schools of thought. Of course, every school of thought in the world differs from others—if Marx were the same as Hegel, then Marx wouldn't be needed at all. So where does Buddhism's uniqueness lie? Song Taichu said, "The centrality of rites in Confucianism, the naturalness of Laozi, the non-action of the Buddha—these all return to one family" (History of Song, vol. 277, Biography of Song Taichu). Zan Ning said, "The Three Teachings are objects of one family, the ruler of ten thousand chariots is the lord of one family" (Zimen Jingshi, vol. 3). Wang Chongyang said, "The Confucian gate and Buddhist door connect with the Tao—the Three Teachings have shared one ancestral wind from the start" (Sun Gong Asks About the Three Teachings, in Chongyang Quanzhen Ji, vol. 1). Zhang Boduan said, "Although the teachings are divided into three, the Way returns to one" (Preface to Wuzhen Pian). Thinking about it now, if the Three Teachings truly were identical, then why did Dharma Masters Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing go to India? They must have gone to learn things that weren't in Chinese culture! At the time, the unity of the Three Teachings had its value, but once something has fulfilled its historical mission, it should exit the stage of history. What we need to do now is focus our gaze on what makes Buddhism different from the rest. What was it that wasn't in Chinese culture, but was brought to China by Xuanzang and the others? Who can explain this clearly? The Dharma is "thought cultivation"—how does one cultivate? By expanding the dimension of one's thought, then transforming consciousness into wisdom. But people nowadays want to translate the Buddhist scriptures into vernacular Chinese—I don't know where these sutras are in classical Chinese to begin with. If you take the sutras translated by Kumārajīva and place them side by side with articles by literati of his era, they were the vernacular Chinese of that day—thoroughly vernacular Chinese.

There are even people setting the Heart Sutra to pop music—these damned things, you call that propagating the Dharma? Setting Amitabha Buddha's holy name to pop music destroys the purity and solemnity of the Buddha's name. If you want to sing, Buddhism has brahmaghoṣa!

There are even people rewriting Buddhist stories into popular literature—they call that propagating the Dharma?

The Dharma is unique precisely because its mode of thinking differs from others! Where there's text and meaning, there is Dharma. Now there's no text, and without text, meaning also gets distorted—where is the Dharma then? Those who destroy the Dharma are Buddhists themselves!

The imperial throne has existed since humanity began, has been passed down to today, and has never perished—why? People respect it, and it's rare; things are precious when scarce! During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, every household invoked Amitabha, every door had Guanyin; in the Sui and Tang periods the status of those who left the home life was exalted—those four great persecutions of the Dharma all happened in that era. Some people say, "Christianity is powerful now, has lots of people—I don't value it at all~~" Now the Dharma is similar—everywhere you hear the Buddha's name recited! This is a cause of the Dharma's destruction: there's too much of it, it's no longer valued, people don't respect it. In the past, ordination certificates were always issued by the Ministry of Rites of the government—that bastard Qianlong Emperor abolished this system. Of course, this is open to discussion. When the Dharma is about to perish, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra perish first—this is stated in the Sūtra of the Extinction of the Dharma. The last to perish is the Sūtra of Immeasurable Life, as in the translation by Kang Sengxie: "In the age to come when the Path and Sūtras are extinguished, out of compassionate pity I specially preserve this sūtra to remain for a hundred years." Zhi Qian's translation also has: "After I attain parinirvāṇa, the Path and Sūtras remain for a thousand years. A thousand years after the Path and Sūtras are cut off, out of compassion I preserve this sūtra, to remain for a hundred years."

In the end, only a single Buddha-name remains (Nanyang Hujin mentions this on page 18 of Brief Explanations of the Yuqie Sutra, Beijing Normal University Press, 1993 edition). The Sūtra of the Extinction of the Dharma has a metaphor: when the Dharma is about to perish, it's like a lamp just before it goes out—suddenly there's a final flare of light, and then it's out. When the Dharma is about to perish, it's the same way: people reciting the Buddha's name are especially numerous. Many people reciting the Buddha's name is a bad thing, not a good thing.

If you are a true Buddhist, if you want the true Dharma to endure, then respect the Dharma. Only when we Buddhists respect the Dharma will others respect it. If we travel everywhere and find the Dharma unknown, and at the mention of Buddhism all people know is a single Buddha-name, then the Dharma is finished.

The Buddhist scriptures have never stated "attainment comes through the Buddha-name alone."

If we want to study Buddhism, we must distinguish between Dharma and worldly methods. The Dharma is the Dharma; worldly methods are worldly methods. Know karmic conditions as karmic conditions, know human feelings as human feelings—everything must be distinguished. Never muddle them together. Those who study Buddhism should know that the Dharma emphasizes the knowing subject, the consciousness that engages, while worldly methods emphasize the object engaged. The two fundamentally do not interfere. Delivering sentient beings happens according to conditions; the Dharma inspires wisdom. When you yourself abide in the Dharma-abode, although the objects engaged have not changed, your knowing mind has transformed—and that's good. Before studying the Dharma, we dwelt in ignorance; now that we study the Dharma, we should dwell in wisdom. At this point we should diligently do what we should do, fulfill the duties we ought to fulfill, accumulate merit and wisdom, and once the mind of renunciation arises, we should try to sustain it long. As the Śūraṅgama Sūtra says, "Dedicate this body and mind to the dust-world"—dedicate your life to the Dharma, like Pavel Korchagin's "dedicate my life to a great cause." Practice according to the teaching.

This lecture ends here. I expect some of you may not be able to accept this emotionally—that's possible. Even though no one asked questions, I know this is the case. As long as this lecture stirred something in your heart, my purpose has been achieved.