Gravitation of love

Gravitation of love is the reason that relationships exist. It is the deepest learning of our soul and the most important lesson in human growth.

Some people often complain why they always attract bad people? In fact, what we should do is to ask ourselves: “Why do I create this reality? What kind of spiritual growth is intended here?

We should treat the people around us as lessons for our growth. They are the motions behind joys of life rather than torturous pain – because of these interpersonal relationships formed by the gravitation of love, these people around us still have lessons of love yet to be completed.

No matter how conflicts and hatred are caused between people, it is within these opposing forces that love and acceptance are released from the heart. We must first confirm the value of our existence and the good intentions of this world. Let true love and unconditional acceptance come from within our hearts. This way, the relationships with our family, friends and colleagues will drastically make positive changes filled with goodwill and respect.

—excerpt from “Mind Energy Resources”

The Astral Bag

Spoken by Master Ching Hai
1988 Taipei, Formosa

In the astral world, there are many empty bags. If we are not careful, after we die, we will fall into one. Once we fall into it, we cannot control it. That’s why we hear of ghosts floating here and there. They cannot stay in one place. They float where the wind blows. If there is no wind, they will stop there. They cannot eat and have no place to live. They cannot talk and cannot just go where they want to; they are not free. It is all because they are caught in this is so-called Astral bag. It is like a kind of plastic bag.

On our Earth planet, there is a kind of hydrogen balloon. It floats in the air and there is a big bucket under it for people to sit in. If we are thrown into that Astral bag, it is the same as being thrown into the bucket in that hydrogen balloon. We cannot find a way to control it. That’s why we say ghosts are very miserable. It is all because while we are still in this world and we still have this opportunity to control it, we don’t control it.

We don’t make use of our precious time in this human world to organize our future life, so when we leave, we are frightened by bad karma (retribution), and we are terrified by other ghosts. We run around with no direction, then we fall into this human body, or we fall into an animal body, or we fall into hell, or we fall into a so-called bag in the Astral world. Then we cannot find a way to control it. Only when we have a human body can we control it. We can decide our future and we can choose where to live. It doesn’t actually happen in the future. Now we can go to other places to live and then go back and forth, back and forth like this. It becomes a habit. Then later on when we leave, we will know where we want to go. Because we are used to going, back and forth already. It is just like this; otherwise after we die, more than half of us will fall into the Astral bag and then float here and there like that. We can live for a few hundred years but it is meaningless and so miserable.

There are many things in this world that are like traps waiting for the floating soul. This is the job of Maya. In Taoism, we refer to the so-called maya, as “yin.” There is “yin,” and there is “yang.” Now we are looking for “yang.” After we pass away, the “yin” has a lot of control. When we are alive, we have yin and yang, we can choose to take yang and not to take yin. After we die, “yang” disappears and we don’t have the choice, we can only have yin. At that time, it will be too late.

Vegetarian Wisdom

Q: Is Vegetarianism Important?

ShantiMayi: Well, important for what or whom? Are you asking, is vegetarianism important for spiritual awakening? Actually there are many spiritual people who are not vegetarians. I have been vegetarian for most of my life. For me, it has been easier to not eat meat. We have a garden in our ashrams (except India), however I have never killed an animal in my life. In our ashrams we eat vegetarian food. It is lighter (satvic) in the body to eat vegetarian. It will make a difference to your entire physical system to omit meat from your diet. But is it important?

This you have to answer for yourself. For the world, it takes more energy and cost to raise cattle than it does to raise vegetables or grain. There are many good reasons for eating a vegetarian diet. Spiritually, it makes sense to eat good foods and organic (biological) food as much as possible. If you are healthy, it supports good health. If you are unhealthy, it supports wellness. A good, healthy body is advantageous for everyone. For spiritual people is it best to care for the wellness of the body, when it is unwell, it becomes a preoccupation. This is not to say the unhealthy people cannot excel in understanding and realization. Good health is simply a hurdle dissolved.

Nothing will benefit health or increase chances of survival of life on Earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
– Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American physicist, Nobel Prize recipient

The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the worlds food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock-food for the well-off, while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvations.
– Dr. Walden Bello, executive director of Food First, Institute for Food and Development Policy

I think of veganism humbly and holistically. It’s about taking personal responsibility in a world so full of needless suffering. It’s challenging one’s self to open one’s eyes and question society’s assumptions and habits. It’s about critical thinking and compassion and how we would like to see the world evolve.
– Michael Gregor, M.D., American lecturer & author

All the arguments to prove human superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.
– Peter Singer Australian philosopher & author of Animal Liberation

To avoid causing terror to living beings, let the disciple refrain from eating meat.
– the Buddha (circa 563-483 B.C.), Indian avatar

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.
– Alice Walker, African-American writer & storyteller

Cows constitute the stay of all creatures. Cows are the refuge of all creatures. Cows are the embodiment of merit. Cows are sacred and blessed and are sanctifiers of all. One should never, in even one’s heart, do an injury to cows. One should, indeed, always confer happiness on them.
– Mahabharata, the great religious epic of India

Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. The house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about and realized. What, then, is that which dwells within this house, this lotus of the heart? Even so large as the universe outside is the universe within the heart. Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the lightning, and all the stars. Whatever is in the macrocosm is in this microcosm.
– Chhandogya Upanishads, ancient Hindu scripture

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The Big Brother Of The Tainan Underground

Narrated by Fellow Initiate Wu, Tainan, Taiwan
Recorded by a Resident Disciple, Hsihu, Taiwan

At the early stage of master Ching Hai’s preaching, She always found time to visit prison inmates. Besides comforting and encouraging them spiritually, She also shared with them biscuits and candies. Due to the longing of sentient beings around the world, Master has become increasingly busy, and constantly travels and preaches abroad. Although She no longer has time to visit prisons, Her concern for prisoners persists. She has instructed our fellow initiates to visit them on Her behalf when they have time. Initiates who used to be prisoners have been requested to go along to encourage the inmates with inspiring stories of their own conversions from evil to goodness.

For this reason, brother Wu was also asked to join such a trip. Unexpectedly, when the organizing brother explained the trip’s objective and asked him to present a speech in the prison, he refused abruptly on the spot. He continued to reject later requests as well. His fear was that, after speaking in the prison, he would be laughed at and would lose face in the event that he should decide to join the gangster circle again. He also found many excuses, like being too shy to speak in public , in order to turn down the requests. The organizing brother had no option but to report the situation to Master. In order to help him understand the holy meaning of this work, Master asked someone to relate the following message to him: “This is the last opportunity in your life to do this job. You must seize this chance, and remember your mission. When you go to fulfill your assignment, be humble at heart, and absolutely refrain from being arrogant.”

Upon receiving Master’s instructions, brother Wu dared not refuse anymore. To accomplish the job perfectly, and to avoid stage fright, he practiced frequently before his wife and son who acted as his audience. The response to his speeches was always “It is awful!” After several attempts, he was ashamed to torture his wife and son any longer. He could only wait until midnight when no one was around, and then stealthily go outdoors to practice his speech to the light pole. And whenever he had time, he would meditate at home, praying to Master to bless him and grant him inspiration.

One day, he felt thwarted and complained to his wife, “I don’t think I am going, because until now my practice is still far from satisfactory!” His wife rebuked him, saying, “This is an assignment from Master, how can you refuse to go? I see you are usually very talkative. Why can’t you speak now that you have the opportunity to express yourself?”

Since it was Master’s assignment, he dared not complain any more. Instead, he rushed to meditate and pray for Her help. On the next day, the organizing brother conveyed another message: “Master said that your wife may also give a speech to the female inmates.” Upon hearing this, his wife’s face turned green, and her nervousness was no less intense than brother Wu’s.

Early the next morning, brother Wu and the working members arrived punctually at the Taipei Prison. Cordially, the prison staff led them to the VIP Room for a brief rest; then they split up into two groups and went to the male and female wards respectively. This trip induced very deep emotions in brother Wu. Previously, whenever he went to a prison, he entered as a prisoner. However, this time he came as a VIP lecturer. Events in this world are truly ever changing and unpredictable. On the way, he recalled some fragmented memories of his life in prison, and without being aware of it soon reached the lecture venue.

When brother Wu went onto the stage and began to speak, the inmates stared at him with hostility and indifference. Even the applause sounded mechanical. An indescribably strange atmosphere pervaded the venue, as if invisible forces were oppressing him and making him speechless. Immediately, he prayed for Master’s blessing, and his mind was stabilized. He described his whole life in detail to the inmates: how he had sunk into gangster society, how he had been converted to goodness and pursued spiritual practice, and how he eventually met master Ching Hai.

As time went on, the atmosphere gradually began to change; the inmates started to listen with great interest and attention, and their expressions also became more cordial. When brother Wu concluded his speech, he received warm applause from the whole audience, which seemed to convey their encouragement and recognition. Some inmates took the initiative of helping the work team clear the venue. Several inmates who knew brother Wu even approached and greeted him. One of them rushed forward saying, “Hello, brother boss! I will surely visit you at Suma Ching Hai’s Center when I am released.” Brother Wu delightedly expressed his welcome.

After this first speech in the prison, brother Wu’s blissful feeling could not be described in words. He never imagined this meaningful mission could be accomplished so smoothly and successfully. For him, it was an incredible challenge . Without Master’s admonition, he could not possibly have gathered the courage and strength to rectify his undesirable quality of declining to do good deeds and benefit others. Furthermore, he had conquered his stage fright.

The most precious lesson that brother Wu learned from this was that he could always feel the bliss of being one with Master during such missions, and experience Her selfless and almighty love. For instance, when going to the Tainan Prison to give a speech, he kept shedding tears in the car until he felt embarrassed. He wondered: “I didn’t shed a single tear when being punished severely for many days in the prison before. Why am I behaving like this now? Perhaps it is like Master once said that our soul knows we are now on the right path, so it cries due to extreme bliss!

When brother Wu made a speech at the Jiayi Prison, another initiate observed a strong light bathing him as he was on stage. He looked much younger in the light, and Master’s manifestation body was standing behind him. No wonder brother Wu always feels that, the more work he does that benefits others, the happier and more relaxed he feels both physically and spiritually, and the more his guilt feelings are eliminated. So, it turns out that Master’s manifestation body is always blessing him and cleansing his karma. This story testifies to the truth of Master’s words: “When helping others, we are actually helping ourselves.”

The application for brother Wu to present a speech at the Hsinchu Youth Prison encountered difficulties. The local fellow practitioners had been applying for a long time, without being approved. Once, when brother Wu spoke at the Hualien Low Security Prison, several inmates advised him, “Brother boss, you should pay a visit to the ‘Hsinchu Youth Prison.’ The situation there is very serious. Tell them the story that you told us today; it will surely touch many of them, and lead them back from the wrong path.” This loving request intensified brother Wu’s wish to visit the Hsinchu Youth Prison.

Perhaps sincerity really worked, or perhaps it was Master’s fantastic arrangement operating invisibly in the background. Mr. Ma Ying Jiu, Minister of the Justice Department was inspecting the Swallow’s Nest (Yan Cao) Prison where he coincidentally met brother Wu, who was making a speech there. Minister Ma shook hands with him and encouraged him cordially. Shortly afterwards, the fellow initiates from Hsinchu received permission from the Youth Prison regarding the lecture application. It happened that Minister Ma had personally called the Hsinchu Youth Prison instructing them to invite brother Wu to give a speech. Fortunately, the Formosan Government is very wise and really cares for prisoners, allowing its youth who have gone astray to have the blessing of developing affinity with a living enlightened Master.

A chain of presentations by brother Wu has occurred in prisons throughout the province. As brother Wu is inclined to getting carsick, long distance travel is agonizing for him. The occasional recurrence of his chronic ailments also aggravates his exhaustion. Once when he was traveling to Yilan to make a speech, he was complaining within about being too tired. However, in the car, he heard a brother recalling when Master wandered and preached everywhere in earlier times. For the sake of saving sentient beings, Master camped anywhere necessary, and did not even have a Center in which to stay and preach. Overcome by remorse, tears rolled down his cheeks. Immediately, all the grumblings in his heart disappeared completely.

So far, brother Wu has presented speeches in prisons in Taipei, Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Swallow’s Nest (Yan Cao), Jiayi, Tainan, Yilan, Hualien, and Green Island (Lu Dao), as well as the Hsinchu Youth Prison. He receives an overwhelming welcome everywhere he goes. After each talk, he always begins to wonder, “Where is the next opportunity for me to redeem my sins?” He truly feels that real happiness can only be found in doing work that serves and benefits others.

Master’s New Year Wishes – part 1

Spoken by  master Ching Hai, Hsihu center, Formosa Jan 29, 1995 (Originally in Chinese)

Many people misunderstand the meaning of the New Year and other festivals. On every grand occasion or New Year, we should spend more effort to reflect and introspect on ourselves, how we can serve the world better, contribute more to our relatives and friends or the country. The occasion is not to be used every time as an excuse for making merry, instead we should refine our coarse behavior and speech. Of course, everyone is aware of this. I just take this opportunity to remind you. You don’t have to listen if you have done so. If you have not done this, or have forgotten to do so, then you ought to be reminded!

I have said everything before. The important thing is that you have to put the teachings into action, then it will be fine. Of course, we should progress in the new year. Instead of getting “older” every year, we should be “stronger” spiritually and wiser. Then, we deserve to be called “elder”, the older the better. For instance, if we did something last year that we or others disliked, then we ought to rectify it in the new year with our best effort! Improve our behavior and speech, becoming more beautiful.

In real life, it is hard to avoid having some moments when we overreact, but do not let this quality cling to us in ordinary times. Do you understand? Of course, it is different when you have to react. For instance, just now you are angry with that person because he made you mad. Or, there are times when we cannot suppress our temper. At those times other people can forgive you. Aware of our wrong behavior later, we should apologize or improve ourselves, then we may be forgiven.

However, we must not let this quality develop to the extent that we are using it even at normal times. This is different from speaking harshly when we are angry. We can find out later. Anyway, this is provoked by the situation, and is different from having a rude personality. It is totally another thing if we are rude even when joking or chatting with people, and irritating them. That is our bad quality. If we observe such a quality in ourselves, improve it and do not let people feel uncomfortable each time they think of us. The bad memory will jump into their mind each time they think of our name. Subsequently, we undermine our friendships, the atmosphere at home and our essential business.

The Master is not telling you to speak in a flattering manner wherever you go, for instance, praising others with words not from your heart, or just doing it to win others’ feelings or to delight them, when we are thinking the other way at heart. We should speak according to our heart. The oneness of outer actions and inner thoughts is “Zen”. Otherwise, we are hypocrites. It is true that we should behave naturally, but politeness and nobleness are also essential. Observing our refined behavior, even the people with no elegance would feel ashamed of their attitude. A New Person In The New Year

The New Year gives us a chance to become a new person. If we did well last year, we should be even better in the new year. If not, then we improve in the new year, the more the better.

Many people misunderstand the meaning of the New Year and other festivals. On every grand occasion or New Year, we should spend more effort to reflect and introspect on ourselves, how we can serve the world better, contribute more to our relatives and friends or the country. The occasion is not to be used every time as an excuse for making merry, instead we should be refining our coarse behavior and speech, right? Of course, everyone is aware of this. I just take this opportunity to remind you. You don’t have to listen if you have done this. If you have not done this, or have forgotten to do so, then you ought to be reminded!

We have to set a good example for the world in every aspect, including the relief missions, spiritual practice, handling friendships and the relationship between Master and disciples. Only when absolutely necessary, then we use stern methods. Is it not better if we can treat each other in a refined and noble manner? The creation of heaven should start from here!

People in high positions in particular, should care more about their qualities. As an official, one should be honest and upright. A government servant must work diligently for the nation, sacrifice for the well-being of her people. Spiritual practitioners or the liaison persons for Master, etc., should also mind the manner and quality in their acts and speech, sacrifice for others instead of enjoying personal comfort. Parents, they should take care of their children of course, make them comfortable, but not spoil them badly. Children, naturally they should be filial and obedient to their parents and elders.

The teachers should fulfill their responsibilities, provide moral and ethical lessons for the students. The basic A, B, C lessons, that everyone can teach, are not enough. The greatest responsibility of a teacher is to teach the children about ethics, the superior qualities. This also applies to the parents. Just feeding and dressing the children are not enough. If everyone fulfills their responsibilities – the parents protect their children well, the children are filial – the world would be in great peace, beginning with the family. Then, all the natural disasters and war calamities would diminish.

The World Is A Stage For Our Play

Spoken By Master Ching Hai, Hsihu Center, Formosa October 25th, 1994
(Originally in Chinese)

In the very beginning, we were with God; we were one with the essence of the highest Buddha. At that time, there was nothing to do in the universe. It was empty like an ocean of love, so pure and tranquil, without any movement, or anything interesting. Therefore, when God or the Creator suggested that we have some activities and add some excitement to the universe, we all agreed with joy. Thereafter, we shared in part of God’s creative work. Each one of us has to do something and has to play a role. We each cast our own character. That is why there are so many different colors of skin, different temperaments and even different shortcomings. Thus, we created the universe. We created different planets, different nations and different people.

When we came down, we brought some tools or toys along with us, such as our characters and the roles. Since we created them, we also need to destroy them in order to rest and then to create new ones. Suppose you had created a bad character, perhaps a hot tempered or murderous one, even though it was your role, it was not meant to be played forever, because the roles in the play still have limitations. You may play it for a hundred years at most, or you may murder a few people, so as to carry out the drama, thus making the universe have activities, have the virtuous, the evil and transmigration. But you cannot continue to kill people like this or be so hot tempered. At the end, you still need to eliminate this character.

The character you created is only for you to come down and play with for fun. After the play is over, this tool or this malevolent character has to be eliminated. How do you eliminate it? You have to try your best to overcome this character. It was created for you to play with, but because it is defective you have to destroy it. This has to be done by no one but yourself. You will have to destroy and dissolve this character completely by yourself in order to reclaim your original quality, which has no discrimination of good or bad. Do you understand what I mean? Otherwise, you carry this character with you as you transmigrate through the universe, contaminating yourself and others as well. Unless it is cleansed off, you cannot recover your original self that existed before the creation, and before the drama was set on the stage.

In case you have not eliminated the qualities before you die, then you cannot return to where you came from. Because before we came down here, we did not have these toys, such characters and temperaments. At that time, we were in an ocean of love and purity; we were just as loving, as perfect and as almighty as God. In order to have some fun, to carry out the drama, and to make the universe more interesting and diversified, we played our roles as different characters, like the performers in a drama.

Originally, we were the children of God and we were with God. Later, we wanted to have some fun so we signed a contract with God. We all supported His plan of creation and agreed to follow it. Subsequently, according to the plan, we created Africa, Europe and the Americas to be this way, and Formosa, Cambodia, Thailand… to be that way; each one being unique and beautiful in its own way. But the trouble is, sometimes we overplayed our roles; we forgot to wash off our stage makeup or to remove our masks, and we continued on with the play. We forgot the will of God and couldn’t stop playing. That is why this worldly game is no longer fun and it gets worse as we go along.

Now, those who are tired of playing and wish to rest must eliminate all those characters borrowed from the second realm, for such characters do not exist above the second realm, not even our brain, the computer within us exists. These tools are not needed up there; without karma, there is no need of temperament, no need to have good or bad. It was originally quite uneventful! Now, if we want to go home, we must dissolve all these tools and characters; we must destroy all these qualities that we have borrowed, before we can become our original self again. Do you understand what I mean? You continue to play because you have been here for so long that you have forgotten.

If you want to go back now, you must follow the Master and listen to the Master’s instructions. You must eliminate all those borrowed and defective tools. There must be no more greed, anger and obsessions, no more alcohol, no more meat… no more malevolent qualities. If you still cannot let go of these, then you have to stay here. Why is that? Because these tools and qualities belong down here, and if we are still attached to these, then we have to stay here with our tools. We can go up only after we have let go of them.

It is like if we were to visit the president at the presidential palace, we have to leave our luggage or guns at the gate. If you don’t want to leave your weapons, your baggage and other junk with the security guard, then you will not be allowed to go inside to see the president. Similarly if we still indulge in greed, hatred, obsession, fame, gain and other vicious qualities that are unfitting up there, then we will not be allowed to see the King of the universe.

When we came down here to have fun together, some people chose the roles that had the worse qualities, while some others chose those that had higher positions. In fact, only in this world we have the good and the bad, we see others as virtuous or evil, superior or inferior. When we picked our roles before we came down, no one intentionally chose anything. It was like God put out a big pile of different qualities, the good, the bad, the greedy, the angry, the obsessed, the irritable, the benign, etc. for us to pick one to wear, just like costumes. No one complained that his position was not what he wanted, that he wanted to be the king and not the policeman…, etc. At that time, no one had such ideas at all.

When we were up there, all things were equal. We were not impressed by fame or gain, we did not care about being poor or unfortunate, or worse yet, having a poor figure. We and God agreed to create a universe in which there should be a variety of different people, animals, flowers, trees…, etc. Besides, we were all willing to come down here to each play a role, choose a character in the creative plan. But after the role was over, the character was supposed to be eliminated and not left to roam around the universe. For the universe can only be an ocean of love, nothing but simplicity and purity.

At the end, if we were still unable to learn our lessons, or unable to fight, conquer, and destroy the character, then we had to keep it in our bag; just like when you keep leftover money in your pocket. If we come down again another time, we will have to choose another tool or another character before we can come here.

No one was born into this world exactly perfect. From birth until a certain stage at least, we have to be imperfect, which means that we must have a lot of junky qualities. So the last time, if you did not eliminate that character, now this time you have to come down with another lousy character, that becomes two to make things more difficult for you. And if you do not eliminate both characters this time, then next time around, you’ll have three. Your qualities will become worse and worse, with more and more shortcomings. If all three are not eliminated, later you’ll have four, or five, or six, or seven, or eight… and you’ll end up in a mess indeed! (Master and everyone laugh.) Therefore, we say that some people are really bad and have a lot of shortcomings, because life after life, they did not practice and learn their lessons well; instead of eliminating their rotten qualities, they accumulate more bad qualities each time they came down. In addition to that, they even contaminated themselves further by imitating their neighbors.

Therefore, the faster we advance in our self-cultivation the better off we are! You must persevere and try to eliminate any undesirable qualities that you may have; otherwise, there is no guarantee that it’ll be any better the next time!  The baggage might be too heavy to carry! When we came down the first time, we jumped down with empty bags. Now we try to go back up, wow! We have so many tools, habits and burdens, and all are unnecessary baggage. We have become used to working with them, that is why we hang onto them so dearly. We have developed a serious attachment to them and that is troublesome.

The negative qualities we have are also a type of obsession; we are immediately liberated if we can let them go. Therefore, it is said, “Let go of the butcher knife, be a Buddha instantly.” Aside from the butcher knife, the same applies to anything that binds us in this world. So if you want to go “home”, then practice diligently.

Everyone Is God’s Child

Master Ching Hai spoke to her disciples

Everything is made for purpose. Even some things we think very bad, but in a proper use, they are useful. Like in our home, the toilet is the most unwanted place, but it is very necessary. Therefore, we learn to value things in life accordingly and not to judge rashly or blindly. In the Bible, it is stated that “Judge not so that you shall not be judged.” Whatever we laugh at today, we will be laughed at tomorrow ourselves.

So be careful how you treat others, especially your relatives. Even if they are very ignorant and do not understand your purpose of practicing Quan Yin Method, you should treat them courteously and nicely because they are also members of the family of God. No one is excepted, no one is not a member of the family of God. Even if they deny God, they don’t want to know God, they are still God’s children.

So in this world, everything has its place and purpose. So, he could not go around and say what is good, what is not good. We don’t really know. Even though in the field of medicine, you know there are so many herbs that in some countries are very well-known and popular and much widely used, and in other countries, they are completely ignorant about it. And even some poisonous plants sometimes will be used for some healing purpose. So, until we know everything, we better not accuse anything, or blame anything, or criticize anything, because God is very wise. When God makes everything, it’s for some purpose. It’s just that we don’t know.

Therefore, many people look at this world as miserable, as great temptation. But some other people look at this world as a school, as a good school for training. It depends on our mental attitude. If we are very wise and practicing well in our method, and we feel this world is good.

Since God is omnipresent, we cannot escape from God. So we might just well remember and submit our will to His will, so that our life has more meaning and our purpose of being a human will be quickly fulfilled. If something is there and we keep denying it, it is a waste of time, and a waste of energy. We just naturally accept it, and that’s it. And it is better for us and it is better for God.

Striving To Earn Money Is A Duty – Not A Sin

Spoken by master Ching Hai to initiates
Hsihu Center, June 3, 1995

What you should detach is the attachment for power and fame, not to be detached from money and fame.

The thing is that we had better strive, strive to have a better life all the time, not because we are materialists but because life should have joy and abundance in all things and in all aspects. We do not have to give power and finance to the negative class of people. You understand what I mean? For example, the good people don’t strive to make income for themselves or to have some power within a society then all the power and the finance go to the negative power, all the bad people. They will in turn control the good people and the good people can do nothing; cannot even spread goodness. So to me, to earn money, to make a business, to strive in your life to earn a good standard of living for your family, yourself and your country is a duty, not a sin.

I do not encourage my people to stay in poverty, and to give all the power and finance to the negative system that has no morals, to people who have no morals, who have no responsibility, no feeling, and who have no sense of sharing with other people. For example, we who are practicing moral standards, if we have money we always share with other people. We help people in disasters, we help the victims, we help the refugees, we help the poor, we help the needy, we help the sick and the orphans and things like that. So, it’s very good to have money. It’s not capitalism. It’s the power of finance that we must have and also the power, sometimes, of social activities.

If you are a politician, you should stay in politics and be a good politician and fight for your country and for the standard of living of other people. If you are a businessman, you must be a successful one. Always strive to be successful. Earn as much money as God gives you and then you can share. Money is very easy to use. You cannot say, “Oh well, I don’t care about money. I’m a practitioner. Money for me is untouchable.” You cannot do that, you know? You cannot have such an attitude, you don’t have then you’re lazy to achieve and then you say, “Oh, no, I don’t care. I renounce everything.” It’s not true.

In the old times, the so-called practitioners, they always renounced many things. It’s okay. You can do that for a while. But I don’t think you should do it all the time.

Sometimes, I put some make-up on, wear some nice clothes for camera so that you can see me nice in the pictures. After that I’m so happy just to go next to the river and wear comfortable clothes, just be alone and be natural. Sometimes, the make-up and the clothes make me feel tired. The outer requirement of beauty and decency sometimes makes you tired if you are not used to it. Especially for the practitioners, we just like to feel natural. But if we want to do it for the sake of beautifying the world or to work in the society, it’s also okay.

So for us, the so-called practitioners, we really don’t need material comfort much. And that’s why it’s easy for us sometimes to think, “Oh no, why should I earn money, I don’t really need anything anymore.” It’s a very easy way out. But when we come to think about it, if we still live in this world, many people depend on us, our family, our children, our parents, relatives, and friends. Sometimes they need our help. If we are not in a position to help them, who will? Because only very rarely do people in this world want to help the poor and needy.

Truly the people in this world very rarely would give anything, even in ordinary circumstances. So that is the way of working of the negative power, to make the people become greedy and grasping. Whatever they have is mine, mine, mine. They never let go. Even when they have more than enough, more than they can ever count, more than they can ever recognize how much they have, they still want more. No one else can have it. Therefore, if the so-called good persons, positive people, like the practitioners of moral standards, the practitioners of the Way, the Tao, the Truth, don’t have money, who will help those needy people? That’s the difference. That’s why we need to earn money and make good business. Not because we need it but because in this world we can make use of this useful equipment, money, power or political standpoint, then we can help the people.

Whatever I teach you is good and pure, good for you, good for the society. And whatever I do is what I teach. Just because I believe that I must have the power and the finance to help the world, not to take the power and finance of the world for myself. I have to give them the power and the finance they need, not that I take the power and the finance from them, for my own personal benefit and glory. So in that case, I work for my ideals and beliefs. That’s why I also ask you to do the same, if you can and if you want to. Only if you want to, because I believe there is logic; but of course you don’t have to do anything. If you believe the same ideal and you think it’s logical then you do it. I just want to explain to you why we cannot shun money, why we cannot despise political positions, because they are good tools, they are good instruments to work for God, to work for the betterment of the world at large.

Many people think because I’m a Master, why do I still make money and all this? Of course, I know they say that, but because they’re ignorant. Otherwise, they can see why I do it. I don’t have to. If I were to take just one hundred dollars from each of you, I’d become a billionaire in one day. No problem. I don’t have to work. So, because I am not a materialist, because I don’t care for position and money, that’s why I work. If I cared for position and money, I’d ask each of you give me some money every month. Everyone would be willing to do it, is that not so? (Audience answers: “Yes.”) You’d give more than that, not just $100. Even if I took one dollar from each person, that’s all, from all my followers, in one day I’d collect millions of dollars, and everyday everyone would give me one dollar only. What would I have? Do you know?

Okay. Now. If anyone asks you why I make money, you already know why. Just because it’s the right thing to do. It’s the correct way to live our life honestly, earning our money with the sweat and labor of our own talent and our own endeavor. We put our labor, our talent, our work, our time into the production and then we can earn the money and then we can give it away.

The world is upside down. All the masters who don’t work, who don’t do anything, their disciples just offer to them anything and they praise them, “Oh holy man. Never touch money, no material.” It could be. But this is just one of the ways, it’s not the only way. It’s not all the masters who like to do that. It’s not all the people who don’t touch money, who just sit there and let people feed them, who are holy. It’s not that way. But actually, I think I’m doing the things a little bit stupid in people’s eyes, because all the masters don’t do that. The disciples feed them enough, really. Why do they have to work and do anything. But I want to give you a good example of all perfection development. You don’t only develop a moral standard and wisdom but you also make use of that moral standard and wisdom in daily life. Express it.

If you have talent and wisdom, then you can do all things. You have to beautify the world and make money for yourself. Take care of your own living so you don’t burden other people. And if you have really good moral standards, then of course you have compassion and love for all the needy and desperate beings. And of course, you would lend a helping hand to anyone, regardless of race, color, beliefs, and religious system, even your own enemies. That’s how we know that we truly have wisdom and moral standards.

At least you understand me. Many of the people in the world they don’t know. They think the opposite. If I sit here pretty and you all come with flowers, food, everything around me, and bow to me really flat on the floor, things like that, then I am a holy person. Because I don’t do anything, I don’t touch money, that’s when I am holy. Really useless holy! (Laughter) And the people who strive to do good for the world, with their own hands and efforts and work hard for it, then many people scold or criticize them, thinking they are materialistic and they want power and things like that. Power, I have enough already. Materials I could have anytime. Each of you give me one dollar I have enough to live my many lifetimes !

We must work. God has sent us here with equal opportunity, power and talent. So, if we don’t grasp the finances and the power from the world then all the negativity will grasp it. We are under their control. The negative power wins, and then we can’t do anything, we can’t complain and say that God doesn’t help us. God does, God sends us here, sends you here and even gives you opportunity to study like everyone else, the same as the negative power. This is just like a competition, you know what I mean? Both have opportunity, talent, and ability to take the same thing.

So, if you renounce it, of course, then the negative power will take it. And then in this world, if we have no power, no money, what will we become? Beggars, of course. That everyone can be, but mind you, nowadays, even beggars cannot survive. Many governments don’t like beggars, you see, even if you want to beg. If you renounce everything that doesn’t mean you are safe. You got it. Many put beggars in a home and you are not free to do anything that you want. You can’t have this and you can’t have that and you have to do many things not according to your will. And in the home you must eat meat and you cannot eat vegetarian, etc., etc. So, what do you do?

So, it’s not that you renounce everything then the negative power will leave you alone or will give you peace. It’s not true. Fight. You have no choice really. Take away your wrong conception about money and fame. What you should detach is the attachment for power and fame, not to be detached from money and fame. You know what I mean? The desire for it, that’s what you should renounce, not the money and the fame, just the desire. (Applause) Now so many people who practice spiritually have this wrong conception. So now you should not have this kind of wrong conception any longer since I have already taught you and showed you why logically. Not that I force you to believe me talking nonsense, but it’s really logical.

So, don’t laugh at our brothers and sisters who are in Parliament or who are in Congress. They are doing their jobs. They’re doing fine. Many of our brothers and sisters are in high political positions, as well as very famous and successful businessmen. I never tell them to get out of them. If they get out, I even say, “Why, are you crazy?” Yeah! Some of our brothers and sisters, just after initiation, renounce. Don’t become Congressmen anymore, don’t run anymore, and don’t do anything. I say, “What do you want to do now? I don’t need such a useless person around me. I have too many already. (Laughter)

We renounce the desire for the world, not renounce the world itself. Because the world is a part of us, a part of our relatives and friends, brothers and sisters, so we can’t renounce the world. That is the wrong word. We renounce the desire for anything in this world, that’s all we must renounce. Then you do anything you want. Earn as much money as you can, be in as high a position as possible, and use your power and finance to help the needy people. That’s the right thing to do.

The Trap Of Success

Master Tells Story

Once, there was a king who came from the country Hsi-li and he went to war with another country. Every day he noticed one particular army soldier who was very courageous. He was very enthusiastic in fighting at any moment, and was basically not afraid of death, volunteering to go to the most dangerous places. Any place that no one dared to go, he would go and this won the king’s great admiration.

So, one day the king summoned him in order to reward him. When the king saw him, he felt very strange and wondered why this soldier was so skinny, his face was so green, the skin was not good and his body was very weak. The king was very surprised and asked, “Why you have become like this?” Then the soldier told the king, “I have an incurable disease, so my health is not good.” The king pitied for him and ordered his personal doctor to take care of him daily until his illness was cured. He was brought the best medicine and the highest quality food for his consumption because he was the national hero, a very courageous person, and needed to be taken very good care of. Of course the king’s doctor also admired him very much and took very good care of him. Money was no problem because he was the national hero and also it was the command of the king.

After a while, this person recovered and became very strong, and healthy looking. Everything was fine, he was totally cured. But at that moment, he lost his courage completely. Now he dared not go anywhere, dared not rush to dangerous places, he always hid in the back, his courage was all gone. The king was very disappointed and also felt strange. He summoned the person over and asked, “Why you were so courageous before but now after I have taken good care of you, have fed you well, have cured your illness, you have betrayed my grace, not sacrificing yourself for the country like before? Also, you hide and refuse to fight in battle. Why? We have all been so nice to you, have trusted you so much yet you have betrayed our good intention and have betrayed our trust in you. Why?”

The soldier told the king honestly, “It is because you have treated me so nice that I have become this way.” The king said with surprise, “Why is it that because we are too nice to you that you have become this way?” He said, “Because you have been so nice to me, have cured my illness, have fed my body well and made it beautiful that I have now become very greedy for life and dare not die.” He was near death before, thus death was nothing. The pain of the illness made him uncomfortable so maybe death was better. Therefore, he had charged forward in the battlefield not because of courage. Now because he had a good and strong body, he became greedy for life and dared not sacrifice his life anymore.

Sometimes it is the same with our practice. If we have met with difficulties or undesirable situations, we would practice with all our devotion. But after being too rich, too free, too comfortable, perhaps we would become somewhat lacking in diligence. Thus, Shakyamuni Buddha also said, “Rich people, people with money or with high position, will find it difficult to practice! If a certain person who has a high position, with a very comfortable life and with a lot of money and lives a very smooth life still likes to practice, we should know that he is a Bodhisattva coming to this world to help the beings.” How much he helps would depend more or less on his mission.

Then Jesus Christ also said, “It would be very difficult for the rich to go to Heaven! It would be as difficult as a camel passing through the needle hole.” Because we are too comfortable, too happy, we would drowning there in enjoyment of the happy, comfortable and rich conditions, then we would not think anything about practice.

The ordinary people would practice because of having a little pain and thus would think of liberation. That is the reason why it is no good if life is too comfortable. Sometimes a person in a high position would become proud if he was too successful. So, sometimes it is all right if we have a little of nonsuccess! Of course we have to do things successfully, but we still have to know the trap of success.

The World Is The Best School For Practicing

Spoken by Master Ching Hai

Q. Master, when I meditate, I cannot keep my mind concentrate at here (between eyebrows). It runs all over the place and it talks about all kinds of different subjects. How do I concentrate and meditate better?

M. Some people can concentrate right away; some people take a longer time. I have mentioned previously in the lecture. Also forgive yourself. The situation in this world is not conducive to our tranquil meditation and calm thinking, but try again and again. In this world, we have an advantage, that because this world is so difficult for us to practice, God’s blessing is with us many folds. So we walk one step and the Master Power will walk a hundred steps to help us.

If we are in Heaven and practice, it’s not that lucrative. Therefore in Heaven if you want to practice, it takes a longer time. For example, here we practice one day it is equal to one hundred days in Heaven. That’s why many divas, heavenly beings, they like to be incarnated into human bodies, in order to practice faster. It’s because here we have all kinds of rubbing force, like karma and situation and disaster and war and suffering and happiness, all these mixing. It’s a kind of a high degree fire to forge us. These fires will forge us into a strong, useful tool for ourselves and for the world.

While we are practicing here, we have also the opportunity to help our fellow beings and, therefore, we gain more merit as well. For example, you meditate alone at your home, so you have only one personal merit. But, if you, through your effort or through your eloquence, you offer your place, for example, for a hundred persons to meditate, then you have a hundred more merit to add up to your personal merit. So you have a hundred times more quicker, you understand what I mean? Or you get another hundred persons to come in to get initiation, these merits are also yours. Because after all we are one, the more we connected with more people, the more expand we become and the greater we become, in terms of merit. Mathematical wise speaking, it is like that.

So it is better than in Heaven. In Heaven everybody is having a good time and so they take it easy. They don’t have the motivation behind them to push them to concentrate. That is why I say when you are in deep sorrow or when you are despair you pray better, and sometimes you meditate even better. At that time you remember God more; And then you get better experience that day, bigger light, stronger sound or feel more elated, more near to God. So it is good to practice in this world even though it is difficult.

I am happy that many of our fellow initiates practice very diligently. Some come to the center just to look around but later… Well, they don’t look around that long because everybody closes their eyes. So they feel embarrassed after sometime and they also close their eyes, and then they see something inside, instead of looking at pretty girls outside. So there is a very good advantage of having a temple or having a center, where people come together and do the same thing, concentrate and thinking of God; that helps very much. So you take your time. You can look around for a while, and then when you are fed up with it, you close your eyes and meditate with all the people. Okay?

The mind is always having trouble to be controlled; that’s why we have to practice every day. Otherwise, I would tell you, “Get initiation and you are the Buddha.” No more work! Right? It is because our habit is long term. It has been many thousands of years of time, maybe more! So to take one lifetime to clear all these is hard work, but it’s worth it. Or you want to stay here a thousand more years to continue to do that? Well, it’s fun! So that is why I tell you to have to meditate longer time, two and half hours or three hours, because the first twenty minutes is struggling. Just go on, go on with it and after about twenty minutes, it begins to settle down. After half an hour, you begin to enjoy, and forty minutes, you are gone! (Laughter)

For Little Angels – Lesson 7

FOR ANGELS TO ASPIRE TO THE GREATEST HEIGHTS

By Master Duy Tue
Originally in Vietnamese

Lesson 7 – The Magic of having a dream

 Having a dream is different from wanting something like money, fame, or power. In which way are they different?

Your wants that come with being greedy, lazy, and playing tricks will not make you happy.

A good dream is a desire that is possible to be fulfilled. In that dream, you desire to do something that helps your community and people in other parts of the world.

Some examples of a good dream are a dream of writing a lot of interesting books, of having inventions or initiatives that benefit the society, or of becoming a professor at a well-known university in the world. Dreams of doing good for your people and the mankind are the dreams that let your love grow.

When you dream like that, your head will get clearer and brighter. Then you will have whatever you need to be able to help other people. You don’t have to worry about money or housing. Those things will take care of themselves. Therefore, having a dream is a magic that few people know.

Q & A After Lecture

Excerpt from Master Ching Hai’s lecture

Q: Some people say that it is import ant to be a good-hearted person, but it is not necessary to be a vegan. Does this make sense?

M: If one is truly a good-hearted person, then why does he still eat another being’s flesh? Seeing them suffer, he should not be able to bear to eat them! Flesh eating is unmerciful, so how can this be done by a good-hearted person?

Master Lien Chih once said, “Kill its body, and eat its meat. In this world there is no one more cruel, malevolent, atrocious and evil than this person.” How can he ever claim that he himself has a good heart?

Mencius also said, “If you see it alive, you can’t bear to see it die, and if you hear it groaning you cannot bear to eat its meat; so the real gentlemen keep far from the kitchen.”

Human intelligence is higher than  animals, and we can use weapons to make them unable to resist us, so they die with hatred. The kind of person who does this, bullying small and weak creatures, has no right to be called a gentleman. When animals are killed, they are terribly stricken with agony, fear and resentment. This causes the production of toxins that stay in their meat to harm those who eat it. Since the frequency of the vibration of animals is lower than that of humankind, they will influence our vibration, and affect the development of our wisdom.

Q: Some meat-lovers say that they buy meat from the butcher, so it’s not killed by themselves, therefore it is all right to eat it. Do you think this is right?

M: This is a disastrous mistake. You must know that butchers kill living beings because people want to eat. In the Lankavatara Sutra, Buddha said, if there was no one eating meat then, no killing would happen. So eating meat and killing living beings are of the same sin. Because of the killing of too many living beings, we have natural disasters and human-made calamities. Wars are also caused by too much killing.

Q: A long time ago, I heard another Master say, “Buddha ate a pig’s foot and then got diarrhea and died.” Is this true?

M: Absolutely not. It was because of eating a kind of mushroom that Buddha died. If we translate directly from the language of the Brahmans, this kind of mushroom is called the “pig’s foot”. It’s just like when we call a kind of fruit “longan” (in Chinese this literally means the “dragon’s eye”). There are many things that by name are not vegetables but actually are vegetarian foods, such things as the “dragon’s eye.” This mushroom in Brahmanic language is called “pig’s foot” or “pig’s joy.” Both have a connection with pigs. This kind of mushroom was not easy to find in ancient India and was rare delicacy, so people offered it to Buddha in worship. This mushroom cannot be found above the ground. It grows under the ground. If people want to find it they must search with the help of an old pig which likes very much to eat this kind of mushroom. Pigs detect it by their smell, and when they discover one, they use their feet to dig in the mud to find and eat it. That was why this kind of mushroom is called the “pig’s joy” or “pig’s foot.” Actually these two names refer to the same mushroom. Because it was translated carelessly and because people did not truly understand the derivation, the following generations have been caused to misunderstand and mistake Buddha for a flesh devouring man. This is really a regrettable thing.

You Make God The Way You Want Him To Be

Spoken By Master Ching Hai

There are all kinds of material attachments to religious orders, just to satisfy their mind. But it cheats them out of their precious time, by not letting them think of anything better, or try to find anything better. The Buddha said, “Buddha is inside you.” And then Jesus said, “God dwells within you. You are the temple of God.” What did they mean by this? It means you make God the way you want Him to be. You make Buddha the way you want Him to be. According to your realization, your level, your power, the Buddha is that, God is that.

For example, I teach you the Quan Yin Method, without a method, but we have to call it a method. Otherwise, If I said to people come here and I’ll give you nothing, no method, nobody would come. But, after a while you realize that there is truly no method. It’s only the  power that helps you.

Now, after I give you the Quan Yin Method, for example, then you meditate. You try to search within yourselves to find what kind of power that you have, what kind of capability that you have forgotten, how much intelligence that you have not used, who you are and what kind of position you have in this universe. You search and search, and you’ll find it. And then, you find up to the first level, then you’ll find that you are very loving now. You are less stressful than before, and so you think, “Oh God is that. God helps me. God can help me to heal stress and to heal my sickness.” You get cured from some disease, at the first level. Sometimes, when you touch somebody, that person gets cure too, and you have healing power! You’ll say, “Oh! God has healing power. God is that. God has love. God gives me love. I feel loved now, and I feel I love someone else.”

But that love is still on a weak level. And by eating vegetarian you feel your body is better. You can think better than before, and you love your neighbor better now. So, you begin to declare that your Buddha is love; your Buddha is healing power; your God is healing power and magical power.  He can make a lot of magic and things like that. You know God is there. You know there is a God, and that He has such and such qualities. And for a little while longer, you practice and you get up to the second level. Now, suddenly, whenever somebody asks you a question, you can talk with eloquence. You can reply to them in a way that they never have heard before, in a way you never dreamed you could reply before. You understand all the sutras and all the Bibles in the world.

You can also sometimes see into the past, into other people’s past and future. You know why you are connected with each other like this. You can regulate, invisibly or visibly, some of your karmic ties with other people, so suddenly your relationships smooth out. Suddenly, two enemies may come back loving each other, because, invisibly, in your practice your power has smoothed the past enmity out of your life and your relationship. So you begin to declare, “God has intellectual power! God is eloquence! God is that!” So your God has grown a little bit taller. (Laughter) That’s how you make God and how you make Buddha.

Then you begin to listen inside, and you can hear the sound of thunder or the sound of many waters. So it declares in the Bible that God speaks in the voice of thunder, and like the sound of many waters. That’s how they declared their God. When they saw the big flame of light, they said, “God comes in a big flame. God is like a big flame.” So their God differs. Your God now differs from the God before, or differs from another initiate who has only reached the first level, or differs from another initiate who has reached the third level. His God is different from yours, but it is the same God, whom, pitifully, is being seen by different eyes and different angles. Just like when the Buddha was alive, he told the story of the four blind people who touched an elephant; who described the elephant. The one who touched his ears said, “Wow! The elephant is like a fan, a big fan.” And the other one who touched his trunk said, “Oh! The elephant is like a big pillar.” And the other one who touched his nose said, “Oh! The elephant looks like a water hose.” And the one who touched his tail said, “Wow! The elephant is like a broom stick.” This is how ordinary people see God. And this is how practitioners and people at different levels see God and make their own God.

Therefore, it is said that God is within you; that Buddha is in your mind. That is the meaning of it.  Now, you know that you can make Buddha and you can make God. So I would advise you to make the best God out of it. Our God must be the supreme, the Most High, to be worthy of our time, energy and attention. Time is money! We might just as well buy the best God. (Laughter) Now you understand why God is not there for you to worship, but demands us to make use of His power it. If we don’t make use of this God by our own power, then when we pray and nothing is done, we cannot blame anyone else. From the top of the hierarchy to the lowest level of hell, you have only yourselves to blame. You’ve gone the wrong way. You walk the wrong path. You approach things in the wrong direction, with the wrong method.

A KING WITH A LOT OF DESIRE – part 3

The King was thinking with his throat center; his Adam’s apple kept coming up and down, and the God saw it. (Master and everyone laugh) When he saw his throat center activated, then he knew. He kept looking with his wisdom eye into the throat center, and he saw the black market going on there, (Master and everyone laugh) Mafia organization going on there, ah, all kinds of criminal records written there. So, God knew what was going on in this King’s mind, but pretended not to know anything. He didn’t say anything. He tried to be even more pleasant, friendlier, and offered more things.

After that, God was just in the front mountain and tried to tell the King, “Okay, I am busy. I have initiation going on in the back mountain, five hundred foreign disciples in the meditation hall, and five or six sites of construction going on. So, would you please excuse me?” (Master and everyone laugh) And “Sayonara.”

The king was very desirous to stay in the Kingdom of God. But then the God made sure that the king knew that he must go. When he tried to stay there longer, many of the guards, god’s guardian angels, with the eyes as big as the sun, shining like atom bombs, stared at him, and said nothing. (Laughter) The God said to him, “Either you go voluntarily and soon, or you go involuntarily and soon.” (Master and everyone laugh) The king saw that he had only a handful of generals, soldiers, and a small chariot; and with all these guardian angels with very big umbrellas, powerful eyes and arms; he had better move. So he had to move. He went back to Earth again.

Since that day, God didn’t favor him anymore. So he began to be ill, suffered a lot, and then started to die. Before he died, he called his ministers and other officers to his deathbed and said that he was very sorry now. Very sorry because he knew why he was dying. He knew God was punishing him. God withdrew eternal happiness or the eternal life-force from him, and now granted him a big favor which was the death sentence. He was very sorry and very repentant. He also said, “After I die, if anyone asks you why I died, you tell them it was because of greed.” And that was it. He closed his eyes and meditated forever in the grave. Good-bye. Finished! (Applause)

See, we could be materialistic practitioners as well. This story serves to remind us that even though we follow a so-called spiritual practicing path, we must check ourselves all the time. We must be sure that we don’t follow materialistic spiritualism. Yes it is called that. Because we follow a path in order to gain more power, then we can control others or we can take things from the universe, from other people without ever knowing. Sometimes you don’t know it, but you do follow materialistic spiritualism. For example, you come here or you go to a Master anywhere expecting that she or he will heal you of your sickness because you don’t want to go see a doctor. You think you have the right to demand such things. You come here with a very grave illness and throw yourself, throw the responsibility onto the ashram, wanting to be healed overnight; or you want to be richer, more powerful in some way and then you expect the Master to fulfill your wish in such a way. This is no good.

Even if you practice the Quan Yin Method, you follow the spiritual discipline and meditate, if your mind is not pure of material need, then it’s no good. Of course, when you are in trouble, you are bound to ask for help. Like I don’t have a job now and I need to pay the rent and all that. Master can you help me to find a job. That is different. When you really need, you may ask.

Also if the people come to initiation, expecting that after that, she will have this and that material gain or more position in the society, etc. This is disgusting. We should not come to any Master expecting such things, because we are bound to feel very disappointed. Or even if we are not disappointed, the Master might grant us our wish. But then, the more we want, the less we are satisfied and then we keep wanting, wanting to no end. And then our attention, our energy is always focused on these material aims and we forget the Almighty Power inside.

After we attain the Almighty Power, anything will come to us when necessary without asking. But we don’t come for that, we don’t come for material fulfillment, or any other magical power. These are astral desires. Also material in other senses, not only that you wish for money, then it materializes, but if you wish for magical power or any kind of control over other people, the weather, or the surroundings, these are also material wishes. These are even worse. Like business people, we go to do business and we want to gain money and all these kinds of things. We should practice for the sake of wisdom alone, for the sake of knowing ourselves, for the sake of knowing the origin of our Home and to be free, loving and happy. That’s all there is. And everything else comes or does not come; it is just by the way.

Everything I told you, don’t forget. But sometimes you know but your practice is different.  So we have to always check up. We are bound to make mistakes, but we have to check and correct it.

A KING WITH A LOT OF DESIRE – part 2

Doesn’t matter how many thousand years you live, still one day you must end, and there’s nothing here you can take with you. And nothing physical will ever, ever satisfy you forever, every day of your life. Satisfaction comes only from inside. If you seek anything else except satisfaction from inside, you will always end up frustrated and miserable. Every time you try, every time like you knock the wall, you have to return and reshape your actions again. Even love, children, husband, wife, anything that you think that will bring you the most beautiful feelings of human life, still it never lasts. Today it is good. Tomorrow it brings you heartache, problems, consequences, and all kinds of sorrow and worries.

It takes a lot of effort to keep someone you love. And it takes a lot of effort to keep someone who loves you. Any little so-called wrong or insensitive move may break the relationship immediately, and sometimes it’s irreparable. So every effort we spend in this world to repair our friendships, to build up the kingdom on Earth, everything always brings us trouble, even though we are successful in the end, or sometimes in between. Still it takes us all energy, time, youth, and attention in order to keep that alive. It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship, or what kind of treasure that it is.  Have you experienced that? If you have not, you may try. Go and fall in love somewhere and then tell me what happens.

All right, so let’s go back to India, to our greedy king. So now he was bored after running around the world. The king was bored after four thousand years of invading the four corners of the Earth. Now, he was bored to death because he had nothing to play with anymore. All the things, all the countries that he had conquered, he knew by name. All the games in the country, all the beautiful women, he had seen everything he knew. Now, he was bored with the Earth – nothing to do. One day he sat there. He couldn’t meditate on money either because he was fed up. He had enough. He couldn’t meditate on anything else because everything in the world belonged to him. So he sat there. He thought of God and meditated on God.

Ah, finally, my God. Can you believe that? He actually did meditate on God. Then, he was thinking: “Oh, I wish I could see God. How I long to see God. If I could just see God, it would be good, beautiful. Oh, God! How can I see God?” (Laughter) As he wished, his dream came true. God, moved by his sincere desire, perhaps materialistic desire, invited him to the Kingdom Perhaps, the god of the Astral world, Vishnu god or Shiva god, we don’t know what kind of god that was.

Well, by the way he was thinking, perhaps he ended up in the Astral kingdom, because he was so materialistic. Not that he wanted to see God for reverence or longing in his heart, but he wanted to see God because he desired to see the Kingdom of God. He wanted to see whether the Kingdom of God had any differences from his kingdom, and anything else he could learn, he could look at, he could play with etc. It was just pure materialistic curiosity.

God was very generous and loving. Anyone who meditated on him attained his attention. So, that was God. He was compassionate, loving, even though he was only an Astral God. An Astral God is also the representative of the highest God. He has some qualities of the Almighty.

Now, very lovingly, cautiously, hospitably, he invited the king to come to the Kingdom of God. Then his UFO, airplane, or whatever, chariot, took him into the sky and up to the Kingdom of God, to the throne of the deity. Then, the God, whatever kingdom that may have been, Astral, intellectual, or akashic Buddhi God, I don’t know, invited him to sit next to him. He had a very long sofa made of gold, studded with diamonds and precious stones glittering like the sun in the morning. So he invited him to sit next to him even – very cautious God. Very politely, very hospitably, he offered him all kinds of biscuits, candies, grapes, apples. Anything that was available in the Kingdom of God, was offered to him, as well as to his accompanying horses, elephants, queen, chariots, managers, soldiers, generals, ministers and everything that he brought up. Then God talked, chatted to him in a very friendly way.

The king, the one who was never satisfied, sat there talking to God, but at the same time looked around. Wow! The lamp is made of diamonds (Laughter) Wow! And that lamp is made of rubies, and the other one is make of pearls. And everything here is more precious and beautiful than anything we have on Earth. Even the diamonds are different; gold is different, silver is different. It seemed to be a thousand times more beautiful, more real, more precious, more pleasing to the eyes and, of course, to the heart of the king.

Now he sat there and thought. When he was looking, he thought with the sole. Later, he thought with the knees, then he tried to think with the solar plexus, and then he tried to reason with the heart. (laughters)That didn’t work either. And then he tried to reason with the throat. But that was all he could come up with. It didn’t work either, because he wanted to swallow everything. So the most concentrated chakra for him was the throat center. He wanted to eat anything that he saw. He wanted to swallow, possess everything that he ever laid eyes on.

He was thinking, when it comes up to the throat, he wants to swallow the Kingdom of God. Now, he said, “Wow! This is very beautiful. What if I get rid of this old man (Master and everyone laugh) and then become the king.” Ah, hah! So he was sitting there and thinking like that with his throat.

Questions and Answers after Lecture

Excerpt from Master Ching Hai’s Lecture

Q: Master, why Krishnamutri said, “Gurus and religion are crutches.” So he refused to be the crutch for his students.

M:  Probably what he meant is that if you are too attached to religious dogma or to any teacher at all, then you will be handicapped. In that sense he is correct. The teacher or the master is not the one on which you lean, but from which you gain experience and wisdom and then you walk yourself.  Good teacher should teach the student this way.

If a student of any master should feel that he is not yet able to develop himself, then he can pray to the Master, in the initial stage of his spiritual practice. Later when he grows up, he just automatically drops the Master.

It’s just like a person; not everyone can walk straight. I need an crane  to walk; my legs are weak sometimes. But when my legs are okay, I don’t need it. Someone, sometimes they are naturally born handicapped or accidentally handicapped, and then they need the crutches. It’s okay with him. Can you just kick him out, and say, “You don’t need the crutches. It will make you dependent!” Understand?

So we cannot just say like this – black and white – to say that the Master, the Guru or the religion is no good absolutely for people. It’s good to someone. If you don’t need it, it’s fine. If you need it, stay a while until you don’t.

So I don’t preach anything extreme. In my opinion, religions are also very good for many people. At least they learn the virtuous way of life. They fear God; they fear the law of cause and retribution, and many people become good. I tell you the truth. But, as long as we know that this is not the ultimate. For example, the Master, in the physical body is not the ultimate. The ultimate is inside the Master, and inside you! Through the Master you will find the ultimate. That’s fine! If you have not found it yet, you can rely on the Master, to help and carry you for a while, and then you can walk. It’s fine. But there is no such thing as extreme as to throw everything altogether.

The One Who Realize God and the Messiah of God – part 3

If we have already found a path that we think is suitable to our spiritual development, then it is fine, it good, and we should continue. We should try all our best to follow that chosen path. How do we know if that is the right path for us?

How do we know if we have chosen a good Master, or a good method? There has to be two conditions. First, we must be good disciples; second, the Master must be good. It cannot be one way. So, if we are very good disciples, if we have been very faithful, if we have done everything that a disciple is requested to do, and if that path or the Master’s teaching gives us satisfaction, gives us more love, wisdom and peace, that is the right path. Understand? But we must do our best. We cannot get something for nothing. Otherwise no need for a Master even.

If after you have tried so hard and have tried your best on many paths and you could not find complete satisfaction, we invite you to come to this path, because we know this path is very fast, quick and simple. In our times we don’t have so much energy and time to follow a very complicated, long and difficult path. Also, there is another reason why, our life is very unpredictable. We do not know if we will live until tomorrow. So whatever we can get today is the best.

Before I left home to find God-realization, I had only one prayer; “God, if You exist, please help me or through me open the eyes of people, because people cannot open them themselves. How can You demand them to keep Your commandments, to love You, and to worship You when they don’t know You? You must open their eyes for them to see You first.”That was my prayer. Probably the sincerity touched God’s compassion, so I was granted what I wished.

After studying many people’s character and human psychology by my daily contact with different people, I have come to realize that sincerity is difficult to have. This is the only reason why we cannot realize God, who is very close and very near to us in our hearts. It is because most of us are so attached to the physical appearance of this world. On one hand we say we want to know God, but on the other hand we cannot forsake what we have, even if God wants us to do it. That is the only reason why we cannot reach God. Otherwise we could do it just like this.

That is what I have come to understand and I would like to share it with you, because God is not so difficult to reach; it is difficult for us to forsake the material world. It is our deep attachment that prevents us from going near God. This sound very simple, but it is the very original reason. That is why in the Bible it is stated that you cannot worship both God and mammon.

Therefore God has thought of some special method to help us, the attached souls, the encaged spirits. This method is not known to a lot of people, just to some groups. Only in this modern time has the message been spread all over the world. But because of that, whoever brings the message has to suffer a great deal, more than at the time of Buddha and Jesus. In order to bring the message to humankind, there must be someone who will do it. I think you understand what I mean.

Even when the message is spread all over the world, not all people will take it. Therefore you can imagine how difficult it was when Jesus or Buddha were alive, when means of communications were more restricted. Then even fewer people followed them. In the ancient times, people complained that the freedom of religion was restricted; and the people who believed in Jesus or different Masters in those times were very frightened of being persecuted, chased, questioned, jailed, and punished. Even then, people’s faith under such circumstances was very strong, and they appreciated what they received perhaps more than in modern times.

In modern times when we get the message so easily, we probably do not believe the value of the message. When it is more open and more easily available, it is more open to criticism and therefore also has disadvantages. So we cannot do anything. No solution! If it is difficult, then it is difficult to get, to practice, to meet the Master. It is difficult to get together and understand, difficult to get the information from the Master, and difficult to progress and to improve the spiritual movement of the Master.  But when it is easy to access, we will think, ”Oh, how can it be so easy? I think it is no good. I have to think about it, or maybe next time.“ So, there’s no solution.

Still, God always loves humankind, so God always tries and the Masters always try their best to bring the holy message, the best solution, the best method to offer to the brothers and sisters of this Earth.

We always have our fantasy. We imagine the Master must be like this, like that and the God-realization method must be like this, like that, must be very difficult to attain, or must be so-and-so. So many of these preconceived ideas and the outside circumstances sometimes prevent us from knowing the Truth. It is not entirely our fault. It is because the material existence is too difficult for us; it has brainwashed each one of us into such a condition, into a way of thinking in which we could hardly escape. That is what makes the job of the Masters difficult and that is what makes our God-realization difficult.

But even then, it is worthwhile to try. If something is so easy to realize, I guess it is also not very interesting. So we should struggle in our own way to understand what God is or at least to know who we are, why we are here, and where we will go after a few years in this world. Where will we go? Why are we here for only a few years or a few decades? We have fed ourselves with so much beef, pork and vegetables of this world to grow that big, so at least we must know why. If we do not have answers to these questions, we will never be happy. This is the only simple reason why we must realize ourselves, we must realize God for our own satisfaction. We can never be happy, no matter in which position we are placed or how many material possessions we are given, until we realize this very basic fundamental question.

Therefore you will never find a truly happy person in this world, even if he is a king. But Jesus’ disciples were happy and the disciples of our path are happy. They truly have the inner happiness. Not that I give them money, praise them, or do anything to make them happy externally. Why is that? It’s because they have found the answer. They are doing what they are supposed to do as a human duty. They are fulfilling the purpose of human life.

Each one of us is given human life only for the purpose of realizing God. If we forsake this duty, we will never be happy in this life or I any other lives. To tell you the truth, this is the only reason for human suffering, and nothing else. If we realized how we struggled in our mothers’ wombs, how we repented our past lives’ mistakes, and how we promised God to utilize this present life in a very meaningful manner to serve Him, before we were born, then we would never waste one second to think of anything else but to try our best in all our leisure time to realize God!

But as soon as we are born into this world we forget everything, because it is the law of the material world to let people forget. Therefore it is necessary that a Master come and remind us again and again and again, until we remember what we had promised to God inside the wombs of our mothers. We might not remember with our physical brains, but our souls, the ability of our wisdom will remember. Then it could happen that we’ll follow the Master’s teaching, that we’ll go back to the path of God. Then that will be our luckiest day. I wish all of you this lucky day.

Thank you for your attentive, loving attention. Amen!

The One Who Realize God and the Messiah of God – part 2

Actually, not many people have the very high hope of attaining the position of Jesus or Buddha. Therefore people always say Jesus was the only one or Buddha was the only one. In a way it is true, but it is not. Otherwise Jesus would not have told us, Whatever I can do, you can do better. We don’t need to wish to become world-famous like Buddha or Jesus, but we could aspire to be God-realized and to be of help to ourselves and to whomever we are in touch with.

So the purpose of practicing any method or walking on any path at all is to realize ourselves, to realize God; not that we want to be like Jesus or Buddha. When God wants us to be one, we could not even refuse, whether we want to or not. I’m not frightening you. It is the truth I have known by my own experience. Also I may tell you that to be in a position of Jesus or Buddha is no fun either. So it is OK not wanting to become one.

Why is it that the only Son of God, like Jesus, had to suffer, had to bear the cross? Or someone like Buddha, who had all the power, must bear all the misunderstandings, insults and attacks from the people at that time? It is partly because of the ignorance of the mass of people. It is also partly because the body of the Master must bear some of the karma of his disciples. But the Master can do that only when he or she is still in the physical body. Therefore it was necessary that Jesus came to the Earth to suffer for the people at that time, to bear the cross.

When people come to a Master who has kept this power, no doubt they come to worship the Master. They bring fruit, flowers and their love, but they also deposit their debts at the feet of the Master. Even though the ocean of mercy from the Almighty will wash away most of the debris people bring, some of the residue still lingers where it was deposited and the Master’s body must bear this burden.

Jesus was not the only one who suffered such a terrible punishment from people. If you study the lives of many of the Saints in the ancient times or in India, you will know they had similar fates. Some Masters were even burned alive or made to sit on a hot iron pan under the hot sun. Some Masters were even flaked alive, you know, cut to pieces, one piece by one piece, like vivisection. This was even in India, in a holy land, in the land where most people were vegetarians, saintly and know about the Scriptures. So, I have told you that to be in the position of Jesus or Buddha is no fun.

But there are only the physical sufferings that we can see with our eyes. There are mental sufferings that the Masters silently bear, which we don’t know. Therefore, thank God that He hasn’t chosen many; otherwise I don’t think anyone would like to become a Master.

You may ask me, “Then, why should we practice? Why should we meditate on God?” We must, because otherwise we will suffer too much, and the whole race of humankind will suffer. Since the ancient times, our world has undergone a great evolution and it has become more civilized today because of the many people who have followed the teachings of the Masters.

When a Master comes to the Earth, not only the disciples are uplifted and shown the wisdom, but the whole of humankind will also be purified and uplifted to a certain higher level of consciousness. Therefore, after many Masters have graced our Earth, the world has become better, as it is today. But even then, it has not reached the level of the heavenly understanding. It has not reached the same consciousness like many other worlds in the universe. We are, to the other worlds, very, very young, and very backward in spiritual understanding.

In the heavenly worlds, where we can visit sometimes with our meditative merit, we can see that the people who live over there do not need to communicate with language. Even though they still have to learn spiritual lessons, they are very advanced, very intelligent, and the Masters over there do not need to speak. When they want to study with the Master, the Master’s presence is enough for them to understand everything; there are no doubts, no questions, no answers and no complicated thinking. Everything will be absolutely clear in the presence of the Master.

When I see in our world, that even with so many lectures and back and forth arguments, with the fulfillment of so many desires and wishes of people, and with answering so many questions, still we do not understand very well. Therefore, God continues to send different Masters to this world, and any Master who comes to this world must suffer the language problem and the mental retarding ability of its people. Not all Masters are willing to come to this world to teach, even very briefly, like Jesus. Therefore, when any Master comes to this world, the whole universe praise, cheer, and applaud.

But then, someone must come.  Because the whole universe is linked together in a kind of fraternity, in a brotherhood, just like the members in a family. If one world or one planet is backward in spiritual advancement, the other planets will also suffer in some ways. Just as if one member in a family did something wrong, the whole family will also be affected. Sometimes even the whole nation has to bear the consequences of one person. Therefore it would be a great help to our world and to the universe if we catch up with the spiritual lessons and try to improve our understanding in any way we can.

The One Who Realize God and the Messiah of God – part 1

spoken by Master Ching Hai
Costa Rica
May 29, 1991

In obedience to God’s command and to the request of the disciples in Costa Rica, I am here today with the honor to greet you, the citizens of a great nation. Let’s pray that God will open our hearts so that we may think the same way and understand the same way tonight.

We all know that God is in our heart, but why is it so difficult to know Him? Why must Jesus come down to suffer in order to show people the way to God? Couldn’t God do it Himself without having to sacrifice His son? Do you know?

If God is in our heart, why couldn’t he make us recognize him?  It’s because we are too complicated, even for God to handle.  We imagine that God is like this, like that, and we have dictated God to do this or that for us, without truly wanting to know what God is.  We pray many times but we don’t know what true sincerity is.  Yes, we are very sincere, but we pray for different things, not for God-realization, and even if we do pray for God-realization, we do not put our whole attention and sincerity into our prayers.

It’s not that we do not want to offer God our utmost sincerity. It’s that we could not do it in this physical world because there are so many temptations, so many prejudices. so many preconceived ideas, and so many wrong teachings.  God in his almighty, highest level could not reach us directly because between our thinking, our way of life, our perception and God there is a great distance.  In order to bridge this distance, Jesus, for example, had to come.

When Jesus appeared on earth, most of the people didn’t recognize him even though there were many prophesies at that time predicting that the Messiah, the Savior, was coming.  When he finally came, they could not believe it.  It was also because of the fantasy of our minds, the fantasy that if the Son of God came, he must be glorious, he must be different from everybody else, probably his nose should grow on top of his head!

I just remembered how the Buddha was depicted in the Buddhist scriptures and I couldn’t help laughing. I’m sorry.  It’s good that you don’t know Buddhism, otherwise you would probably laugh to death.  Do you want to hear what the Buddha looked like?  Okay.  Don’t blame me, and don’t think I am preaching Buddhism to you.

Buddha was supposed to have eighty superior marks and thirty two beautiful significant, holy signs.  Now I will just tell you a few, okay?  According to these so-called scriptures, the Buddha’s tongue was so long, his ears were so big, and his hair curled all over his body like a sheep.  Also he was supposed to have a big lump of flesh sticking out of his head like a horn, like a unicorn perhaps.  Can you imagine, when the Buddha talked, his tongue stick out so long like this?(Master demonstrates) Would it not frighten anybody?  And, he was supposed to walk like a goose.  Those were supposed to be the holy signs.  His face was supposed to be like a lion and his shoulders like a bear.  There were many more animal signs, but I don’t want to talk any more.  In conclusion, Buddha looked like a very strange creature!

So now, if any Buddha were to come to this world and people would look for these kinds of signs, then we would be at an end, because I don’t think we could  find anybody who would be suitable.  So Jesus was lucky because he lived only three and a haft years after his public appearance.  If he lived any longer, probably people would have made more out of his appearance, like Buddha.  Then we would have to wait long, long ages for him to appear again as promised, because we would be looking for someone like that.

What we should know is that it’s not Jesus in person or Buddha in body that would appear to us again on this earth to teach us anything; it is the spirit.  When a spirit from God descends upon the earth, it can be housed in any kind of body.  Because Jesus was a very realized saint, he understood this and he never claimed that he was the only one who was capable of doing anything he did.  He was the only one, but at that time only.  When he finished his earth life, someone else would come.  Not really someone else, it is another kind of body which clothes the same power, the same spirit.  Do you understand?

Anybody that houses this power from God we call him or her the chosen one or the Son of God.  God chooses whomever he likes to be his messiah.  It’s not even our choice.  We can aspire to be one, we can make ourselves ready, purified and available, but God chooses.  That’s why it is a little rare.

We could be saints, we could be holy, and we could be realized persons, but we do not need to be a messiah, an prophet.  Even then, we could profit the whole world, the whole universe a great deal without having to be an openly chosen one from God.  That is the only difference between a messiah or a chosen one and a realized person.  In a God-realization person, there is God’s power, there is God-realization.  But in a chosen one , there is totally everything in order to help mankind, in order to suffer, and in order to glorify God personally.

Therefore, con-temporarily with Jesus and Buddha were many other saints, but they didn’t have to suffer the way Jesus did, because they were not the chosen ones.  Therefore Jesus said, “No one goes to the Father except through me”; but then he also said, “After I leave, I will send comforters to you, so grieve not”.  He promised that whatever he could do, his disciples could do better.  So that means everyone could realize God and be as great as Jesus was.  Whether we will be the chosen on or not is up to the Almighty’s will.

Master Duy Tue: The Danger of Mind and Thinking – part 3

6. It’s important for you to choose your life purpose.  Just for you to understand easily, I divide the world into  the world of forms( material world) and the world of formless (spiritual world). Most of us choose a life purpose that has to do with the world of forms . Only a few choose the formless world. Such visible things as your spouse, your children, your occupation, your house, your possessions, your feelings and desires all belong to the world of forms. People spend all of their energy on these things, yet never feel satisfied. The first consequence of pursuing the world of forms that you must face is dissatisfaction. Second, all things belonging to the world of forms arise and change very quickly and may suddenly go up in puff of smoke. Forms certainly won’t leave back any comfort, instead they only bring about short-lasting pleasure and then vanish. It doesn’t mean that you should belittle the world of forms, but you should make the formless world your top priority.

To come back to your true self is to come back and discover the wakefulness. That exactly is the formless life, which is real, eternally unborn and un-dying. When that purpose becomes your major concern, it will attract a life in the world of forms which is more peaceful, comfortable, safe, and lasting. Changes in the world of forms won’t cause us  pain since we are now abiding in the formless life.

Thus, it must be clear that choosing to discover and abide in the formless world is your purpose of top priority according to the reasons I have mentioned. It should be noted that, among those reasons, there is an unexpected one: in doing so, the goal of life in the world of forms will be attained very easily. That’s why I advise you to set discovering the formless world your top and constant purpose. I do not recommend ignoring the world of forms, instead I emphasize that being mindful of the formless world, prioritizing it and constantly discovering it should be your most important goal. By doing so, the pursue of goals in the world of forms will be of utmost ease.

Life itself is in no way simple. Problems happen day in, day out. Impeaching, criticizing, humiliating, insulting… are common. But once we are able to abide in the wakefulness, those things are no longer of our concern, because  all we have to do is to generate the sky blue light, which represents love, to respond and cope with the situation. Look inside, radiate the sky blue light and let everything settle down on its own, do not direct your ears to the outside but instead to listen to the inside, do not open your eyes to look outside but close them and look inside, then all humilatings won’t affect you.

It’s important for you to uncover three light sources: the white light, the golden light, and the sky blue light. Those three light sources will attract all saints and invisible, magical forces. Being like a center from which those three light sources are radiated, you will gradually know all the mystical essentials of the universe. At one point, you will even be able to perceive that, among billions of planets in the universe, a not-too-small number of them have similar or different kinds of life. The abiding in the white light will let you be informed that there are different kinds of living creatures in various planets of the infinite universe. Thus, when I delivered speeches, there were several times I found myself talking about the international affairs, communities, and planets. I said that I was not only a Vietnamese citizen but also a world’s citizen, not only our earth’s citizen but a universal citizen. I dared not  saying this without the signals given to me by the white light. Thus, the body is just a device that I use to make use of the three light sources. Because of the value brought about by abiding in the three lights, all worldly attainments in the world of forms are not important and can not bind my body and mind. All worldly positions, material, win-lose or right-wrong controversies, clothing, housing, cars, … are little value to me. I almost find an ant bigger than all possesions in the world of forms. Nothing can make me over-think. I only feel sorry for people in this world, who are continously stucked in win-lose arguments, struggling for reputation, and play-acting with one another. But I’m sure a day will come when the humanity discovers that there is life in other planets where the living is so beautiful and harmonized, and where people don’t need to rely on flattery, win-lose, killing one another… yet live a very peaceful life. What is the use of competing for a house, a position, clothing, or reputation? How mediocre and trivial that is! Once you know that there are wonderful kinds of life in other plantets, the win-lose in this world becomes ridiculous funny, a complete nonsense. Please don’t follow that win-lose track.

In studying with me, you are supposed to open your perspectives. Once abiding in the white light, you will have an immense perspective. All worldly attainments in the world of forms won’t get you moved because your perspectives are quite extended now. One of the powers of the Magical Force and the Innermost Intelligence is that it creates such an immense, unimaginable perspective. From that immense perspective, I can’t stop myself thinking about the life in other planets. By comparing the life in those planets with one in this world,  I see that all attainments in this world are not attractive at all. Thus, abiding in the white light leads us to a special perspective, with this help we gain limitless, infinite happiness. That perspective is the white light, the golden light, that brings about incredibly great strength and happiness.

In summary, all those steps that I’ve gave you as instructions for your spiritual practice. It will help you to see through your ego and not let it become the master. In addition, the sky of wakefulness will dawn and shine in you. This is the ultimate issue in all religions, nothing else. When your sky of wakefulness dawns and shines, you will once again stand above the ego and no ego. When it comes to ego, you use ego. When it comes to no-ego, you use no-ego. Both are just manifestations since you are now completely abiding in the white light. Sometimes, it is required to turn into the golden light or the sky blue light, or occasionally, the red light (anger) or the black light (sadness)… which also are manifestations in order to be engaged in life when necessary, not our true self. The true self is the white light, the perfect wakefulness, the profound wakefulness. This wakefulness is eternal, unborn, and un-dying.

My lecture is ends here for today . Its content should be memorized and discussed among yourselves. From my part, I have discussed clear and details. From those three light sources, everything you wish to have, dream of, will come true, so don’t be worried about trivial things in life. And I can assure you that you won’t be afraid of poverty, illness, accidents, and even death.

I wish you success!
Online lecture, May 24, 2008.

For more information, please visit  http://www.duytue.org/

One Can Attain Enlightenment Anywhere – part 5

Now, when we practice this so-called Quan Yin Method, we will understand many things of the universe, many things of this world that we never dream of understanding before. There are things we can express to our neighbors, but there are many things, numerous things, that we can never talk about, because the world of the Buddha is extraordinary and exceptional. There is nothing in this world we can compare it to or make an example of.

Much of our wisdom remains unused. But after we become enlightened and become more and more enlightened, a portion of it will be incorporated into our daily life to make us more loving, more intelligent, more selfless and more able to serve the world. And whatever we do, will be better quality. Of course, we have a long way to go to become a Buddha, but compared to before enlightenment, we have much, much greater intelligence and capability. Therefore enlightenment is not only for monks, not only for the renunciate in the Himalayas or the people in the mountain caves, it is for everyone of this world.

Why do I say much of our wisdom remains unused? It is because some of our knowledge is for preparation for the Buddha Land, and only some of it can be used in this world. The limitations of this world, lack of material, lack of different information  make us unable to use most of the wisdom. For example, when we achieve a little bit higher level of practice, we are able to see the land of the Buddha. That is not the highest level. To be able to see the Buddha Land, to see the Buddha is not the highest level. It is high but not the highest. Now, I just cited an example, you are able to see inside of the Buddha Land, or the Buddha. I think you can say, it is at the middle level of practice.

When you see the Buddha Land you are in the middle level. We can say approximately like that. There is much more to go, but when we can see the Buddha Land we are already much wiser. We would have learned a great deal during our meditation, during our daily practice, during our sleep.

After the initiation, even when we are asleep, we go to the higher land and learn many things. Otherwise two and half hours of practice every day is not enough. We use any rest period to learn also. Any activities become in-built with Buddha’s wisdom. Then when we see the Buddha Land, we learn many things and we know how to build houses in a different manner. We know how to build many things, for example, UFO’s. We know that houses in the Buddha Land are build in crystals, with diamonds, with gold instead of brick and cement, because we have been there and have seen that. We have seen many other extraordinary machines being built. This is just an example. It is a true example.

And then when you come back to this world, out of your meditation, out of the trip to the Buddha Land, and you, for example, want to construct such a house, such machinery in order to help human beings, you cannot find such beautiful crystals in this world. You cannot find such a wonderful method in this world to build this kind of house, to build this kind of machinery. Therefore, your wisdom, your knowledge remains unused. That is why I said much of our wisdom remains unused in this world, except when all human beings are enlightened.

We hope that day will come, then we will all enjoy Nirvana here. The atmosphere will change and all the disasters will disappear. All the sicknesses and sorrow will be no more. Then there is no need even for UFO. But until that day, we have to practice ourselves, and be satisfied with this world.

After leaving this world a practitioner of the Quan Yin Method will not have to be reborn again in this world, unless that person wants to come back as Buddha, a Bodhisattva to help the suffering of humankind, because there are many more beautiful, extraordinary, magnificent worlds for the practitioners of the Quan Yin Method to go. He has no need of this suffering world. His wisdom, his vibration, after practicing the Quan Yin Method has risen to the level of sainthood and enables him to be fit to live in the glory of Kingdom of God or Nirvana. Otherwise to the ordinary person, the Light, the glory of Heaven is terrible, is unbearable for them. They will not be able to bear it. This is just like the beggar not used to the palace of the king. He will feel very uncomfortable and humiliated. In which case, even the servant, the lowest kind of servant will look better and more confident than him.

Therefore we have to be prepared for the Buddha Land or for Heaven. We have to change our internal wisdom, we have to change our vibration, the frequency of our internal being. I just wanted to give you an example to understand. Even in this world, we have people with different frequencies.

That is the reason when we see someone we feel very comfortable or when we see someone else we feel very disturbed and we do not understand why. That is the reason why many people like to come to see the monks, to see the religious leaders, to see the yogis, or to see the practitioners of some kind. That is the reason why people loved to see the Buddha or Jesus Christ when they were alive, which caused a lot of envy and jealousy amongst the contemporary so-called practitioners. It is because when people see such persons, their vibration, their holy frequency, their very enlightened, comfortable, healing energy will make people around feel so comfortable, so blissful and so enlightened. Therefore now you remember and understand that the different vibrations, the different frequencies truly do exist.

So after we practice Quan Yin Method for some time, we will feel ourselves, the different vibrations between different people, we will be able to sense it, and we will be able to know ourselves. We will be able to know what kind of level we are in. When we reach the level of “non-level,” the “non-discriminating level,” then we can say that is Buddha hood.

Of course, you are all welcome and are invited to join this circle, free of charge, no string attached, free of any condition. Of course, you ask me where do I get all this money from. You can be sure that it is not forced from you, from your pocket. God gives me all the money I need, and much more that I ever needed so that I can donate to the poor and the needy of this world. God also gives me the spiritual wealth, more than I ever need, so that I can share it with all the people of the world. The money does not rain from the Heaven. God gives me many talents so I am able to earn money through these. Now if you have any questions and issues that are not clear to you, I am honored to answer.

Thank you for your attention.

One Can Attain Enlightenment Anywhere – part 4

The ultimate way to reach the Buddha hood is mentioned in the Surangama Sutra, and in many other scriptures of the world religions. After practicing the Quan Yin Method you will understand exactly what I said, without anyone having to teach you so. In the Surangama Sutra, it is said that the ultimate way, the last road is the Quan Yin Method. Quan Yin Method is to listen to your own inner Nature.

There is a kind of Energy, a kind of vibration that can be heard without the ears. These silent Words of God, of Buddha are the source of all wisdom. If whatever I said appeals to you and seems a little wise to you, it is due to the Quan Yin Method that I have practiced, that I have learned directly from the source of all creation. Of course, these are the things that I can express by words. There are many more things that only I can understand and cannot be explained in human languages. But there are some things that you could know without explanation.

For example, at the time of initiation, at the time that you want to learn the method which is called Quan Yin in Surangama Sutra, you will immediately attain what we call enlightenment and have many kinds, or some kinds, or one kind of experience, which is stated in the above mentioned scriptures of the world religions. And you will continue to have this enlightenment, you will develop the enlightenment, and the enlightenment will even get greater, because we are in direct contact with our Buddha Nature or the Kingdom of God. My disciples can testify to my words.

You are always welcomed to write and ask any of them. You can write to American disciples. You can write to English disciples. You can write to European disciples. You can write to Chinese disciples, Vietnamese disciples, disciples in Philippines, disciples in Singapore, disciples in Thailand. Just pick any name and ask them whether what I have said is true. That is how we know whether the Quan Yin Method is truly in accordance with the great religions of the world. At least I mean the five great religions.

Now religion is not merely recitation of the words of the past Masters, like Buddha, like Jesus Christ…but it is the incorporation of their wisdom into our daily lives. It is the sincere upkeep of their precepts, their commandments. And it is the polishing of wisdom daily within a very wise method. If all of this is combined together, we can call it a religion.

A true Buddhist must be able to contact the Buddha inside, knowing what the Buddha is. A true Christian should be able to contact Christ or God, otherwise how do we know if God exists. If Buddha is real, a true Buddhist should be able, at least to have a glimpse of something from the Buddha Land, or some glimpse of the great Light of the Buddha, or be able to hear  Buddha’s teaching directly. This is what Quan Yin Method enables you to do.

The Buddha does not teach with the ordinary English or with ordinary Korean language. But the Buddha’s teaching is with a quiet voice, in the universal language, which is very much like a beautiful melody. That is why in the Buddhist scriptures, it is stated that the Buddha speaks only in one kind of language, but all beings are able to understand in their own languages. It is the true scripture, the true teaching of the Buddha. That is why the more we listen to this inner Sound the wiser we become. The more we see the inner Light of God, of Buddha, the wiser we will be. This is how we become the true followers of Buddha or of Christ.

This is not expressed in the Bible or in the Buddhist Scriptures. It only mentions the Quan Yin Method. It only mentions the experiences of the practitioners of the Quan Yin Method. It does not mention how to practice it. Even it does mention, but without the Power of a realized Master, it is not real.  Because the way of the Buddha cannot be taught by language, or by action. It can only be transmitted from inner wisdom to our own wisdom. It is our wisdom that receives the initiation, the awakening, not our brain or our mind. Therefore, there is a necessity of a so-called “initiation,” to bring down the Buddha’s Power from Nirvana to awaken our own Buddha’s Power.

When I say Nirvana you should also understand it means the Kingdom of God in Christianity. I am also like the Korean people,  I do not discriminate amongst any religion. I think we have the same kind of understanding. That is why I feel so good in Korea, even at the first meeting with the Korean people.

So it is not explained in the Scriptures how to do it, because it has to be transmitted internally. But, because there were so many experiences, the results of the practice have been written in the Scriptures. Therefore, if we now have the same kinds of experiences, we know that we practicing the right method.

Actually, the method is not as important as the transmission of the Power of the wisdom. It is just because in our society we have to offer some kind of a concrete project, otherwise people do not accept. Therefore, we have to say I have a method for you. Therefore, you will understand, yes there is something to learn, something to know, something to develop. Otherwise, even if there is such a method, or even if it is written down in black and white, you have no benefit when reading it, because the Master’s power, the transmission lineage is missing.

Therefore, from ancient times you do not find such a method was written down. That is why most people understood the practicing of the Buddha hood to be a kind of mystery, very difficult to understand, very difficult to obtain. Yes, it is, but no, it is not. Yes, if we do not find someone who knows it, but if we find someone who has already known it, it’s very easy. And we can get immediate enlightenment, provided that we are sincere and the master accepts us.

That is how I learned. So that is how you can learn also. Even though there is nothing material to obtain, but there is something that we will know very well, when we are enlightened.

Are you tired already? (Applause) Should I continue? (Loud applause) Thank you. I appreciate your sincerity. That is what makes Korea become a great country, because of the spirituality that Korean people are after. Even though they are very capable of building a nation.

One Can Attain Enlightenment Anywhere – part 3

There were many other Saints, who were sent down from time to time to help to enlighten the people of this world. But then the Buddha had forgotten for almost thirty years, until he saw with his own eyes the suffering of the people of India at that time.

Therefore we do not know whether we are also Buddha, until we get enlightened, by chance or by the grace of any enlightened Master. Of course, you are invited to know yourself, to know whether you are a Buddha or not a Buddha.  Then you will know what the Buddha said is true Everyone is a Buddha. Everyone has the Buddha Nature inside waiting to be discovered.

But of course the ability to discover ourselves varies from one person to another. Therefore the levels of enlightenment are different. But if two persons have the same level of consciousness, their experiences are much the same. That is why the way of practice is called the “Tao,” which means the Path, the Road. Since it is a “road,” each one who travels this “road” will see practically the same things. The things which they see difference only by the length of the road that they have discovered. But if two persons have discovered the same distance, they should have experienced the same scenery.

If the Tao is different, how come all the Buddhas reached the same Buddha hood and did not reach anything else. If there are many roads, then the experiences of the people must be different from each other. But according to the Buddhist Sutras and other Holy books of different religions, the experiences of different people, who practice the Holy way are the same, or more or less the same.

There are of course, many, many wonderful experiences, when you become realized inside. But I’ll just cite some practical examples. Such as, in all kinds of religions, it mentioned the great Light of God, the great Light of the Buddha or scenes from the Buddha Land. I have studied various Scriptures of different religions, and whatever is mentioned is very similar to other scriptures. It is difficult to discern this matter before enlightenment, but after enlightenment, or even with a small degree of enlightenment, we will be able to see this very clearly. That is why I have mentioned earlier that the great people of Korea are very elevated, very high level of consciousness.

It is the same people of India, because they have understood the basic similarities of many religions. Some people think that the people of India worship many Gods. It is not that a multitude of hierarchies of Gods exists in India. It is just that they symbolically respect all the leaders, all the masters of different religions past and present.

In Korea we have many temples, so many churches and so many other practicing centers. It is much similar in spirit. But I think the Korean people are blessed with the more practical aspect of life. Therefore they understand both, the spirit and they take care of their material comfort. I have stated that it is very rare.

Now let us come back to what I just have said before. We do not have to lose all this attainment in the material world in order to gain enlightenment. We can sit in our house, enjoy all the comforts, fulfill our duties, and become great enlightened Saints at the same time. Provided that, we sincerely want enlightenment in order to understand more about life, death and the universe, about any other matters that we could not understand previously in order to serve the world in a better way, in a wiser way and to be of use to ourselves and the whole universe.

We have to think like the Buddha. We have to live the way of the Buddha. We do not just worship the Buddha. The Buddha said that we are the future Buddhas. He said it two thousand six hundred  years ago. We are in that future now, so there is no more time to wait. We could become a Buddha now; at least we learn the way of the Buddha or how to become a Buddha.

The way of the Buddha is laid out in all the Scriptures, but how to become a Buddha is not explained. Therefore, we have worshipped the Buddha for many thousands of years but we have not dreamed of becoming a Buddha. Because how to become a Buddha is not to be done by spoken languages. It is the Power that is inherent inside us, and we have to do it, to discover it ourselves. If you could do it alone, it is fine and good. If we could not reveal our own greatness, then we have to seek someone to show us how to do it.

Similarly, if we could not speak English and we could not learn it ourselves, then we must find a very good English teacher. It is very simple and similar to any kind of science. As I have said the way is the same. There may be many sideways before the highway, but ultimately there is only one way.

How to Make Peace on Earth – part 4

My purpose is not to preach Buddhism or Christianity. All these things you can read in books, you can inquire from churches, temples or from many other monks or nuns. All of them can tell you what Buddhism is, what Christianity is, etc. I have no intention to preach about these things, but I have the intention to build some peace in this world because we are all brothers and sisters.

Peace can only be obtained through wisdom and enlightenment, not through any illusionary imagination and money wasting talks at any table or in any nation. Everyone thinks if he becomes a politician, a priest or a monk, he can bring some peace to this Earth, or at least to their nation. But without wisdom, what can we do? The more we do, the more we go wrong. Also, if one person has wisdom and most of the people in the country have no wisdom, what shall we do? Only if we can get in contact with the original wisdom can we ever do things in the right way. Otherwise, even if we want peace and sincerely want to build peace in this world, we make war. That is because some people believe in making peace with force “If you don’t listen to me, if you don’t listen to my country, I will force you to listen.” Only when we have God’s wisdom and enlightenment, we can  then do things in the correct way. Therefore, we see many kings and queens come and go and the world is still at war. Maybe we have not had enough enlightened kings and queens!

In Au Lac and in China also, we call a good king an enlightened king. This is very clear that even if we want to govern a nation, we should also be enlightened. What is meant by enlightened? It means that our wisdom is opened. We are more intelligent, super intelligent, so we see things differently than we did in the ordinary state. Just like when we were babies or children, even though we could speak, eat, and understand, we were not wise enough to take care of our parents’ business, and not wise enough to take care of the household.

So, if we use our brains only 5%, how can we talk about governing the nation and the world? In China they say, “First, be enlightened, then you can take care of your household, then you can govern the nation, and then you can bring peace into the world.” “First be enlightened,” Practice, and your virtues and light will develop. Only then you can take care of your household. Can you imagine? To have a good household, we have to be enlightened? Only when you can take care of your household then you can talk about peace in the world.

Therefore, man like Jesus and Buddha were truly messengers of peace, truly kings of the world. Therefore, in India, they call such a person “the great king,” or “the king of kings.” We must not have any ambition to be “the king of kings”; but we should have ambition to contribute to the peace in this world, to construct a beautiful structure for this world, where our children and grand children will live in prosperity and happiness. So, that is what we call “First be enlightened, then we can take care of the household, then we can govern the nation, and then we can bring peace to the Earth.”

If we only talk about peace and want to bring peace to the Earth, and we ourselves are not peaceful, then it is a joke. If we only build churches and temples, but we do not care for the living temples, then it is a wrong attitude, because in the Bible it says, We are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit lives here. (Master points to her heart) God lives here, God lives in you. Make the temple pure. If we begin with ourselves and let peace begin from here, (Master points to her forehead) and from every person, then we don’t need any church, we don’t even need the Bible or the Buddhist Sutras. We don’t even need any master, we don’t need any organization or the United Nations.

So, I hope that whatever I do, I would bring some inspiration to you so that you might also be inspired to find peace, to find wisdom and God within yourselves. That is why I am here; not for Buddhism, not for Catholicism. I just want to offer you enlightenment so that you might take care of your household better, so that you might take care of your nation better, and so that we might together bring peace on this Earth. Amen!

How to Make Peace on Earth – part 3

December 16, 1989 Argentina

At the moment, we are abusing the natural resources. For example, hydrogen is for us to breathe, also to make the universe stable. If we draw hydrogen into a block and make a bomb out of it, which we call a hydrogen bomb, then our air will become thinner, there will be less hydrogen in it, and the whole universe might be disturbed. Just like when we use bricks and visible materials to build houses, the universe has invisible materials to build the universe. If we disturb this structure in any place, then the universe might not be stable. Similarly when we destroy part of this house, or break one wall, the whole house is affected.

Therefore recently we have seen many UFO’s, or space ships. Someone asked me about extra-terrestrials yesterday, “If they exist why didn’t they come before?” They didn’t have to. “Why do they come now?” Because we are too threatening to them and to ourselves. We are too ignorant  playing with dangerous things.

Do not think I come to preach Buddhism or want your sympathy or any of your properties. I want nothing. I only want the world to have peace so everyone can have time and a chance to develop their own talent, or their own capabilities. Humans should live together as humans, not as beasts. Up to now, most of the things we do are just similar to that animals do, nothing for humans to be proud of. Animals eat, make children, and love each other. We do the same. If we do not know God or the Buddha Nature within us, we are not much different. Is that not so? Please don’t be angry with me, someone must tell the truth sometimes. Otherwise, we all sleep, dream our dream, and feel proud of ourselves. Proud of what? What can we be proud of? All these atomic bombs? All these hydrogen bombs? All the poverty in this world? All these miseries? Hatred? Violence? Over-population? Hungry kids? What have we made out of this Heaven?

You were told that this world was Heaven before. What have we done to make it become like this? A handful of people are worrying about this beautiful planet. Other people sleep, eat, make love, and make money. Even when they go to church, I don’t know if they pray. Even if they go to the temples, I don’t know what they pray to the Buddha. Yes, they do pray! They pray for their own welfare, for their own business and for their own sons and daughters. How about the neighbors? Should we pray for them also? Praying is not a very active thing. We should also do something, but it is very difficult for most people to realize it.

Therefore, you see, when someone goes to a lecture like this, a few hundred, a few thousand people come to listen. But, when you go to the football game, theater or to hear pop singers, you see many tens of thousands watching a ball, watching people fighting over a ball. Isn’t that amazing?! It isn’t even the people on the outside who play, it is the people on the inside who play. If all the people would play, then I can say, “OK. They are exercising; it is good. Everyone is excited, because they are competing in a game.” But no, only a group of people are playing and forty thousand of fifty thousand people outside are excited. I am always amazed to watch the illusion games of this world. I cannot understand it either.

But I do understand why we do not have peace. It’s because everyone just does not care. We can watch football, it is no sin. We can get to the theater; it is good sometimes, to pass time, and to make a change in our life. But, we should also remember who we are and where we will go after this life. We must also give time to prepare for this departure. We prepare for everything – for birth, for death, for old age, but we don’t prepare for the next life. And even if we don’t care for the next life, we should care for this life. We should work together to make our world more beautiful, more peaceful.

How to Make Peace on Earth – part 2

Now, I will explain to you what the Three Worlds are. The Three Worlds are very well known in Buddhism, but in the Bible, it is hardly mentioned. Have you heard of the Third Heaven? In the Bible, someone was brought up to the Third Heaven when the Holy Spirit had lifted him. The Third Heaven is the highest of the Three Worlds. It is the end of the so-called spiritual world. Our world is called the Earth world or material world. Besides our world there are another Three Worlds which are invisible, but visible to the heavenly eye. If we practice some kinds of meditation, sometimes our heavenly eye will be opened and we may be able to see higher invisible worlds. These worlds are sometimes similar to ours.

For example, in the Astral world, which is the nearest to our world, the scenery, the structure of the houses and the wishes of the people there are very similar to ours. Most people after they die will stay in the astral world. The astral  world also has heavens and hells. Heavens are the places for the virtuous people, hells are so-called “hospitals” for the sick. If our bodies have cancer in some places, then the doctor will operate on those places and remove the cancer to make our bodies well. If the whole body is sick due to hatred, greed, lust, etc., then all the cells are sick. Therefore, they have to be put in a so-called hell, and there they use a kind of laser beam to operate on all the cells and remove all these traits. This is why we say that hell burn people with fire. It is actually a kind of treatment to remove all our mental sickness. If we are unloving to ourselves, and unloving to other people, that means we are in some kind of mental sickness. If we continue to do so during our life or for many lives, then every cell in our bodies will be afflicted by these unloving actions, thoughts or habits.

Therefore, the Astral so-called doctors have to cure our astral bodies, putting all the cells back in order by using very high frequency beams of Light, and it is very painful. They keep doing so until we are cleansed of all traits of greed, hatred, lust, etc. This is a kind of treatment actually, but we call that hell because it is very painful and full of suffering. It is just like when we are in a hospital; there is also a lot of suffering due to the treatment given by the doctor.

Now, the Astral world is one of the Three Worlds. Above the Astral world there is another world, which is the so-called Mental world. Above the Mental world, there is another world called the Third Heaven, or the world of Brahma. The higher the world, the more beautiful, the more light and the more power there is. Therefore, if someone is the king of the Three Worlds, he is so-called on top of the creation. Therefore, to be the king of the Three Worlds is a very great position.

The king of the Three Worlds is what we call the king of Maya. However great his position is, he is a king of illusion, and he has not enough wisdom and love. Everything in this physical world is made and created by this king, therefore it is not perfect. So we see roses with thorns, and people sometimes with ugly-looking faces; sometimes there are human beings who look like beasts or act like animals, with no dignity as human beings. This is the result of the Maya king’s work. Anyone who descends to one of the Three Worlds, including ours, has to wear this kind of imperfect apparel, although originally we are perfect. When we are above the Three Worlds, when we are back at our Home, then we are different.

Now, I’ll give you a very clear example. When you go swimming and diving into the sea, you have to wear very big eye-glasses, an oxygen mask, a big oxygen tank and a kind of frogman’s clothing. You look neither like a fish nor like a frog… even not like a human! But these are the things you need when you dive into the world of the sea. If you stay in the sea and wear these kinds of things long enough, you will become used to it and you can never take them off, as you need them in the deep of the sea. Every day if you look in the mirror, you will see yourself like that and you will think you are like that. Once you go back on land, you no longer need these, and you are beautiful again. So, that is the problem with us when we are in this world. We need many instruments.

For example, our mind is also an instrument, but the instrument sometimes becomes an obstacle, it is not natural. Just like when you wear the frogman’s clothes, your feet become so large like this (Master shows everyone) that they are hard to control, and your nose is bundled with the oxygen mask, which is very troublesome. Your movement is not really very natural due to the equipment on your back, on your face, on your hands and on your feet, etc.

Now we are in this world and the brain is a kind of computer which our souls need in order to gather information. But when we use it too long, we are kind of dependent on it; so dependent that sometimes even when the computer goes wrong, we still do not know that we are getting the wrong information. You know computers sometimes go wrong. For example, I heard of a computer which can translate many languages. A German person brought it to China to translate from German into Chinese, and there was one idiom in German which meant golden but it was translated to blond. That is how we get stuck in this world, because of wrong information.

Yesterday someone asked me, “If God decides everything, how come there are wars, disasters and miseries?” It is very simple.  For example, sometimes you wanted to do something. Inside, you have an intuition that you should do it this way, and then suddenly you say “No. My mama never did it like this, my teacher would not approve, or my girlfriend, my boyfriend, my whatever… “So, you start to do it the way you learned from the people in society, and then it went wrong. You knew you should have done it the other way, your original intuitive way, so you tried again, and you succeeded. Is that not so? You know many times that it is so.

That is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom is intuitive, that is what we call the original Self and God wisdom. Knowledge is what we have from other people, from books, from tradition, from national customs; it is not necessarily correct. Sometimes it helps but mostly it doesn’t. Therefore, we have many conflicts and incorrect incidents in this world, because most people do not use the direct wisdom; we only use second-hand, third-hand or fourth-hand knowledge.

If we want to use the direct wisdom, then we must be in contact with that original wisdom. In order to do so, we must open some of our inner compartments, we must put some of the apparatus in use. We all know that our brain contains 95% unused capacity. These are places we must open if we want to have peace on Earth, if we want to know how to make peace on Earth. Everyone wants it but does not know how to go about to making it. Instead of using scientific research and inventions to serve humanity, we use it for destruction.

Jesus Was One of the Saviors – part 2

God is within us. This everyone knows. So I came to tell you how to get in touch with Him. But the question is: Why do most of us believe that Jesus was the only savior of the world and why do these who do not believe in Jesus go to hell? This is the question.

God is ever merciful; since the beginning of time God has always looked after humankind. Before Jesus, people sinned, people suffered, and people needed God.  God also sent someone, like Moses, like John the Baptist and many others before them. Moses was also a messenger of God.

Before Moses, before many, many eons of time, God always sent one, two, three or four of His messengers to the world in order to save us from our wrongful thinking and actions, and bring us back to the Kingdom of God. Otherwise, if only Jesus could save people, then what about the people who were before Jesus, the people who were trillions of years before Him? Didn’t God love them? It is not logical. I think if we really worship God and understand God, we couldn’t believe that Jesus was the one and the only. The Buddhist people also believe that Buddha was the only one, and some of them don’t even believe in Jesus. So the people of these two religions have been arguing with each other. If we think carefully, or if we get enlightenment, we will know Jesus and Buddha were both sent by God to save humankind in different periods of time.

It is so interesting after you get enlightenment and go deep into communion with God. When you read any kind of religious Bible in the world, you will see exactly the same teaching inside. Some of you will agree with me about this, but some of you will not, because some have read and some have not, some are a little enlightened and some are not. However, just talking about Jesus is enough to prove it, that He was not the only one and He didn’t mean to be the only one.

He sacrificed His life for the sins of people at that period of time, and His blessing continued for a few hundred years afterward. But it has been about two thousand years since then and we have forgotten most of His teachings. The Bible has been cut in half, censored, changed, and misinterpreted in many places. If we do not get enlightenment, it’s difficult for us to differentiate, to perceive which are the true words of Jesus and which have been misinterpreted.

I just mention that Jesus said and proved that He was not the only one. Whatever miracle I can do today you can do also, and you may do it even better. Is it not so? Yes. So we must believe in His words. He meant that we can become like Him. Furthermore, He said that we all are children of God, not that He was the only Son of God.

It seemed paradoxical when He said, No one can go to the Father except through me, and then on the other hand He said, All of you are children of God. Whatever I can do today, you may do even greater in the future. But this is not paradoxical. What He meant is that He already knew God. He realized that He was the Son of God, and although the people at that time, the humanity at large, were also children of God, they did not realize it.

Buddha also said the same. I have become a Buddha, and you will too become a Buddha. He also said, All beings have the Buddha Nature, meaning all beings are equal with Him, just the same like Him. The Buddha Nature is the same as the Spirit of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God and the Son is His creation. Whatever He makes is the son of God. The Father makes the son, the children and embeds in them the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the essence of God. All of us have the Holy Ghost within us. So we are all called “the children of God.”

Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed realized this Holy Ghost within Themselves, and there were also others, like St. Peter, St. Paul, San Francisco and San Jose, etc. Whoever realizes the Holy Spirit within becomes one with God; he realizes he is the Son of God.

Jesus Was One of the Saviors – part 1

Excerpt from Master Ching Hai’s lecture
June 9, 1989
Costa Rica

Why is it that we need a Master to learn meditation, to be reunited with God? If you read the books of my lectures that my disciples have collected, you will see that the Master is referred to as just a water pipe. A water pipe takes water to your home. Without the protection of the pipe, the water will get dirty or lost on the road before reaching your home.

Our world is a world of illusion, a world of matter. If God Himself would descend into our world and be invisible, it would be unsubstantial, we would never be able to grasp Him. Therefore, if He wants to come to the world or send His spirit, His love into the world, He must wrap it inside a body. It’s like a perfume bottle holding the perfume inside. We don’t care whether the shape of the bottle is round or square, long or short. We care for the perfume inside.

If, however, the bottle gets damaged, we may transfer the perfume into another bottle, Jesus was a bottle. (Laughter) I do not mean to make fun of Him, but just to make the message clear to you, OK? Buddha was a bottle, too. So you see, it’s equal now; I also mention Buddha as a bottle. I am also a bottle, a very small one. (Laughter) But the perfume contained inside is God. No human can make this.

It is by the grace of God that we are enlightened or unenlightened. When we love God above everything else, when we desire enlightenment above any other things in this world, we will get it. We cannot blackmail God, we cannot lament to Him, we cannot complain to Him, we cannot push Him or press Him, but we could charm Him by our devotion and longing, sincere longing.

This longing sometimes is like a pain, like a suffering. It’s worse than all the pains in the world. Once you are enlightened, then the pain settles down. But then it grows and grows into wanting more; it becomes a comfortable pain. I don’t know why I say a “comfortable pain.” It’s just like an addiction. I am sorry, because it is terrible to use our worldly language to describe something in connection with God. The more I say, the worse it sounds.

It’s like this. For example, you have heard that in the neighborhood there is a beautiful girl and you long to see her. You haven’t seen her before, but you feel a longing, you’re so curious. You’ve heard so much about her, so you want to see her. That’s only a curious desire, but sometimes the desire becomes very urgent, “Why is she there and I cannot see her?” Once you see her you say, “Wow!” Then you want to see more. It becomes worse than before, because you have seen how beautiful the girl is, how talented she is, how virtuous she is, and how very suitable to your taste she is.

Similarly, before we see God we have heard so much about God. The Scriptures describe that God is love, glory, eternal bliss and that you’ll get intoxicated if you see God. But you are not yet intoxicated because you have not seen God or been in touch with God. Once you are intoxicated, just once, then you’ll always long for more. Then you are satisfied with everything in the world, because just the love, just the intoxication of God takes away all your worldly desires. It makes you detached from the pleasures and sorrows of this world. Then you’ll lust more and more for the presence of God until you eventually become one with God, just like what Jesus said, I and my Father are one.

Jesus reached that state. But He was not the only one who has reached that state in the whole history of humankind. If it were so, if it were true that Jesus was the only one who has reached the state of God-realization, then I think would be very, very depressing for us. Just think of the millions, billions, even trillions of people before Jesus’ time. Did they all go to hell? Do you understand what I mean? Can you believe that? Tell me yes or no. No? Yes? OK. I accept both of your answers and will explain later.

Why “Yes”? Please explain to me. Who said “Yes”? Please stand up and explain why God would let all the billions and trillions of people before Jesus’ time go to hell? How unmerciful God was! The “Yes” person please explain to me why God was so terrible. (The person cannot explain.) Then, do not speak so quickly next time. (Laughter) We must think first before we speak; or else we will make great mistakes sometimes, leading ourselves and others to the same mistaken direction.

Now, does the one who said “No” have any reason? Yes, please tell me. (The person answers, “I believe that God is within everyone of us. It is just a matter of knowing. God is within everyone of us. We have to develop the capacity that is inside us and use spiritual means to get in touch with God. Not our eyes, which are made to get in touch with matter, not our ears that are made to listen to the sounds; we have to use the inner Man to open the inner eyes and inner ears to see and hear.”) Yes, the inner Man. Right, right, I got it. Yes, that’s good. Open the inner eyes and the inner ears, and see God, hear God. That’s right. I think we mean the same thing.

Neither Man nor Women Exists Inside

Excerpt from Master Ching Hai’s lecture
June 9, 1989
Costa Rica

Now, one more topic I would like to mention.

Yesterday, someone asked me a question which I just read this afternoon. The person said he would like to follow my teaching, but because I am a woman, he hesitated. (Laughter)

If we had no women in this world, how would he have existed? How did Jesus ever come into the world? Or Buddha? Or any other great beings there may have been? This is a paradox.

You see, this is human nature. We very readily forget our origin, our benefactor. If we can so easily forget women’s benefit, loving care and devotion to this world, including our mothers’ and sisters’, then how would we even remember God? It would be so difficult. Women and mothers are visible “objects” and very, very close to us; every day we know about them, still we forget this and always despise women. So how could we know anything about God, who is so far away, so abstract, so metaphysical and whom we have never seen before?

I do not complain about this fact. I know my worth. I do not need your praise or your blame.  The merit of women to this world is undeniable. Women are mothers of all the Buddhas and of all the Saints in the past, present and future. Why do we worship St. Maria? She was an ordinary woman; she was also a women. It is because of the respect we pay to Jesus. St. Maria has not performed any miracles, nor has she helped anyone as far as we know. Why do we respect her? Because she had the worth, the merit of bearing Jesus, of bringing Jesus into our world.

So, if you can respect a woman just because she born  a Saint, then why don’t you respect a saintly woman? Do you see me any different than St. Theresa? Am I worse than St. Maria? Have I done anything terrible to you? Do I teach you anything bad or anything wrong? Man and woman – it is just a matter of perception because inside we are all the same. It’s only our wrong perception.

When I said a “saintly” woman, I didn’t mean to boast about myself. I was talking in a way of categorizing, as your Western terminology describes what a Saint is. But actually I don’t think I like any category. A Saint is a virtuous person, is the one who helps others and loves others, who is devoted to God, and above all, who is enlightened. So, if a person is enlightened, loving and devoted to God, he or she is a Saint. So, according to your Western Catholic terminology, I think I am a Saint.  Is that all right with you? Is that acceptable to you?

While I am saying all this, I am not proud of it. It’s not a matter of being proud. I’m just trying to explain things clearly and objectively to you so that I might “drive home” the Truth.  Just like a girl who has graduated from Cambridge College and becomes a physician, or a man who has graduated from Princeton University and becomes a physician. Both of them are on an equal footing. Understand? They both can say. “I am a physician.” Nothing to be proud of. It’s just a graduation. If Jesus didn’t say that He was a Saint or that He had graduated from the “metaphysical school,” how would we know Him? How would people know Him? If a doctor doesn’t say that he is a physician, how would patients come to him? It’s just a job.

Being a Saint is also a job, a metaphysical job, a job without money, without any position in this world, without safety, without praise and sometimes even without thanks. You can see the life of Jesus. How He had sacrificed Himself for the sins of the people, and how they paid Him?

Every time I read the Bible and come to His story, I cry again and again. I cry because of His love; I cry because of people’s ignorance and cruelty. Even now some people still criticize Him and don’t believe that He was a great Saint. This is the saddest thing.

That’s why I had trouble with my Buddhist believers. I often mention Jesus and praise Him, and they think it is a taboo. They think that I am a Buddhist monk, so I should only praise Buddha and talk about Buddhism. Many monks in Formosa don’t like me. (Laughter) But I still love them. It’s not their fault. It’s the brainwashing over long period of time, just as we are brainwashed into believing that Jesus was the only one, and that God was so merciless as to have let all the people before Jesus, all the trillions and trillions of people go to hell because they had never heard of Jesus’ name and had never had the chance to believe in Him. The Buddhist believers are also like that. They are brainwashed into believing that a woman can’t become a Buddha, meaning she cannot become an enlightened Master.

I invite you to reject all these ideas. It is too depressing. Every religion should bring hope, faith and self-confidence to humankind. We should reject any wrong interpretations in any religion. We believe in religion, but we don’t believe in wrong interpretation and brainwashing. Understand? (Laugh applause) Thank you.

Now, I think the best way to find God in ourselves and to understand the real religious essence is to get enlightened, to get directly in touch with God. If you believe what I have said, I may offer you the opportunity to try, without any financial donation, without any condition and without any binding whatsoever. You don’t need to bow to me; you don’t need to call me “Master” even. You can call me a friend or Ching Hai, whatever you like. You don’t have to change your religion. You can go to the church, you can read the Bible all the same. Just be in touch with God every day through the technique I will show you at initiation. OK?

The Real Love

Poem by  Master Ching Hai, April 2011

 

They said: “The world is small”
But it ain’t that small!
There’s plenty room
For you and me and all…

So why this bickering with our neighbor
For a few meters more –
Even a few kilometers,
Or say another mountain and river!
Don’t you feel rather “small”?

At the end of our sojourn
What do we get after all?
One squeezy square meter
If we are lucky!
To lie down forever

Let’s share the splendid Earth
And do everything to make it better
Even the worms don’t rival
With the butterflies or the birds
Why do we humans try so mightily?
Against each other
Make life a real misery
And even shorter!

What will we tell at the Buddha’s gate,
Or to Saint Peter?
All the stuff we did on Earth,
To bring pain and to suffer…
Oh dear man!

 Let me tell you something
Just go hang…
Yourself on the hammock
Between the shadowing coconut
Graceful tall trees!
 Enjoy some cake and tea
Feel the gentle breeze
That cools all folly  

There…there! You see!
…Ah!..tons of things
We can do our heart to please
Some small and great pleasure
Let it all be…

Let’s make life more simple
Let our demands be little.
Then you’ll know
Happiness ever more and more!

 Then we don’t have to go on snatching land,
Nor have we to hurry on converting man:
It’s not how many in a belief system
It’s what become of them!
It’s not the name of a religious order
It’s what we make of the name!
It’s not how crowded a religion
It’s how much into world peace their contribution

It’s not our words
It’s rather louder our actions.
What is going to be our legend
In the long history of humans?
Will it be right and just
Will it be noble and benevolent?
Or just a grim picture
Soaked in anguished bloody paint!  

Why always boast about our Heavenly root:
Oh! Almighty God’s beloved children!
While our life is tainted with all evils
While our survival
Is the cost of others’ extinction!

 What is the mark of the “chosen”?
Is it just the bloodstain on your hands?
Be it from animals or man’s!  

Oh my dear brothers
I wanted to write you a long loving letter
With thousands more questioning words
But I am dumbfounded
Watching the madness
Of it all.
Tell me:
When or will we ever
Represent Heaven on Earth?

The Importance of Finding an Enlightened Master – part 3

Therefore in the world there are not many Masters, because of this difficulty, to be in the world but not to be in the world, to be in Samadhi but not to be in Samadhi. This also makes it difficult for us to find the real Masters because they are not those who are in the first type of Samadhi, they are not those who we can tell immediately from the outlook are in Samadhi. These Masters may not even look saintly. They may not be surrounded by people throwing flowers around them and worshipping them so that they’ll open the eyes and say, “Oh, blessed are you!”

Those of the first type Samadhi are Saints, holy beings, who also deserve our worship. It’s very difficult to become such a Saint, because when we ordinary people meditate, we can’t even go into Samadhi, we can’t forget the world. Even if we run into the jungle, our minds are still tumbling with all kinds of thinking, all kinds of struggles and difficulties. So when we see someone always in deep Samadhi, looking so sweet and always smiling, and blessing us, we think he is fantastic. It’s difficult to experience such deep Samadhi even just for one or five minutes.

Therefore those who have achieved this kind of Samadhi, this state of tranquility, are great Saints who have great power, control over their minds. But it’s even more difficult to be in Samadhi and to be in the world at the same time, to have this inner tranquility but also have the outer functioning to deal with all types of people in order to pull them out of their illusion. This is the state of a perfect enlightened Master like Jesus, Buddha, etc.

Therefore it’s difficult to become a Master, and it is also difficult to judge a Master. Because if a Master exists in the world, then he has to deal with all kinds of people, all kinds of temperaments, all kinds of mental obstructions and then accordingly gives different remedies. He looks like an ordinary person then. If some disciple needs scolding, then the Master gives scolding; if another disciple needs love, then the Master gives love. They both receive love, but in different boxes, in different covers. Hugging is love in one kind of “wrapping paper,” and scolding is also love in another kind of “wrapping paper.” And then because we are not so enlightened, we don’t see anything special about that type of Master. We don’t see the Master sitting for hours, deep in Samadhi; we don’t see the Master as we imagine, always sweet and smiling and saying soothing words. We see the Master acting just like an ordinary person and then we think the Master is still ordinary, from his ordinary reactions. But a real Master’s reactions are never, never ordinary.

Do you remember the story about the two potatoes? If we are not somewhat enlightened and it’s the first time we see a Master or we have only followed a Master for a short time, and the Master gives us two potatoes, telling us to eat them all, and even repeats that order three or four times, then what would we think? We would think that it’s strange, “At home, I myself have so many potatoes. I’ve come to Master for great blessing and spiritual wealth, but here he gives me two potatoes!”

Then we would probably turn around and say, “Potatoes! I don’t even like potatoes. How can he be an enlightened Master if he doesn’t know I don’t like potatoes? He can’t even read my mind, and what a fuss about two potatoes! Why does he keep telling me three or four times to eat them together? I know how to eat potatoes.” Yes, we would argue back and forth like that. But we don’t know the meaning of these two potatoes.

When the Master gives us something with love and blessing, we have everything in that gift. It is not a potato anymore; it’s a world of wealth, a world of spiritual power. In Formosa and other places my disciples who know this always grasp whatever I give them; they always receive whatever I give them with great happiness. So sometimes when we go out together, they also expect me to give them something, maybe a peanut, maybe a candy. Whatever is there we share it together and they are so happy about that.

But sometimes when we are outside, there are also other people who will gather around us; because they see so many people gathering, and taking something so they also come and ask for whatever it is. Although these people are not initiates, when they ask, I also give them. For me, there’s no difference between initiates and non-initiates; they are all Gods. But then it’s interesting to watch their reactions, which are always the same. They will take my candies or peanuts, and then look puzzled, maybe thinking. “Why? A peanut? I’ve plenty of them at home!” or something like that. Or they might throw them back. (Laughter)

Therefore sometimes I am reluctant to give things in public, or sometimes when the disciples asked for a blessing in public I also refused, to avoid the situation that other people might have any ungrateful or critical thought in their mind, which is not good for them. This is nothing to me, but it might give them some obstructions for the future, which we call “Yei Tsang” in Chineese or “karmic hindrance” in Sanskrit and it means that any bad or good deed you do will obstruct you.

Since it’s so difficult to become a Master, what shall we do? In my posters and leaflets we always say “Immediate Enlightenment” and “Get Eternal Liberation in This Lifetime.”

We don’t say “Become a Master in One Lifetime.” We can also become a Master, no doubt, but it’s more difficult. So, at least we can be liberated and enlightened; we can reach near mastership, Master’s state, sainthood, Bodhisattva-hood, and that is also OK. Otherwise we have no hope.

In India people often say that if a Master could have a successor in his lifetime, then he is already very, very lucky. In America there was a Master, Yogananda, from India, who was very famous when he alive and is still famous now, but he had no successor.  It means none of his disciples or followers were equal to his status. No one was equal to his state of enlightenment.

So, it is not difficult to be liberated, but it is difficult to become perfectly enlightened. It is difficult to become a Buddha, a Master, a Christ. But we have hope. Yes. I only say it’s difficult; it doesn’t mean impossible. Whether it’s difficult or not is all up to us. If only we could believe in a Master, follow and completely surrender to that perfect Master, we would become that Master. The most difficult part is to surrender, because we all have this ego “I can do this thing and I understand that thing.” This ego is the worst enemy of our wisdom, of our mastership. It’s difficult to kill this ego. It is very easy to control others but not easy to control ourselves. That’s why it’s said that: “The man who can conquer his mind has the best victory.”

But we can do this through meditation with the Quan Yin Method which I will teach you. Then slowly this Quan Yin Method of liberation, the inner Energy of God will cleanse our obstructions, will cleanse our preconceived ideas, and set us free. We will have no thirst for fame, wealth and power. The pains, sorrows and happiness of the world will still be there, but they will not affect us. We have everything, but then we have nothing, we are attached to nothing. We become like an empty vessel, only full of God’s wisdom and God’s love. Only when we are empty can God fill us with wisdom and love. If we are still someone, if we still have something, then we cannot be completely empty, then we cannot completely have all of God’s power, which He wants to fill us with. Understand?

So, that’s how we can become a Master: Be first becoming no one, nobody, nothing . As Jesus said: Except you become a child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God; and as Lao Tzu said: We have to become children again. They both said the same thing.

WHAT CAUSES WAR? part 5

Now to sum it up, I have to tell you what God is. According to Christian Bible, God is the “Word.” In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That is what we call the “Yin,” the Vibration, the Tao, the Buddha Nature in Buddhist terminology. Once we get in touch with that so-called “Word,” we are in touch with God because the “Word” is God. God is not a figure with a long beard or with a stick, standing there telling you what to do. God is a Power, a loving current that we can use to mold our life and to make things come into being by this creative substance. Therefore for the ones who are in touch with God, everything they wish for will come true; and for the ones who are not in touch with God, it doesn’t matter how long they pray, things hardly come into their lives because they are not in touch with what they want to talk to.

If we want to talk to our friend and the telephone is disconnected, or we are too far away from the telephone, or if we don’t pick it up, then how can we talk to them, to the police or whoever? Therefore we must first make the connection and then wish. Well, does this seem too farfetched now or not?

I am on tour now all over the United States, and before I left for the United Nations’ Conference, my disciples told me a story about how their wish came true. For example, even when the airplane was already on the runway, and one of our disciples was left behind, he prayed, and the airplane came back to get him. Yes! I said I could not believe it, but they said, “Yes, yes, it’s true. We are here!” We always make jokes like that. I said I didn’t believe it, but I knew it was true. So then I said to them, “OK! Since you can pray so efficiently, then you should pray for others. You should not always pray for yourself. This is selfish.”

They said to me, “Whom should we pray for now?”

I said, “For example, for the peace in the Middle East or for the Au Lac refugee who want to be integrated as citizens into other countries.”

They answered, “Yes, we don’t mind praying, but they’re too far away, their karma is too heavy. We don’t know if we can pray for them or not.”

That’s what they said and it struck me that it’s really true, because the Au Lac refugees are not in touch with God yet. My so-called disciples – I would call them friends, but if I say “friends” you wouldn’t understand, so I say “disciples” – are in touch with God, so whatever they want comes true.

Therefore, it’s not that we don’t want to pray for ourselves or for other people, but we have to know where to talk, to whom to talk, and where to get that Power to realize our prayers. Because all the Power is within us, all things are already inside, we must know where to get them and to use them, but most of us don’t.

I have realized that it is truly: Seek you first the Kingdom of God and all other things shall be added unto you. The Kingdom of God doesn’t come by observation. The Kingdom of God is at hand, within you. That’s what’s said in the Bible.

How is it that it’s within us and we don’t know it? Because we don’t know where it is. We don’t know where “within” is. Is it in the heart, in the lung, in the vein or in the liver? We don’t know where it is. So if someone knows, then we can be shown.

I have been taught where the Kingdom of God is, and I make use of that every day for my own and for other people’s benefit. I keep telling people that it is so easy to get in touch with your own Power, to fulfill all your wishes, to be in Heaven on Earth and to forget everything else. The war will cease itself. It has worked within our group. No one after initiation feels like fighting any more, arguing about nonsense, or desiring more things than what they necessarily need. It really works with thousands and thousands of people. It always works, so I know it is the truth.

But most people are not ready for this message. They cannot believe that they have this kind of Power. I am always amazed why people look down upon themselves so much. Aren’t we all children of god and make after His image? Do we not all have Buddha Nature inside? Or even are we not all children of Allah? And if we are His children, we have the same Power, at least similar, more or less the same, so why should we look down upon ourselves? We are God’s princes and princesses, and does that mean something or not? It may seem like an empty saying, but it‘s true. It is just like that.

If you are the daughter or son of a king, you must know your power, you must know your position; but most people don’t know. Everyone just knows, “Ah! We are the children of God. God made us after His image. We are the likeness of Him.” Yes, but that’s it. Then, we go out and struggle for every penny and pray for everything, and it never comes, because we never pray to the right source. We don’t go to where our wishes can be fulfilled. It is so easy, easier then eating bread. Because it is so easy, people tend to look over it. This is very sad, but I shall be patient. I shall be patient.

So, actually we talked about war and ended with peace. If every one of us wants to have peace within ourselves, we must practice the Kingdom of God. We must get in touch with this God power, which is very easy to do. We can do it instantly because God is within us. He is not very far away. The Kingdom of God is within us. Why should we go to a distant church or temple to get it? And why should we take a long time to get it?

That’s why we call our method “instant enlightening” or “immediate enlightenment.” “Instant” is just what my disciples call it, but I don’t like the word “instant.” Actually, my original words were “immediate enlightenment and eternal liberation.” Once we are enlightened, we are forever enlightened and liberated. Liberated from what? From the cycle of birth and death, being reborn and reborn again, suffering and suffering again.

For example, your work in the United Nations is the best job, the noblest work one can find because here you serve the whole world, not only one company or two companies, on family or two families, but the whole world. Your work is the best. I advise everyone to stay and not to leave the UN for as long as you can. But even then you have your suffering, frustration and headaches. Do you see? Things are not as perfect as we want.

WHAT CAUSES WAR? part 4

Now, after these events, people began chasing each other, and physical attraction began to happen. They started to have couples. Other people who looked at this wondered why it had never happened like this before. They wondered why one being did such things to the other being. These people became ashamed of being attracted to each other physically and doing things physically. They were ashamed, so they had to go out of the city of the inhabitants and build their own huts or caves. Consequently, houses began to spring up and separate dormitories began to appear.

That’s how it happened and that’s how we started our history, according to Buddha.  If you want to blame, blame the Buddha! Don’t blame me! I don’t know if this story is true or not. I wasn’t there. I don’t know if I was there or not. It was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten now. I might have been there, but it has been too long now, billions or trillions of years ago. Who would remember all these things? Who wants to remember, right? We have enough to do now, with the Middle East war, the Au Lac refugees and what-not.

After that, because people started building houses, hoarding things for themselves, and dividing the land, everything began to get worse. Some people who were diligent planted a lot of things and had good crops, and other people who were lazy just came to steal. That’s how wars began, and they continue until now because there are those who have a lot and there are those who have too little. Those who have a lot don’t want to share with those who have too little. Those who have a lot work diligently and look down upon those who don’t have much because of their laziness or, maybe misfortune. So, the Buddha concluded that the cause of war is the lack of sharing between people; it is the greed within us. Those who take too much leave none for the others.

Nowadays in our modern times, the scientists have done a lot of research and they think that the cause of war may be starvation. Many countries are starving and many countries have too much, and things like that. But not really, we don’t really have too much. We are just using it incorrectly and waste it.

They also did other research. For example, someone in Toronto, who has a vegetarian restaurant and a vegetarian magazine, told me that according to the research, if in North America each person would eat a vegetarian meal once a week, then we would have enough food to feed sixteen million people a year. I was startled and said, “How could it be?” But it worked out that way. It is not because of the food, it’s the many things concerned with food. In order to produce this food the land has to be cultivated, but now it’s wasted for the feeding of the cows. All the water, medicine, transportation, etc. used for the cows, pigs and other animals, everything concerned with meat diet had reportedly wasted a lot of human resources, and that is the cause of starvation in many countries. It takes a lot of food protein, medicine, transportation and water to feed a cow and these things come from underdeveloped countries, too. This protein and food could have been distributed in a different way in order to feed the whole world instead of feeding a cow, and then we eat the cow, second-hand stuff anyhow.

So nowadays many people believe that a vegetarian/vegan diet can save the world and minimize a lot of war, and I think I do not oppose this idea. Maybe in the very near future we should try, at least to see how it works, and then we can comment. But I believe it will work provided each of us supports this idea and tries to cooperate. It is understood that not everyone will cooperate. Since the beginning of time, not all of us cooperate, because we all want to be the boss. Somehow, in our own way, in our own environment, we always like to be the boss. Why is it? It’s not bad either. This also stems from the noble root that we have been in power, we have been angels, we have been Saints. We have been in Heaven, where everything is under our command. And now, we have lost our way and stepped down to this physical world and have lost most of our power, so we crave for power. But the thing is, we crave and find power in the wrong way. As a result it harms us more than offers us any power. That’s all.

The way to get back our Power is to purify ourselves, to get in touch with God. I have done it myself and I can say that I have succeeded, to some extent. These are not empty words that I am telling you. They come from my experience. Should you like to try it, it is highly recommended. You may try to find your own way, do it yourself, or you may try to find someone who you think is intelligent enough and experienced enough, to guide you to get in touch with your own real Power. Once we have that real Power, we have everything else. Even if we don’t have everything else, we are satisfied. That’s what it is. It is not that we have the whole world in our hands, but we are satisfied with whatever we have, and we will not crave for our neighbors’ things. We will not be too attached to the things of this world, but we will have plenty. Truly it is like that.

The Bible says: Seek you first the Kingdom of God and all other things shall be added unto you. That I have found to be the truth.   It is the whole truth. And in the Buddhist Sutras, for example in the Surangama Sutra, it also says that, Once you get in touch with this inner Buddha Nature through practicing the Quan Yin Method, the worldly things will go on smoothly too. We can also have other things. And this I have also found to be the truth. Therefore, every Bible says similar things. You can find many other examples in the  Indian Scriptures, Jewish Scriptures and other Scriptures.

That’s why we hear that the rich people are blessed by God. It might be true in some sense, but the richness of this world has not always been the symbol of the blessing of God. It just denotes our virtuous way of life in the last period of our existence, before this existence, and that’s all. The blessings of God come directly, without virtues even, once we are connected with this God Power.

WHAT CAUSES WAR? part 3

First they looked. It was so beautiful and it smelt so irresistible, so they tasted it. It was so nice. They never ate anything before and they didn’t think they would need it. They never thought there was such a thing, so nice and tasty, so they ate more and more. Eventually, everyone know about this beautiful foam on the sea, which tasted good, smelt nice and looked beautiful, so they all came and ate. The more they ate, the more they became heavy. Their appearance changed. Their power changed and slowly they could not fly very long distances anymore. Slowly their Light, their aura became shorter, and more dull in color. But they didn’t notice that much. Anyway, it was too late to change. The foam was too good. The more they ate, the more they wanted it, so they could not stop eating. After everyone ate, the foam was gone because they ate too much.

Then something else appeared on Earth, a kind of weed that grew all over the place. Anyone could take it and eat it. It was a kind of crawling weed. People liked it also. Because there was no more foam, they tried the weed, and the weed was also tasty, nice, beautiful and fragrant. So they ate, and everyone ate. The more they ate this weed, the coarser their bodies and spirits became. They could hardly fly anymore. Their physical bodies began to change for the worse, not for the better. They were beautiful and glorious before. Now they looked more coarse, and some sounds began to emanate from their mouths. There was no need to speak before, but now they had to make some sound in order for the neighbors to understand them. It was just some babbling, but it was sound. They could not stop eating now. They had become like addicts. Oh! It was so beautiful, so good, so they kept on eating.

After that something else came. The beautiful weed was not there anymore, and they went searching around for something else to eat. The Earth offered something like rice or wheat. The Earth began to offer these kinds of things, and people ate them. But these things grew outside, in the fields. From where they lived, they had to walk some distance and take them home. These things did not grow all over the place like before. So they took them home and ate them, and everyone had enough every day. But slowly people began to be lazy and said, “Why should I go every day to the field and get what I need? I can take enough for two or three days, then I don’t need to go every day.” So they took for three days. Their neighbors saw this and did the same thing. Some people who were more greedy and took for ten days, others took for twenty days.

Slowly the wheat supply disappeared because everyone took much more then they needed. After a while the trouble started, because the ones who had a lot feared that the ones who didn’t have would come to steal, and things like that. So now, a Council was formed by the people to settle all these disputes and to make the laws. That was why the first government of the world was formed, because of eating, nothing more noble. Then they divided the earth into different pieces. This part was for Mr. so-and-so, and that part was for Mrs. so-and-so, and no one was to violate this division.

The more they ate these things, the coarser they became and their bodies began to change. Some changed into a woman’s shape, some changed into a man’s shape, what we call men and women nowadays. Before that, there wasn’t any shape; everyone was exactly the same, living in glory and love together. There was no physical attraction between each other. But after they ate too much of all these things, there was fighting, stealing, and disputing and things began to change so tragically. People began to look at each other with wonder and attraction.

Those who ate less would still be more beautiful, and those who ate more became more ugly. The ugly chased after the beauty. The beauty would be the woman. Yes, probably because we ate less! Therefore, until now women are still being called the beauty. So then, the so-called man began to chase after the woman because they were more beautiful. Everyone loves beauty because of that, because we were born beautiful, we were from the beauty. That’s why up until now, everyone loves beauty, and all the women put on all that beautiful make-up just because they remember deep down in their memory that they had been beautiful, or their real Self is beautiful.

So, whatever their appearances on Earth are, they are not satisfied. The men too, no matter however beautiful his wife is, he still likes to look at another beauty, because he remembers in the old days everyone was beautiful, more beautiful than his wife even. So, he cannot be satisfied with looking at one beauty. That’s the cause of unfaithfulness. It’s not that he is really bad, it’s just that instinctive nature inside us.

Even greed, the hoarding of money and possessions, and the love of beauty came from the noble root that we have been in a more glorious world, where all things were in plenty. We had everything that we needed without even asking, and we were all beautiful and glorious. That’s why we still love all those shining jewels, make-up, beautiful men, beautiful women and like to have a luxurious life. It is because we had them before, and we miss them now. Therefore, we try to get them back as much as we can, as much as our ability here will allow us. Therefore, all those so-called bad habits and instincts in men stem from a very noble root. If we know it, we would feel more sorry rather than blaming ourselves or accusing others for chasing after beauty or money.

So, once we understand this through spiritual practice, we will leave all these things. We will have them, but we will not crave them. Whatever we have, we are satisfied and use them. We will not be slaves to these things, and we will not crave or try all means to get them, or even maybe start a war because of these things.

The Perfect Example of a Great Saint – part 1

Costa Rica
December 24, 1990

This is a story that happened two thousand years ago, in the Bible. I just read a portion of it. “When Jesus was born, suddenly there was a blaze of light, so bright that people had to shield their eyes and out of the brightness came the voice of God’s messenger, and angel: “Don’t be afraid! I come with good news for you and for all the world. The savior has come! God’s promised king was born today in Bethlehem. You will find the baby asleep in the manger!”

“Then the shepherds saw a great crowd of angles all praising God: “Glory to God in Heaven! And peace for those who love Him on Earth!”

“When the angels had gone, the sky was dark again. The shepherds began to talk among themselves: “We have to go to Bethlehem and see what has happened. The savior was born to save the people of the world. Glory to God! Glory to Jesus! Glory to all His children! Amen.”

Now we remember two thousand years ago a great being was born among ourselves. He is so great that we have no words to praise Him. Only God knows His greatness. We mortals cannot understand. We can understand only when we become as great as He.

Now we often ask ourselves, “Why is it that Jesus had to die so quickly when He had just reached the peak of glory in His mission; that is, to spread the message of God?” If He had not left Earth in such a short time and in such a tragic way, probably, His name would have been forgotten by now. God sacrificed Him in this way so that the whole world would remember, so that we would treasure a messenger of God, by whichever name he came.

Since the ancient times, our world has always been in trouble. People always err and forget God. So God always has to send some messengers to remind us. But Jesus was one of the most remembered because of His greatness, also because of His very short stay with us, and the way He left us and was resurrected. Now we say, “The great Son of God, He had such a great Power and did so many miracles. Why didn’t He change His own destiny? Why did He have to die in such a tragic way?” But He had to do it, otherwise we would not be shocked out of our sleep. We would think the world is forever or the Master is forever.

There were also some other Masters before Jesus, but now people do not remember Them as much as we remember Jesus. When we remember Jesus, we will remember God and we will derive some blessing because Jesus was the Son of God. In other words, Jesus was God personified on Earth. He had to leave us very early. He had His purpose. He wanted to shock us out of our slumber.

Many thousands of years later, we are still shocked, if we remember this story, because of the ephemeral nature of our existence on Earth. Even the Son of God had to die! Everyone must go eventually. If even a man as great as Jesus cannot preserve this ephemeral body and also cannot be protected from the violence and ignorance of the people of this world, how could we feel safe? That is why He submitted Himself to the punishment which He did not deserve. He suffered for the sake of everyone!

If we say Jesus used his blood to wash away our sins, it is not exaggerating. It is the truth. Because every time we think of Jesus, we learn something. At least we remember the ephemeral nature of our world and our body, or at least we learn humility because such a great one had to suffer in such a way. He was so humble that He surrendered Himself to God and said, Whatever God wills must be done. Otherwise He could have escaped. We know He had a lot of magical power, including the power to be invisible, but He chose to obey God’s arrangement. So when we think of Him, we would say, “Who are we to be proud, to forget God’s will and not to surrender?” But these lessons are hard to learn. If all people would learn these lessons well, then Jesus’ sacrifice was worthwhile and we are worthy to be His followers and worshippers.

Everything is arranged by God for some purpose. Our effort is necessary so that we will know we don’t need any effort. All the guidelines, all the meditation hours I have prescribed to you, and all the effort that you put into it are necessary, so that finally you will learn to use no effort, no human effort, as Jesus did. He died on the cross just to give us a perfect example of surrendering. If we know this and learn this well, we are good Christians. Because during His great but short mission He always preached this lesson. The Bible also always emphasizes this, Seek you first the Kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto you. Worry you not for tomorrow. Take care of today only. Do not worry about what you will eat or what will clothe you. Look at the lily of the valley. If the Father takes care of the lily of the valley, how would He not take care of us? Are we not better than them?

But many people in His time did not hear His messages. Many people nowadays still do not hear His messages, even if they call themselves Christians. So every year we should celebrate Jesus’ birthday and try our best to remember to remind others how to surrender to God, and try ourselves to surrender to God, or at least try to remember God.

God is within us, but if we are too busy thinking of all other things and wanting all other things, then God has no chance to contact us or to put His message through, whether through silence in our heart or through a living messenger. I think Jesus sacrificed Himself just to let us know this lesson. Lay you not your treasure on Earth, where moths do corrupt and destroy; but lay your treasure in Heaven, because it is eternal.

How do we lay our treasure in Heaven? Should we build a safe and put money inside? No, in Heaven we do not need money. Everything is provided in plenty before we ask. So why did Jesus say that we should lay our treasure in Heaven? He meant we should build up our merits and love God.

How to love God? Keep His commandments, there are only ten. They are only a few and easy to keep especially when we compare them with so many temptations and difficulties in this world, or when we compare them with the amount of endurance we have to have in order to preserve a marriage, keep a job, or study.

We accept everything in this world for what purpose? Each one of us eats only about three meals and wears just a few clothes, but we work so hard to maintain everything. We keep all the rules of the factory if we want to keep the job or to please the boss. But what does the boss give us? Not much. God gives everything if we keep the commandments, but we just neglect them only because God is invisible to us.

God is so liberal. He will not come to us every day and say, “Hey, you didn’t keep the commandments, you…,” so we don’t fear Him as we fear our boss, our relatives, friends, wife, husband, etc. Sometimes, when we are married, we have a very difficult husband or wife and he or she gives us a lot of trouble, but we bear it because we love our spouse or we fear that person. But we do not fear God and do not keep His commandments.

Moving Toward God-Realization – part 2

Therefore when these so-called people, so called unenlightened people, or “have not realized their own greatness people” come and request the so-called Buddha to explain to them and to show them the way how to become Buddha, then that Buddha would do it. But without any sense of false pride or superiority at all. It might have a little sense of surprise in it, but no pride – Probably, “Why doesn’t she know it?” You know, “Why doesn’t she know that she is the Buddha.” On and off, will be always a sense of surprise during the preaching time of any Buddha or any Master.

When I say Buddha please understand also, and I think you understand, that I mean also Christ or any Messiahs or any Master living – true living high Master. I was very… much of the time in contact with Buddhist doctrines, before and even now. Also I read many other doctrines. But because when I was young I was always familiar with the Buddhist terminologies, therefore, sometimes I say Buddha or Buddhist doctrines. But please do not misunderstand that I stand for Buddhism alone and do not respect Christianity or any other great philosophy. I am for all. I respect all and I know all point to the same Truth. But we must know the Truth. That’s important. Not only to know the way, but we must know the Truth. Like once the Buddha said: I am the finger that points toward the moon, but the finger is not the moon. He meant that His doctrines, His philosophy is just to awaken in us a sense of longing for the moon, for the Truth. But we must not cling to that philosophy alone and forget to find the Truth. So the Truth which we have inside us, that is God Nature or the Kingdom of God or Buddha Nature, we have it already. We must uncover it. There is a technique to do it immediately, and continue to do it daily until we recover the whole Kingdom of God for ourselves.

The way most of the people live their life now is not yet complete and is not very ideal for our happiness and for our wisdom. There are many levels to live our life. The first level is the physical level where most or many of the people spend their life. In the physical level we mostly love sensual pleasures, love to sleep, love to eat, eat well, love to have all kinds of physical happiness, and we tend toward laziness too. We just work because we need to earn a living. But we do not put our ideal, our heart into our work. I’m just talking about different levels. Please don’t be offended. So that is the physical level. And we find that it’s difficult to work. We don’t like working that much. As far as it doesn’t concern our welfare, it’s difficult for us to lift our finger to work for others or to do anything that is more beneficial to the mass of humankind. I’m just talking a general view, but if we go into details it’ll take a longer time.

So now the second level is what we call the emotional level. In the emotional level we are very strong in our opinion. We can say we are domineering or authoritative. What we think is right. What we do is correct. And we expect even others to do the same. There is this level are born many dictators and great so-called leaders in the extremist movement. Because they are too emotional, they live their life in the emotional level.  It is good if they follow the right way. But when it is the wrong way they also do not try to correct it and they will not admit their errors. And that is the danger, because there is no flexibility.

Another level where we can live our life is that we live our life in the intellect, in the mind, the physical mind. Well the mind, I am sorry, it’s normally physical. It’s kind of computer, very excellent computer. Records everything and puts our all the data, very faithfully without any intelligence and judgment. If we do not put the soul’s intelligence into it then the mind is an automatic machine. I’m talking about this automatic machine, the unenlightened mind. So when people live in this kind of automatic level of the mind they become even more engrossed in themselves. Is that right? And they would not care much about what’s going on in the world. They would not even dictate others what to do.

So many people reach this level and they probably hide themselves in a cave or bury themselves into any kind of ideal, and they stick in there. They get stuck. And they would not care what happens to the world. And they would not even want to change the world or to change themselves. They thing they are perfect the way they are. And many mistake this for the highest enlightenment itself. They thing there is nothing to do in the world. But the way of doing without doing is in a different level. It’s not that. It’s not that we don’t care for the world and we do nothing for the world. It is not so the great enlightenment. It’s just one of the levels of the progress to enlightenment, to the great enlightenment. Enlightenment we have anyhow, different degrees each day. As we struggle towards the Truth we experience different enlightenments each day, and we broaden our wisdom until one day we reach the highest level. So that is one of the levels.

Now if we reach a little bit higher level we live in so-called the soul, the Self level, the Self-realization level. We know than that we are soul, that we live because of the soul, that we are intelligent because of the soul’s Light, that we have compassion and feeling, etc… because of the soul’s motivation behind it. And in this level we know many things and we try many ways to benefit the world, to help the world and to help ourselves to live in bliss, happiness and anything that we want to define as a noble goal of humankind. And we try hard. We still try with effort and all our might to achieve this, and to help others to achieve the same. This is the soul’s level, the Self-realized man.

Because at that time we identify ourselves with the soul, we know that we and the soul, the source of inspiration, are the same, we are not the body. But still that is not the highest level, because at that time we still have the ego that identifies, that know it is great, that knows that, I and my Father are one. There are two, still too crowded, too crowded. (Master & everyone laugh) Even though you say, I and my Father are one, but because there are still “I” and “my Father,” therefore not yet one. Yeah, you see, that’s the paradox of things. So now, don’t say I criticize Jesus; it’s not true. He only said that in order to make people understand. But He was not that, you understand? He knew that He was different. Therefore in another place, he said, Not I but the Father does. You understand what I mean? He knows. He know better than, I and my Father are one, but He must say something. Otherwise people would not get what He wanted to say.

To Love God Is To Keep His Commandments – part 3

So God, the Father, the Supreme, the most compassionate, the most loving, the Almighty, could not possibly have such a defying nature and would never make war against His children or sometimes kill His children in thousands just for some small mistakes. That cannot be the true God. These are only the imagination, the characteristics of human. We should go back to the true God. The true God is all loving, all wise and all forgiving. This is the God that Jesus wanted to present to His people, and this is the God that I also want to remind you of. The true God resides within us and there is no other God besides Him.

How to find this God? By reverting to the principles – that is, all loving, all forgiving, all compassion, and all wisdom – by repenting our previous misdeeds committed through ignorance, and by resolving not to commit them again. With such a true repentance the Light of God will sprout forth again, and all our past sins will be forgiven. That is the true baptism; not by water but by the Holy Spirit, by the Light of wisdom and logic. That’s why nowadays when we are baptized by water, we don’t see any Light from God and we do not feel free of our sins and suffering; because the principle is not imposed upon us, wisdom is not opened for us, and deep repentance is not evoked within our souls.

At the time of the true baptism, or what we call initiation, you will see the Light of God, you will hear the Word which was God, which is mentioned in the Bible: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So the true baptism should bring us in contact with this Word or with God. That’s the difference between the true baptism and ordinary baptism. We may use water or we may not use water; it makes no difference. What is important is the impression that the baptism evokes within ourselves.

Therefore when John the Baptist baptized people and when Jesus preached, people derived more benefit than when all other priests did the same. It is because John the Baptist had inspiration, sincerity and devotion to God. And when Jesus preached His doctrine, it was inspired by His own deep conviction, His own enlightenment and His own love for God – a very pure love and pure wisdom, which was different from the ordinary priests of His time.

Jesus’ love and wisdom will not be contaminated by any worldly gain or any desire for worldly fame and power. His life was simple and true, true to every word that He preached. He did not preach because He wanted to be famous or He wanted people to respect Him, but He preached because of His love for God, His true love for humankind and the true desire that He wanted to bring the true Light to people in order to eliminate their suffering.

Once we understand why we suffer, we can change it. It is only when we do not understand, then we continue. Similarly when the doctor diagnoses the condition and knows where the sickness is, he can cure it; but the most important thing is that the patient himself should know how to live his life in order to stay healthy for a long time. In order to stay healthy in body, we should know some hygienic rules, we should know what food to eat and what exercises to do so that we can prevent most diseases. In order to stay healthy in spirit, we should know what the Law of God, the Low of Nature is, so that we can stay healthy in wisdom and become “God-like,” because God made human in His own image. The Bible tells us: Be you perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.

If most people had followed this advice from the Bible, the world would have become Heaven long ago. But most people do not follow and do not respect the Law of God. Therefore we incur much suffering for ourselves within any nations. The most important and the first law of God is: Thou shalt not kill, and that we even misunderstand. We couldn’t even keep the first commandant. In the Bible it is written that the priests at Thanksgiving killed many lambs, sheep, goats and good ducks to make an offering to God, and that this was even done at the site of the holy temple, making God’s abode become a slaughterhouse! So God protested. He said: Who told you to dill all the sheep and goats to make an offering to me? You should wash yourself of this innocent blood, and don’t commit this sin again. You should repent of your sin!

Can you imagine a beautiful temple with great and magnificent pillars, with shining roof, with large rooms, spaces, coral yards and splendid structure? It should be a place for gathering for wisdom, and for worshiping the most High; but at that time, the temple became a slaughterhouse and all the priests smelt blood and smoke from roasted meat. I don’t think intelligent people would say that it’s very holy. Moses laid down the law, Thou shalt not kill that which is from God. But even then they broke it.

So we cannot blame God for the miseries that the world has to suffer from time to time. If God, who is worthy of our reverence and love, has to depend on roast beef, roast lamb and roast sheep for survival, if He has to live from our sweat labor and earnings, from some people who are too poor to even afford meat themselves, then we can imagine what kind of grace, what kind of blessing that He, as such a dependent God, could give us? Even ordinary people wouldn’t do that, so how would a God do that?

Many good-hearted people often help others from very pure, unconditional love and don’t expect anything in return. How can we imagine a God who always demands gold, silver and roast beef, and doesn’t even give anything in return? If He demanded beef before He  gave any favor, this must be the trickery which came from the priesthood, not from God.  Even if God truly wanted it so, after we gave Him all the beef, chickens and whatever,  He should have, but still didn’t return the favor. He could have said, “OK, it’s fair enough.” But He didn’t. He didn’t even return anything at all. Oh, that God! The proof that He didn’t return anything is that, those people who made offerings are still suffering from sickness, from misery, from sorrow and from everything else, like any other mortals. Even the priests in the temple also have to suffer like anyone else.

Therefore, some people made a fool of God. That’s unfair to Him. The question lays in our own misunderstanding; not that God has an unmerciful and greedy nature. God has laid down the Law that we have to obey, not for God’s sake, but for our own sake. In English we always say, “For God’s sake you have to do this, for God’s sake you have to do that.” But now I say, “For our sake we should do that, for your sake you should do this.” We should correct that saying. I don’t know if in your country you also say “For God’s sake,” You do this, too?! Oh, I am sorry, but I have to speak the truth.

Peter Canova: Unraveling the Mysteries of Creation and the Sacred Feminine – part 1

Peter Canova  is the American author and Gnostic Gospels expert.  After an extraordinary career as an international businessman and luxury hotel developer, Mr. Canova began studying ancient mystical teachings, quantum physics and psychology. Today he’ll discuss his perspective on the mysteries of creation and the meaning of the Gnostic Gospels as well as other spiritual insights he’s gained from his research.

Mr. Canova is author of the “First Souls” novel trilogy. Book one is called “Pope Annalisa” and has won seven national book awards in the US including the prestigious Nautilus Gold Medal Award and the Independent Publishers Award.

My name is Peter Canova. I’m from the United States and I’m an author. I had a series of, I guess what you call psychic experiences when I was younger. And it put me on the quest to understand the whole basis of how these types of phenomena happen to us. I sensed that we must all be connected in some sort of matrix or energy field. So just trying to really understand and answer those questions set the course of my later life.

I think what has been missing in organized religions for a long time is a flexibility that allows a person to determine their own spiritual experiences, their own images, their own dreams and things like that without being channeled into what is accepted by the particular religious group. When you have a spiritual perspective, but you don’t lock it into any particular type of creed, your ability to experience that spirit is a lot broader.

The modern world is rediscovering the mysteries of the East and the significance of yin, the female energy, and yang, the male energy, for spiritual advancement. Psychologist Carl Jung, known for his adept studies of Gnosticism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and other traditions, believed that the unification of the yin and yang polarities within the individual is an important step in achieving spiritual wholeness, or merging with the higher Self.

All of us are born with both male and female qualities within us. Now Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, would call it the anima and the animus, which is the male part in the female and the female in the male. And one’s ability to use those faculties simultaneously is what makes an outstanding human being. When we bring those faculties into balance, we have a person who can be both feeling and intuitive, a person who can be both logical and analytical. And I think that that is certainly a gateway to opening up to higher spiritual experience.

The sacred feminine was always the recognition that there are two faces of God, that God in this world expresses itself in terms of male and female qualities. The sacred feminine, in particular, was the belief of the ancients that it was the divine feminine faculty that led directly to the creation of the material world and the creation of material experience. And therefore in very early societies, you had a lot of worship of the goddess as opposed to the god, the male god image. And along with that worship of the goddess went a respect for these feminine faculties. People took a more intuitive approach and a heartfelt feeling approach towards their spirituality

When consciousness first came into physical form, the world must have been a very magical and intuitive place back then. The human being was closer to the source of the consciousness that had descended into the physical body. I think what happened was all of a sudden, the spirit in the human being woke up to the shock that it was in a physical body, and now it had survival issues.

They had to develop a more male type of analytical strategy to understand the things in the world and survive. And I think that worked but it went overboard. Now we’ve gone almost to an extreme on the male side, and I think the reason why real spirituality has become so obscured is because we have lost the ability to believe in our own imaginations and listen to our own intuition, and listen to the heart rather than just the head

You can follow any of those charts you see on the left brain and right brain faculties. Generally speaking, the male or the left brain faculties are logic, analysis, linear thinking, tend to be very verbal in orientation, and tend to want to classify things. The male orientation wants to break the whole into parts to understand it. Now the female, on the other hand, is more feeling and intuitive, and it looks at the whole rather than the parts. Now we all have each of them, but in most cases one side is more pronounced than the other. So, it’s important to bring those two into balance.

We asked Mr. Canova to speak about his award-winning book and its message.

I’ve written a novel called “Pope Annalisa” about an African nun who becomes the first female pope, but in the book it deals with a lot of scientific, spiritual, and metaphysical themes. And it’s really about the origin, the destiny and the purpose of human beings here on Earth.

It’s about spirit transcending religion, quantum science transcending tradition, material science and consciousness transcending matter.

We haven’t seen a female priest before; we certainly haven’t seen a female Pope before. And so I started thinking what would it be like. What would a woman be like who would be able to become a Pope when that’s been an exclusively male occupation for 2,000 years, and what kind of a world would accept that? What kind of a world would allow that to happen?

So from those questions, I started to build the whole platform of the world that Pope Annalisa might live in. So I just kind of built on from that and then that vehicle just became an outpouring of my own spiritual expression of what I wanted to convey to people. I felt that the experiences I had were so vivid, I wanted a way to convey the knowledge that I’ve brought back from those experiences to other people in hopes that would help them in their own particular spiritual journey.

In 1945 some of the texts that are part of the Gnostic Gospels were discovered in Egypt, and their finding led to profound insights about the meaning of the spiritual teachings of past enlightened masters such as Jesus.

We see very clearly that Jesus was teaching two different things. He was teaching an inner mystery and he was teaching an outer set of guidelines and parables for the masses. Now in the book of Mark or Luke or Matthew, it’s very clear. He says to the disciples, “Unto you were given the mysteries in the Kingdom of Heaven, unto those without, these things were done in parables.” Christianity had two streams – one was an inner church of mystical teachings, and the other one was an outer church, which is pretty much what has evolved into the churches we know today. But through documents that have been unearthed in recent times, we begin to be able to construct the picture of what those teachings might have been.

What was the nature of these mystical teachings? Mr. Canova now explains his findings.

I’m going to try and simplify. The first thing would be that there was one and only one source for all existence, and that source they called the first consciousness. First consciousness was the ancient, first thought. I should say, first thought was the ancient word for consciousness, so the first precept of the mystical teachings was that there was one and only one consciousness that has created everything that we perceive and everything that we see.

The next important thing in that teaching would have been that this one consciousness divided itself up into numerous points of consciousness, so you could say Consciousness with a large ‘C’ broke itself up into consciousness with a small ‘c’ which would include human consciousness, and this happened through a process where the whole would limit knowledge of itself, almost like the whole would forget parts of itself that it was the whole and it was everything, because as it limited its own consciousness, that created the source of identity for individual consciousness, and the parts could only think of themselves as parts if they can’t recognize the whole.

A specific portion of the Gnostic texts says that the first of the spirit consciousness, you can call them angels in modern terminology, in the Gnostic texts they’re called aeons, but aeons and angels are really the same thing, when the first of these spiritual beings started to break away from the whole and started to think of the possibility of a separate existence, this was the original fall. The first was the fall from spirit into the thought of separation, and the thought of separation became soul or psyche or individual mind.

The second fall was the fall of psyche or soul into the physical body. And the second one would have been the one that we see in the Bible, Adam and Eve. When this first thought of separation started to congeal, it started to produce an effect, which led to the creation of matter. And it’s said that this matter could not vibrate at the same dimensional level as the spiritual vibration, and it was expelled in a great disturbance. Their word for Big Bang was “a great disturbance,” and it was expelled from the Heavenly realm. They called it the Pleroma, what we would call the heavenly or spiritual realm. This thought that led to matter was expelled in a great disturbance into another dimension.

Questions & Answers after Lecture (27-28)

Q 27 :Master, there are billions of people alive today who would pass from this life without being initiated into your program. Does this mean that they cannot reach enlightenment in this lifetime by any other means?

M: Yes, they can, but the degree is different.  And sometimes in deep prayer, they have a glimpse of enlightenment, but that is flickering and sometimes it’s gone again. And they don’t know; again they are back into ignorance. But initiation means permanent. You know definitely where the switch is, and you switch it on any time you want. And you are inside the circle of light . But enlightenment from other ways, it is not always permanent and sometimes it’s dangerous because people do not know how to handle the newly discovered energy. Therefore some people become mentally disturbed and all kinds of queer things, or abusing of the magical power which is from a lower level and become anything, you know, magician, healers, any kind without reaching the highest level of consciousness. Because without the guidance of the Master, we do not know where we are heading to, and then we stumble around and we play around with all kinds of things, and sometimes it’s dangerous.

Because the path of enlightenment is also full of tricks and pitfalls which we should avoid. And with an experienced guide, it’s easier, faster, safer. But what can we do? The world is like that; that’s why it is the world. If the worldly people are all enlightened, we don’t call this earth “world,” we call it “heaven,” understand? And the atmosphere around us will be different, Everything will be different. And then we don’t even need to work for food, we don’t even need to want anything. All things will be there just like in heaven because our merit will be different, will be many folds, thousand folds. Up to now just a few millions of people are enlightened, the merit is not enough to cover the whole earth population. Therefore we still have disasters, we still have wars even though it’s less than before.  Because the majority of the people have a higher awareness at the present century, due to the mass media, the broadcasting system of Master’s enlightening message around the world, and due to the large numbers of people who join into the enlightened circle of the sage. Therefore our world is better.

Q28: When one becomes a Master, will he or she ever have fear, doubt or anger? We call Jesus a Master, however, according to the Bible, Jesus was frightened the night before he was crucified. And before his death, Jesus cried, “Why God deserted me?” Please explain, if Jesus had fear and doubt, how can we have no fear and doubt?

M: They probably would have fear and doubt, but that fear and doubt is not deep rooted like us. If Jesus had no fear of the crucifixion, then his sacrifice was not so great. He had fear, but he accepted. Whereby we have fear and we run away and we try to blame it on others or we try to escape, we try to put that cross on someone else. That is the difference. We might have fear. We might have emotion, but we can withdraw it anytime or we can make use of the fear or emotion to the benefit of other beings. After enlightenment, all the feelings, all the emotions are still there, because we are made to have these in order to use them to understand other brothers and sisters. If you have no feeling, no emotion, how can you understand human beings? How can you help them? But the fears of the Master are different. The fears of the Master sometimes are also affected by the fear of the disciples. He takes the fear from the disciples so the disciples are fearless but the Master will take some degree of that fear. But that is only very shallow and not deep rooted. It’s only illusion. And the Master on one hand has the fear but on the other hand definitely has no fear, you understand what I mean? He knows he has to have fear but he doesn’t fear the fear. (Applause)

 

The Greatest Way Of A Gentleman Is Enlightenment

Excerpt from Master Ching Hai’s Lecture

If I don’t have the opportunity to truly have a very deep understanding with the non-initiated people, I would have forgotten, because most often I see people as myself. I forgot whether I am enlightened or they are not enlightened. I have never remembered these things when I meet people. And that’s why sometimes apart from feeling some kind of discouraged during my mission, I also felt in my heart that there is no need to teach anyone. There’s no need to run around the world, no need to answer the invitation of my disciples worldwide and tire myself out on the airplane, smoking airplane, and crowded airport and all that, and hectic schedule. Because I thought there’s no need to do it, because I don’t see any necessity. But then just when I think like that, sometimes the almighty power would remind me that it is necessary. Because there is a big difference between knowing you have a treasure and making use of it and just knowing you have a treasure but do not know where and how to use it. There is a big difference. Therefore, if I continue to travel around the world according to the sincere request of the disciples, it is because of these instances that I know some people do not know that they are great, and they long to know.

Not because we want to be proud of our greatness, but it is a duty to know our heritage. We cannot just be born into this world, live a few decades of hectic schooling, working, sweating, earning money, struggling with children and family problems, and then “kaput,” finished, (laughter) and nothing more to that, nothing more to life, nothing more to the great meaning of human life. And worse still, at the time of leaving this world, we suffer. We suffer because of the attachment with our family members, we suffer because we do not know where we are going, we suffer because of the fear of the unknown. And the whole family members or the beloved ones just standing around helpless, seeing us suffering.

Therefore the great way of a gentleman is enlightenment. We must know where we come from and where we are going, very clearly, very decisively, because we are great human beings. We live a life of a hero. We walk the life of God on earth. We should not live like slaves to our money, to our possessions, to our whatever desires that the world has labored, found a way to stick it onto our mind. We were not born with desires, we were not born with hatred, we were not born with race discrimination. We were born from innocence and beauty so we should remain like that. And we should even be wiser, apart from being innocent. That’s the way of a gentleman, that’s the way of the great beings.

Enlightenment Awakens the Positive Power – part 2

 Why must we remember the purpose of our coming here? Not because we have promised to do so; but because if we don’t remember, we must come back again and again and again until we do remember, until we have fulfilled our mission on this planet. Then we can go to a higher existence or remember our original great position in heaven or in nirvana. The suffering of this world is not due to only the war. The war is not the catastrophe. It’s not the lack of food and all these, but the suffering of this world comes from ignorance. Because we don’t know our mission, our purpose, we mistake the “playground” for “home,” overstay our due, and sometimes suffer the cold, danger outside the house.

Even then the Buddhas, God Almighty always try to look for us, for the lost children, for the ones who love to play and forget to go Home. Therefore the Buddha sometimes comes down and endures the suffering of the human existence, endures the humiliation of the petty physical life in order to find the lost children, to bring them back to safety before it’s too late. Because any house, doesn’t matter how solid it is built, one day it must be demolished by itself, by some other elements or some causes, or have to rebuild a new one because it’s too old. This world is a big house, very beautiful, very solid house; but it’s not a permanent house.

That’s why the Buddhas, the Saints, like Jesus, Mohammed, etc., They came down to us, extended Their blessings to us. We walk one step, They walk a hundred thousand steps to receive us; forgive our mistakes; cleanse our past unwholesome actions; teach us the new kind of life, new beginning, or better speaking; and lead us back to the original way of life, the way we must live, the way we should carry out our life.

Up to now, all the cells in our body, all the nerves in our system have listened only to almost negative orders from our “information center.” That’s why we have wars. That’s why we have assassinations. That’s why we have competition at the cost of other people’s jobs, businesses, wives or husbands; because we do not have positive information in our brain center to order our body to do good things. The people who are good in this world are also sometimes – or often overwhelmed by the negative, by the negative influences in the society, also become shaky in their faith, become weaker in their goodness, and sometimes eventually also give in to the negative power.

So when we have only negative information in our brains, then of course we can only give out negative information or negative orders; and the cells in the body, the nerves in the system also can follow only the negative orders and then do negative things. That’s why we have no peace in the world. That’s why even up to now brothers are still killing each other. Even parents are killing their children for pleasure, for privacy, for individual freedom, “pro-choice” etc. Not because they are bad, not because all these war-makers, all these parents are bad. The husband who killed the wife, the wife who killed the husband, or the brothers killing each other are not because they are bad. Just because their brains have been fed only with negative information, only with negative ideas and that’s what they carry out.

Whatever the brain orders, the cells comply, the cells have to do it, the body must function. That’s why we sink deeper and deeper into depression and that’s why our world is almost any time in danger of disappearing, from our own making.

So the only thing to help us now is very logical; is that to feed us with positive information to change our information stream. Every day we must receive good information, positive information, constructive information, enlightened, wise information. Then from the brain they will direct the cells, the nervous system; and everything done will be only good, only peaceful, only wise, only constructive positive things. That’s how we save the world.

Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many peace talks, how much money we spend on the arms, on the army, still we don’t have a secure feeling. Look, one day this country just finishes the war, shakes hands with each other. Okay. We start anew. The next morning, we hear that the other country has broken out in war. Then the United Nations run over there; and that’s not yet finished, the other country makes war with the other country  over there and then over here, over everywhere.

Stephen Bassett: Enhancing Awareness of Human-Extraterrestrial Relations

In recent decades, public interest in the existence of extraterrestrial life has grown dramatically, and many people are seeking disclosure about what governments know on the subject. One such individual is activist, lobbyist and commentator Stephen Bassett, Executive Director of the Paradigm Research Group and the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee (X-PPAC), both of which are based in Bethesda, Maryland USA. Mr. Bassett is a leading advocate for increasing public awareness about the extraterrestrial presence engaging humankind and its potential benefits for our planet and civilization.

Supreme Master Television had the opportunity to speak with Stephen Bassett about his work at the October 2011 Conscious Life Visionary Expo in Los Angeles, California, USA. Today  we’d like to  present excerpts from the fascinating interview.

I am a political activist, and I have been since 1996. And the focus of my activism is the extraterrestrial issue and its resolution. Prior to that I did business consulting. I did get a degree in physics but my life really began when I entered this issue and I’ve been doing it exclusively since then. And the issue regarding ET phenomena had been with me my whole life.

One of the key books I read was John Mack’s “Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.” Mack was a Harvard (University)-trained psychiatrist. And the fact that he had gotten into the issue, studying contactees, was a milestone for me and told me this thing is definitely moving forward. Then it was easy to conclude: “Well, if the extraterrestrial presence were to become known as an accepted reality, that would be the most profound event in human history.”

So I said, “I’ll engage it politically.” So the first thing I did was to register as a (federal government) lobbyist, thus the name Paradigm Research Group, which is the name of my organization. I was the first person to ever register as a lobbyist in Washington (DC) (USA) on this issue. Then I formed the first political-action committee. Then, of course, the field is getting crowded so we’re now a movement.

Mr. Bassett now discusses the substantial body of evidence for the existence of human-extraterrestrial interaction that has emerged in recent decades.

The evidence is massive and overwhelming. It’s been accumulated for 60 years, 5,000 books and pamphlets, millions of sightings, hundreds of thousands of reports, thousands of pilot sightings, discs (seen) off (of airplane) windows, cockpits, radar reports, and multiple sightings on the ground. Now, you have to go look at it. It’s years to study this evidence. But there is a massive amount of evidence to prove it.

One of the most profound pieces of evidence is in the last 20 years, many hundreds of thousands of people have reported contact with extraterrestrials. They’re reporting contacts which are pretty consistent, the same kind of beings, the same kind of procedures. So that’s incredibly powerful evidence. And then one other; that is, government witnesses coming forward, people like astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and astronaut Gordon Cooper. That’s very powerful. These are very accomplished people.

Mr. Bassett next elaborates on some of the types of extraterrestrials that have been described by contactees, and the need for increased public understanding of their existence and efforts to interact with humans.

There appear to be four or five types that are most commonly reported by contactees, and the most common is the “Greys,” which vary in size and in other ways. And this image of the “Grey” is now ubiquitous in the world, in advertising, on packaging, on television. It’s a very slight, four-foot being, spindly arms, four fingers, very small mouth, vestigial ears, vestigial nose and big, black, slanted eyes. And that wasn’t concocted in the imagination of some ad person. That is in fact the imagery that’s being reported.

“The Art of Close Encounters” is a new book that has a 150 contactee reports with about 200 pieces of art that show the range of this phenomena. There’s a group called the “Nordics” which look very human, almost identical, but beautiful, tall, blonde beings. Those are pretty well established. There are significant benefits that would come if the world’s people know that they are not alone, there’s other extraterrestrial civilizations. I think this opens up a broad range of doors that we could go through to start dealing with the problems we’re creating. There’s potential technological breakthroughs that come from ET technology.

So the benefits would far outweigh any justification that the world’s major governments could put forward to justify keeping this suppressed anymore. Letting them know it’s true, and also letting them know that things are moving forward, helps to acclimate people for this, so that there will be less disruption when it does happen. And also, as awareness raises about the likelihood of disclosure, the likelihood of disclosure goes up. So again, the idea is to get disclosure of the ET presence as soon as possible, so public awareness helps in both those areas.

When humans become more conscious and accepting of extraterrestrials, the door to advancing our planet and civilization in numerous ways will be opened.

We have a number of craft and we’ve been studying them for decades, we know how the craft perform, we know they’re anti-gravitic. So there may be a profound energy source there. There is a lot going on now in human physics that’s pointing towards accessing extraordinary energy sources. It’s called the ground field, zero-point field, quantum field. It turns out the amount of energy that is around us is actually quite extraordinary. If we could tap into that energy, it changes the equations on planet Earth profoundly, so we think there is more information there, we need to have that information out so that we can utilize potential energy sources.

It’s also clear from the contact reports, they’re (ETs) extremely skilled in life sciences, in genetics. So one of the great truths I think we will learn in the post-disclosure world is that DNA from life planets all throughout the galaxy has been swapping out for millions of years, space-bearing beings have been taking DNA and moving it around. And so our DNA, our life structures here are connected very likely to life structures all over the galaxy. This is incredibly profound.

And when you examine the contactee reports, it turns up everywhere, genetic work, DNA, hybrid beings, they are the masters of this, and probably a lot more, which also means that they’re probably more than capable, or have the technology that is capable of solving almost all the disease problems we have, which means that if we had full contact with the extraterrestrials, and if they were willing to provide us with some of this tech, we could cure virtually all of the major diseases that plague us, which would transform the planet. So disclosure is the door to open contact, and open contact may be the door to access that technology.

Mr. Bassett also believes that having a strong spiritual foundation can help us accept the changes brought about by increased contact with our fellow beings from other parts of the galaxy.

I think people who have a spiritual base probably are in a better position to deal with this transition than people who don’t have that kind of a base. Belief systems will shift, there’ll be some new information we’re going to learn about, our ancient history and perhaps some of our religious lore.

In conclusion, Mr. Bassett states that our extraterrestrial friends are here to guide us to a constructive future in a way that has been experienced for millennia by the inhabitants of many other planets around our galaxy.

They understand from previous experience that at this point we have to go from thinking we’re alone in the universe to knowing we are not. We have to go through the disclosure process. And we have a limited amount of time because the weapons that we have are getting more powerful. The environment’s getting more damaged, so we have to make this transition because once a planetary civilization gets to this point, if they don’t come to understand that they are not alone, if they can’t engage these sort of civilizations, they may not be able to get through this time. In other words, they perish. So they are shepherding us through a necessary transition that every sentient species has probably gone through on planets around the galaxy.

Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken on occasion regarding extraterrestrial beings and their visits to our planet as in this October 2010 videoconference with Supreme Master Television staff in Los Angeles, California, USA.

… Master, have UFOs carried out any other activities on Earth that we don’t know about? What are those activities?

M-Yes. Too many to count, okay? But they’re all good intentions, good intentions. One of it is to help to promote peace, yes, promote peace and stop war. They also stop comets from hitting us, etc., etc. So, you see, many times we heard that the comet almost hit the Earth and then it veered to the other direction into space, harmless space, and so it didn’t harm the Earth.  They also help heal many sick people wherever they can, whenever they happen to have a chance to do that.

And they also soften war-like aggression and trying to induce people into a more peaceful state of mind. So, their activities are so many, so many. We have to thank them immensely. Thank God that they even exist, that God even sent them, that God even allowed them to come and help us, that we even have enough luck to be helped by such highly developed beings.

Thank you Mr. Stephen Bassett for your enlightening discussion on the interactions of extraterrestrials and humans and their potential benefits to our civilization. May the Paradigm Research Group soon succeed in encouraging governments worldwide to inform their respective citizens about our friendly galactic neighbors.

For more information on Stephen Bassett, please visit http://www.ParadigmResearchGroup.org

May our planet soon elevate, thus enabling us to fully integrate with the universe.

Fighting the Spiritual War – part 3

Share the Responsibility of Cleaning the Planet

Nevertheless our fear is not the real fear. We can conquer it. That’s the difference. We know how to do it. We know how to conquer it. We are made like that, so that we help in cleaning the planet. Every Quan Yin practitioner shares the responsibility of cleaning the planet in some degree or another.

Therefore when you’re sitting here meditating together in a group, it’s not that you do it for yourselves, for your five generations’ liberation, for America or for your family alone; it’s for the whole planet. The more people do that, the better. Unfortunately not everyone realizes that. Their level is only up to thinking of the immediate benefit. Therefore sometimes it’s difficult for them to join us in this noble task force.

It’s not that we don’t care. It’s hard to care sometimes. That’s the karma. So we have to be patient and wait until one day the karma is over and then we can help. We can’t force the issue. We can’t step over the Lord of Karma’s head and then do what we want, because it’s not good for the people. Just like in the family. Our big world here is like a family, and there are some parents who watch over the children – us, like the children. So now whoever is nice, quiet and good will be rewarded, so that they develop more and make a shining example for the others to follow. The children who are repeatedly naughty, the parents have to do something like spanking or no ice cream for one week, for example, like that. Then the children will learn to behave better.

Now, the Lord of Karma is like our parents who represents the highest Almighty to take care of the children here. So he has to do his job. Because people don’t remember the karma of their past lives, they sometimes blame God, saying, “I am doing good this life. I am not doing anything and you still burn my house.” They forgot just thirty years ago, before they were born what they did, something like that; or where they have been. It is very easy to forget what we did last year; never mind last life or many lives.

Do Everything Unconditionally

So when you practice for enlightenment in a spiritual way, you have to know we do it with no conditions. Even if we follow the Quan Yin Method, practice the highest way, we still have to accept some minor or sometimes even major problems or disasters that come to us. Luckily they are fewer than ordinary people who don’t practice.

If you come to me with a kind of contract, then you are in for a disappointment. Some people misunderstand our motive. I never promise you riches. I never promise you a life of ease, a “bed of roses,” I never promise you you’ll get anything you want, even when it’s bad.

So we practice to eliminate the ego. The one that wants everything even when it’s nonsense, when it’s not possible; the one that always wants to push everyone else to work for him, wants things for nothing, wants things when he doesn’t work for them, wants to serve himself first and does not consider in that circumstance whether it’s correct or incorrect, that’s the ego.

Also God doesn’t owe us anything. It’s only for us, for our benefit that we should meditate, that we should become good; because that’s good for us.

For more information, please visit http://www.Godsdirectcontact.org

Fighting the Spiritual War – part 2

Practice Loving Kindness and Compassion

America is getting better. I saw in the newspapers, like on TV programs, now they’re cutting down on violence. And on the music radio programs, they want to cut down all kinds of violent music, all kinds of music that glorifies gangs, drugs or sexual tendencies, something like that. I am  very happy. I am sure there are many other things that Americans have tried to do right for a long time, but it takes some power behind that to push them. So we try to supply a little power, together with other spiritual groups, to make the world a better place.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have disasters any more. That doesn’t mean we don’t have disease in the whole because the majority of humankind is still clinging to the negative habits, even though many of them know it’s not good for them. Therefore they probably need some kind of shock like that to shock them out of their dreams. But I don’t like that, because it’s too painful for the people. Therefore we try to minimize their pain with our care – with our material and spiritual support. Otherwise, what are we here in this world for? If we always blame God or everything and say it’s their karma, it’s their bad retribution, then what are we here for?

Just like your children, if they did something wrong and they hurt themselves, of course, you know that is a consequence of the bad doing of the children. But still you help them when they get hurt, when they are wounded, when they are sick, even though it’s due to their own foolishness, their own actions. Still we help them and we love them all the same. Similarly, this is also good for us, to practice loving kindness and compassion. Everything we do is for the whole, not for ourselves.

The world is getting better, it seems, everywhere. But it looks chaotic at the moment. Why? On one hand, it seems like the world is getting better. Every nation has more freedom. All the restricted countries are open now, have become more free. The people of different nations have gotten together now. The worst enemies before are becoming friends now. That’s very good for our world. Very, very good. But why, why does it look chaotic at the same time? Who knows? [Someone answers: People can’t handle the freedom.] You got that from me last night. [Laughter]

Who else? [Someone answers: The karma works faster!] Yeah, it could be that also. It could be that the karma works faster for them so that they are cleansed. In the same sense, it is like when you want to build a new house or you want to clean the whole house, it looks messy. It looks messy at that moment, but then it becomes better in the future. Or sometimes you go to the doctor when you are very sick, and he gives you medicine. Then it has a counter-effect and you become worse that before, it seems like, for a very short period of time; and afterward, you get better. So that’s it.

God Is Eternally Reliable

We can never be sure how to protect ourselves from this world. So now the most protection we can get is from where? From ourselves, from God. That’s the most permanent, because at least we know that we have something else besides all these material possessions. Then sooner or later we will return to that where we have everything, we have the whole kingdom. So at least even if we encounter any misfortune, we are secure. We don’t go berserk, we don’t go into shock, have mental problems, or things like that. At least even that, the society has less burden with people like you. You are capable mentally to stand up, to grow again.

I’m glad to inform you that none of our disciples who live in that area had any problems. I mean no houses were burnt. Because many of our people are living in that area, Santa Anna and all that. So it’s good for you, you have to help those who are in need. Otherwise it would be to you that we have to bring food, toys and blankets, to your house.

Now if we have a very simple life, it’s easier to help people and to help ourselves. Also we have security from our spiritual practice. So very seldom we fear. I fear sometimes, when I go into that tube for a medical exam. It looks like a tunnel, like a coffin, like the tunnel before you go back to this world, that separates this world and the other world – the life and death tunnel. A long tube like that and it’s very low. When you look, it’s right in front of your nose. You feel closed in, but then I made it. After the third time I said, “That’s it. I’m going to lie here and it’s done.”

It’s okay to have fear, because it’s a habit. Sometimes you collect the fearful feeling from the atmosphere also, it is not necessarily yourself. Sometimes because we are practicing and we become more sensitive, we collect it from other people to share with them the difficulty, the fear or the feeling of that place or at that moment. That’s what we are there for.

Wake Up from Your Dream – part 1

Spoken by Master Ching Hai
February 24, 1991
Harvard University, Boston, USA

We always stay in a sort of dream. Everything in this world seems like a dream to me after many years of searching. Just like a man who wakes up from a long dream. We also wake up after we die. Some wake up in beautiful surroundings. Some wake up to find themselves in a strange, peculiar world. Some wake up to find themselves still in this world, in the same surroundings, but a different kind of body. Well, the same body, just different kind of feeling, different kind of movement, different kind of bodily functions. Some wake up to find themselves in a suffering world; some wake up to find themselves in very dark, unbearable surroundings.

It is just like a man in this world, who wakes up from his dream to find himself in a different situation of his daily life. It depends on what kind of life he was leading. For example, a man of great responsibility, he might dream a very beautiful dream or not; but when he wakes up, he is faced with all kinds of responsibilities and all kinds of questions to solve. A businessman, when he wakes up, he finds himself confronted with a lot of investment problems, bank accounts, new currency rates, the world economic crisis and things like that. A patient in the hospital, when he wakes up, he finds himself in his pain again, with all his tubes surrounding his nose, needles in his arms and another needle here, or maybe bound in bed. Maybe he has recovered and he is enjoying better health, a better view now, or he is going to be discharged from hospital that day.

So each one of us will wake up one day from our dream which is approximately about a hundred years. It’s a long dream. Some have a shorter dream. Lucky people! We all know that we will wake up one day, but then we are not ready, we are not prepared for the waking up stage. That is why we are perplexed and fearful. If we know how to prepare for the next day of our lives, then the transition is not so painful. It is just like a man who lives a very peaceful life, who does his duty, and who has love, he would wake up every day facing a nice atmosphere, more or less nice. It depends on how he has arranged his life.

We do not die after we leave this world. There is nothing to fear if we have led a very, very ordinary and normal life. But there is some fearsome illusion awaiting us if we have neglected the commandments of God. It is for the play of the world that regulations are made. It’s for life to go on in a multicolored manner that commandments are installed. It is not for punishment actually. But if we do not abide by these laws, then some kind of correctional service is necessary. It is not eternal. Please do not have this negative picture in your mind that everyone who is disobedient to the laws will be punished eternally.

Hell is limited. No one can be a permanent resident there because God did not intend to make the world into a permanent hell or make permanent such an ugly thing. Therefore, whatever we do we will have to compensate for it, but for a short while only. But even then, it is very painful for us to suffer for just a short while; because when we suffer, time lasts forever. Takes a long, long time to overcome this period of suffering.

Just like when we are in this world, when we sleep and we’re happy, the time passes so fast. We cannot get up in the morning because we think it’s still time to sleep. When we’re happy, with a beloved one or with friends, time seems to be too short. Now when we are in trouble, when we have to wait for someone, when we have anxiety, when we have pain – bodily or mentally – time seems never ending. The same situation happens in so-called hell. Hell is just another state of mind when we are too unhappy, too much suffering – mentally or bodily. It is just like when we are sick or unhappy in this world. It is multiplied much more, and that’s what we call hell – the state of mental disturbance, of pressure, of invisible suffering.

We have many ways to avoid suffering in this world. If we are bored and feel unhappy, then we go out, have a drink, maybe dance, go to see movies, go to see the theater. Other people would go to find meditation, go into their “corner” and find their own happiness inside – their “within-world,” the Kingdom of God within. I do not despise people who take drugs, take alcohol, or use various so-called lowly or cheap substitutes to gain happiness, to forget the sorrow of life. I just think they use the wrong way. That’s all. And it’s a pity! If they knew the other ways, if they had tasted the different way of happiness, they would have turned faster to the other end: and they would be the fastest for enlightenment. They would be the ones who would run the fastest to any goal, to any means that would offer them happiness. These people are victims of very bad information, or have been misinformed.

Therefore, it is our duty – those who are so-called still awakened and have some intelligence – to help instead of just accuse; because we do not know their longing for Truth. We do not know inside their hearts that there is a great yearning for happiness. What is happiness and love if it’s not God? They yearn for God, they are misinformed, they turn to the other end, and they use the wrong things.

These people are also very near the renunciation stage, near monkhood; because they also renounce life, they want to find their own imaginary happiness. They reject this kind of material, transitory, ephemeral life. Other people would just be happy with a big steak, a bottle of whiskey or whatever small things – go to work every day; take care of our life; and take care of our wives, husbands, children, etc. But these people, they are so unhappy with this kind of ordinary life. They cannot take it. They don’t want this offer. It’s not good enough for them. That means they are very noble. It’s not that bad. It’s just that they don’t have the means to find a way to get out. They are probably more fed up with life than any monk and nun. [Master laughs] They probably are the most renunciative people, just they don’t know how to have the real thing, how to achieve the real happiness.

We find many ways to gain our so-called enlightenment, nirvana or happiness. The better way, of course, is through effort, through enlightenment, through a proper channel to God; and not through material substitutes like drugs, alcohol or other kinds of unnatural ways.

Real Doctrine and False Doctrine (part 3)

Lecture by Master Ching Hai
October 20, 1986 Taipei, Formosa (Originally in Chinese)

Part 3– As was said in the beginning, this world is the Maya’s (the dark force’s) territory, a land of Maya’s material with all kinds of temptations. The great Buddhas who come here from the higher world to take their kin Home, to make them become noble beings instead of the dark force’s slaves are in fact the ‘intruders’ who interfere with the work of the dark force. They have to fight with Maya, because the beings released from the Three Worlds will become greater and higher than the dark force and will never have to return to this dark world again to suffer; and that means Maya will lose a dear soul, a good slave, which makes him unhappy and then causes many troubles!

We have seen that since ancient times any real great Master who came to this world to rescue sentient beings would suffer a great deal. It has never been an easy task to deliver the world’s citizens. Even when they could deliver a limited number of beings, they themselves would encounter a lot of criticism and obstacles.

Shakyamuni Buddha also encountered a lot of opposition. Some wanted to kill Him, some criticized Him saying He was teaching the ‘outer path’ (heterodoxy), etc.; Jesus Christ, before He could preach long enough, was already nailed to the cross; Confucius was driven out from several states; Lao Tzu had only a few believers, though He is now even more famous than two thousand years ago. When He was alive, no one recognized Him and He became famous only a long time after He had died.

Why is it that ancient Masters have become more famous than present living Masters? It is because after the living Master left this world, the Maya king (negative force) would make use of the Master’s fame for his own purpose, changing the Master’s true preaching to the opposite direction to serve the negative philosophy. That is why the Truth a great Master preached while descending to this world would become superstition after some time.

For example, Lao Tzu had never taught people to worship Him or anything or any symbol, much less to sacrifice animals as offering to Him. He did not say that He would bless anyone, or that after His death people should make offerings to Him or worship Him. In the Tao Te Ching (the Virtues Sutra) He only taught people to find the eternal Tao (the Path), to be connected with and united with the Tao as the only way to find the Truth. This was the most important point that Lao Tzu emphasized in Tao Te Ching. It is no doubt the highest ideal.

However, if we have a look at today’s Taoism, we will see how this perfect ideal has fallen. At each and every Taoist temple there is always the sacrifice of animals’ flesh, offered to ‘whom’ I do not know; because there is no doubt that Lao Tzu has been frightened of it and has run away. Being a great and compassionate Master, how could He ever stand to eat sentient beings’ flesh? The same with Confucianism. It was originally intended to encourage people to become highly moral and erudite, but has turned to many flesh sacrifices– swine, beef, etc.

China has a great and long tradition of many thousand years in literature and moral development, where Buddhism spread quickly far and wide, lasting for many a glorious, golden days before it met with a lot of opposition and fell to the ground. Buddhism in mainland China almost died out. At present, it seems that only in our little ‘potato Formosa’ is there still a little section of old Buddhist tradition, where the monks are keeping celibacy and vegetarian diet.

The Heavenly Grace of Noble and Selfless Motive

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, March 26, 2012
International Gathering in France

I have to thank all of you for your supportive energies and your supportive actions and supportive purpose. In your mind, you have a purpose that you want to save the world and you want to rescue the planet. This is very powerful thinking, very selfless and very noble.

Any noble and selfless thought or action always brings good results. Even if you don’t see it, maybe graphically or visibly, it works. Every time you think nobly and you act nobly or selflessly, the results are always fantastic, visibly and invisibly. And it affects the whole world, not just that person that you did a favor for, or not just yourself or your family or your five generations. It affects the world and even the universe, depending on how big your action or how grand your noble thoughts are.

It always works because when you’re thinking nobly or acting selflessly, you are one with Heaven. And then you’re adding more power to Heaven to overcome the negative power in this world. So, that’s why you and Heaven are connected, and it’s like team work. It’s teamwork because Heaven is invisible and you are visible. The invisible and the visible connect together: It’s very strong. The negative power is also invisible, but it has equipment here which is visible through the people who work for negative power or think negatively. So, if the world is full of these negative instruments and connected with negative power, then of course, it’s bound for doom and trouble.

But if we balance it with our positive power and our connection with Heaven, then at least it’s balanced. It’s not like one side is too much and one side’s too little. So, the more practitioners, the more noble thoughts you have and the more selfless actions you do, you will save the world. ♥

Spirited Actress & Dancer Tonya Kay: Connecting with Oneself through Raw Veganism

It is our pleasure to introduce to you actress and dancer, the lovely Ms. Tonya Kay.

Today, we will spend some time with the multi-faceted artist and find out how a simple change in diet that started three decades ago have helped transform her life and livelihood.

Multi-talented only begins to describe Tonya Kay. She is an award-winning actress and writer; professional dancer, model, vocalist, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Aside from her starring roles in movie and television, Tonya is also well recognized for her athletic abilities, especially her unique combination of stunt and dance.

Her talents have led to invitations to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, American Idol with multi-Grammy winning singer Rihanna, and America’s Got Talent, among others. As a professional dancer and stage performer, she has toured with STOMP, De La Guarda, Panic at the Disco, and Kenny Rogers.

I just really believe you can change the world if you change what you eat.

When people feel good, they make different choices, too. So I’m really into that, just helping individuals feel their best so that they can get to that childish place where they can create and love and play again.

The next couple of months, I’ve got some appearances on some TV shows. I just won best supporting actress in the 2011 Los Angeles Movie Awards, for my portrayal of Kielle in a series called “Silver Lake.” I’m going to be dancing in the Muppets movie. That comes out this Thanksgiving, and I got to work with the Muppets. And I’m going to be in an episode of “Friends with Benefits”; it’s a new series on NBC. And I’m filming a music video this week. Oh, and I’m on a car show; I restore classic cars. And I’ll be on Speed TV on a show called “My Ride Rules.”

A couple other projects that I’m in that you should definitely check out are “Bold Native.” “Bold Native” is the first fictional film about the Animal Liberation Front. Everyone on the production team was vegan or went vegan for the duration. And that was about the coolest set I’ve ever been on.

Also, I am the voice of Green Girl in an animated series called “Raw Man and Green Girl,” and it’s about raw super heroes who fight the nasty, the beekeeper and Franken food and things like that; it’s super cool for kids.

I’ve gotten to work with some really great, notable other vegetarian and vegan celebrities. I did a modeling shoot with Russell Brand. I filmed a music video with Rob Zombie. I worked with Ellen DeGeneres in Las Vegas, she’s a famous vegan.  And it’s really cool to connect with these people in the workplace. Hollywood really grabs onto the next fashion, the next fad. They’re really open to change; California’s progressive.

Like raw food and raw vegan food are a super popular movement. There are 12 restaurants in the area that I can go to that are raw vegan, and there are tons more that are raw-friendly. And the great thing about the raw vegan movement is that just because it’s popular, people latch onto it. But they stick with it because it works. There’s not a human being that doesn’t feel the positive change that happens to them. It’s definitely experiential. You don’t need to read the books – you need to do it.

Being on a raw vegan diet for the last 10 years, Tonya accredits her achievements and strength to her plant-based diet. With a strong belief that this is the best diet for maximum health and for protecting the environment, she strives to convey this message through different activities such as writing books and television appearances. She writes weekly columns in the EcoHearth Magazine, volunteers for the preservation of endangered species, and donates to animal protection projects.

I went vegetarian for animal compassion reasons, unconscious animal compassion reasons. I went vegan to break the system; it was an act of rebellion.

I went vegan when I was on tour with Kenny Rogers. And it was 5 AM, we stopped at this truck stop and I wanted food. And when I went in there to the truck stop, I looked at this with all neon packaging and cartoon characters, and none of it looked like a food to me. And I saw instead how the system is really set up against us. And I went raw vegan as a desire to really find out what healthy was.

And I had been taking care of the other animals for so long that I was kind of doing a reverse specie-ism. So going raw was really an act of self-love where I considered myself one of the animals and now we’re all one. And I have extraordinary health. The health benefits going from cooked vegan to raw vegan have been extraordinary, nothing less than miraculous in my life.

Can you talk a little about how being a raw vegan impacts your life as an actor?

There are so many ways that being a raw vegan impacts my life as a professional actress and a professional dancer. Athletically, being a raw vegan has helped my athleticism just skyrocket. Now I get injured far less.

My connection to my body has become so crystal clear, that I can hear the movements that are causing injury long before I ever was used to. And then if I do get injured – cuts, bruises, contusions whatever, accidents happen – then my healing rate is so much faster. It’s also mental. It’s the knowledge that I’ve gathered being a raw vegan that has made me a better athlete. I have the tools to eat, make choices that help me sustain my energy over a long period of time, where before I just didn’t even know.

And I get a little bit sad when an adult asks me questions about diet and how sugar is processed in the body. And why do they have diabetes or why are they depressed. And I get a little bit sad that in the school systems we’re giving kids diplomas but they don’t even know how their own body works. We have not prepared them for life if they don’t know how diabetes is caused. Adults are turning to me and asking “I want these tools now.” So I feel like having these tools, this education, and then acting upon it, has made me a better athlete.

And in the acting world, my ability to tap into my emotions is so clean. I’m not afraid to connect with people. That’s a really great asset for an actor to have because I really believe that acting is one of the most noble art forms that one can undertake.

It’s a fascination with humanity and psychology and wanting so badly to know what the experience of another person is like that we would forfeit all of our own experiences in order to understand them better. So being a raw vegan has just cleaned up that space where that happens. Where I can just really get into another person and share the thing that helps me understand what it’s like to be them. That’s called compassion.

Tonya Kay was born in Michigan in a small farming community, and at a very young age was concerned by the inhumane treatment of animals. Intuitively, she refused to eat her friends, the animals.

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 30 years. I have been vegan for 20 of those years. And I’ve been a raw vegan for the last 10. And each progression was a distinct and separate experience unto itself. Obviously I went vegetarian very young. And that was probably based on an unconscious knowledge of the suffering that animals go through.

My grandparents had a slaughterhouse and I got to see firsthand what was going on and really I didn’t know I was making this decision. My mom was the one who told me at the dinner table. She says, “Do you know what they call people like you,” and she says, “Vegetarian.”

We asked Tonya to share with us her own experience in transitioning from vegan to raw veganism, in hopes that her story will help us who aspire to the same way of eating and living.

I never want to feel restricted at all. So I just made a list of all of my favorite cooked foods, because I was already a vegan. and which ones were my favorite, I decided I would always have on hand, in my kitchen. Anything that was not on that list, I just got rid of that stuff, and replaced that with more raw food. So in the end, I was just eating huge amounts of raw food and always also had my favorite cooked foods on hand.

And then over time, just being patient with yourself, I noticed that my tastes changed. And my taste buds now, they’re super receptive to the life taste. And brown foods and oily foods and whatever, they just don’t rank very high anymore.

Ms. Kay strongly believes that creating the world in which we wish to live in starts with ourselves.

I’m in for the health. I’m in for the compassion, but the environmental aspect is what really moves me right now at this point, a decade into my raw veganness. I just really believe you can change the world if you change what you eat.

By changing our diet, really we would be changing the environment. We would be changing the way we interact in the community. If we had a mass movement of people going vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan – if a mass movement went to that direction, it would be a more peaceful society, a more utopian society, be like living on a paradise island. And that’s where I want to live. I want everybody to join, join this party over here because this party is good.

Our admiration, Ms. Tonya Kay, for your will power, idealism, and appreciation for life. Wishing you success in all your endeavors of bringing much kindness and beauty to our world.

My name is Tonya Kay.
Be Veg,
Go Green
2 Save the Planet!

For more on the multi-talented Tonya Kay and her work, please visit http://www.TonyaKay.com

May the songs of Nature lift your heart to dance and your soul to sing.

Professor Dr. Ervin László: Global Ethics and Consciousness

Our guest today is a Hungarian scientist, humanitarian and inspirational philosopher.  Apart from being twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Professor Dr. Ervin László is an expert on systems philosophy and currently serves as the editor of “World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution.”

If we look at the great scientists, they had very great spirituality. They worked with very great insight, very great intuition. Science has a spiritual part, and spirituality has a scientific part. After all, spirituality takes place and happens in this world, too. So we try to harmonize it, as in past societies. In past societies there wasn’t this separation, this dichotomy between rationality and intuition, between spirituality and science. This came into being in the 20th century, already in the 19th century as well, of course, but otherwise it got sharpened more strongly now.

In 1993, Dr. László formed the Club of Budapest, an international non-profit association dedicated to bringing about a planet-wide paradigm shift by fostering global cultural consciousness through such endeavors as building bridges between peoples. The Club and its esteemed members hold dialogues and discussions with the goal to develop effective strategies to promote world peace and an elevated planetary consciousness. Dr. László organizes group meditation for world peace as well.

We all know that meditation is a healthy thing for us. It also starts to turn out that meditation, it has an effect on other people too, and even on our environment. It tunes our own system, it makes us healthier. It harmonizes us with our environment, our society. It has an effect on the whole of humanity. We have to try, I think it is meaningful.

Combining his own theories of self-organizing systems, global consciousness and spirituality, Dr. László’s work is mapping the way for a new scientific age. In his book “WorldShift 2012,” Ervin László introduces profound insights on how a social shift towards global ethics and responsibility can help propel us towards better environmental sustainability and peace.

Dr. László recommends a systems theory approach to deal with the pressing issues the world faces today. He has stated: “We can’t solve our problems with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to them.”

An open system, it does not mean that anything can happen in it, but it means that it continually receives information, energy and material. A closed system is one which has its borders completely shut, so that no one goes either out, or in. But in an open system, a continuous exchange of material, information, and energy happens. This is absolutely necessary to understand today’s problems of energy and ecology, and social problems in general.

Dr. László also authored a timely handbook for everyone on the planet titled, “You Can Change the World: The Global Citizen’s Handbook for Living on Planet Earth: A Report of the Club of Budapest.” His books offer solutions to the challenges we have to overcome in order to transform the planet into a sustainable world for all living beings and nature. It is humanity’s moral responsibility to be good stewards of our Earth, make eco-conscious decisions and take actions to bring about constructive change.

We are at that interesting point, that so-called bifurcation point, where we cannot make foresights, predictions, prophesies, since the future has not been decided yet. What happens depends on us. In my view planetary ethics is the ethics that says we should feel responsibility to all, to the whole circle in which we are involved. We live in an interconnected world. We have to feel responsibility for the well-being of people (everywhere). And planetary ethics is the feeling of responsibility for this, and the acceptance of this responsibility.

The universe and its primary elements were formed with such precise and detailed perfection that it enabled material, energy and life to come into being. Dr. László explains that it is highly improbable that a universe such as ours – with galaxies filled with an unfathomable number of stars and life on Earth – arose by pure chance.

At the center of Dr. Ervin László’s hypothesis is the concept of connectedness, coherence, and oneness. He explains that this is the scientific theorem describing the fundamental nature of reality. He proposes that every entity which exists in the cosmos is interconnected and integrated in more ways than what we can comprehend within the physical realm. According to Dr. László, all “particles and galaxies have consciousness.”

In 2004 Dr. László released his highly acclaimed book “Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything.” In the book Dr. László applies modern science to illustrate the mysteries of the Akashic Field, a storehouse that records the constant and enduring memory of the universe. Spiritual teachers and sages of the all eras have spoken of the existence of an intelligent cosmic field that conserves and conveys past, present and future information, a field known as the Akashic record.

Bridging both science and spirituality, in the book Dr. László describes the existence of the Akashic Field as a conscious ocean of collective and individual memories, from which all things come into being – atoms, particles, stars, planets, and galaxies. He says that it can be regarded as the beginning or the origin of all things that exist in time and space. In his work on the theory of everything, Dr. László emphasizes our God-like nature and that we are one with all creation.

I wrote a few years ago about this universal information field, what is frequently called a Unified Field, or Akashic Field, and a lot of people asked me to explain the essence of this. About six months ago I sat down to try to formulate this, of what is the reality of such a field. How do we know about it? And this was with some physicist friends of mine, with four physicists among others, one of them Hungarian who also demonstrated the physical reality of this field on the basis of mathematical physics.

What I see is that nature is a creation of God. It is in everything. In each of us, in every atom, in every galaxy. And this is all one which I can formulate, as all of these work by information, and this information is in nature, in the cosmos; the basic information, by which matter comes into being, by which the material organs, systems develop, and by which, we could say, consciousness comes into being, self-consciousness comes into being, too. This is a spiritual universe. It cannot be a purely physical universe.

It has a spiritual basis, it is based on a cosmic spirituality, and it is this information that takes it further. I think science goes through big changes. The new quantum physics shows an entirely different world concept, and it shows what I mentioned before, earlier, the role of information. This information is in the universe somewhere, is stored, and the universe functions based on this. This is like software, as if the whole universe would be a huge computer which works using software. When the universe was born, there was information already.

We can also come into being, contribute to the accumulation of information in this universe. Because it is a very special universe, where life can also come into being. And where there is life, there is progress, there is consciousness. It is no accident. It is about a mass of information here, which is the software of this universe, and this is what I call the Akashic Field.

Dr. László believes life should be lived according to the Golden Rule, a precept that is recorded in the sacred texts of all the world’s religions. For example, in Judaism the Golden Rule is expressed in the Talmud as “Do to others as you would have them to you”; and in Islam, “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others that which you wish for yourself”. To Dr. László, choosing a sustainable diet is part of living in accordance with the Golden Rule.

When I worked for the United Nations in the research institute at the end of the 1970s, I heard about a statistic that says that if everybody in the world would eat that much meat, then about twice as much arable land would be needed on the world as there is on this Earth. So two more planets would be needed, so that we can provide this to everybody. Why? It is not only the meat itself, but we have to produce the feed for the animal.

We have to add the water to it (the feed), a lot of arable land, right, a lot of energy that goes into it, so that we can use all of it, and we can produce it. We should eat in a way, try to exist in a way so that everybody else can live, too. So I tried to live in a way that can be shared by others, and it was then that I started to shift to a vegetarian lifestyle, and since then I feel even much better, actually.

We should wake up. It is very late. We can still change, but if we don’t change, then there will be trouble. However, if we wake up in time, here we have a great opportunity to create a new world.

Dr. Ervin László, we applaud your remarkable scientific works on systems thinking, cosmic consciousness, and oneness. We thank you for reminding us that the physical dimension and spiritual experience are two aspects of the same reality.

May Providence guide all beings on their life’s journey.

For more information, please visit http://www.SupremeMasterTV.com

Did you know that each and everyone of us is fueling one of the world’s biggest ecological disasters and acts of primate genocide in history?

Borneo and Sumatra are two of the most bio-diverse regions of the world, yet they have the longest list of endangered species. This list includes the magnificent orangutan. These two South-East Asian islands are extremely rich in life, containing around 20,000 flowering plant species, 3,000 tree species, 300,000 animal species and thousands more being discovered each year. Despite this amazing biodiversity and delicate web of species, an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for the production of one vegetable oil. That’s 6 football fields destroyed each minute. This vegetable oil is called palm oil, and is found in hundreds of the everyday products, from baked goods and confectionery, to cosmetics and cleaning agents.

Due to the massive international demand for palm oil, palm oil plantations are rapidly replacing the rainforest habitat of the critically endangered orangutan; with over 90% of their habitat already destroyed in the last 20 years.

Orangutans are some of our closest relatives, sharing approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. Orangutan means ‘Person of the jungle’ in the Indonesian language. It is estimated that 6 to 12 of these ‘jungle people’ are killed each day for palm oil. These gentle creatures are either killed in the deforestation process, when they wonder into a palm oil plantation looking for food, or in the illegal pet trade after they’ve been captured and kept as pets in extremely poor conditions and provided with extremely poor nutrition.

Orangutans are considered as pests by the palm oil industry. In the deforestation process, workers are told that if wildlife gets in the way, they are to do whatever is necessary in order to dispose them, no matter how inhumane. Often orangutans are run over by logging machinery, beat to death, buried alive or set on fire… all in the name of palm oil.

There is only a 1 chromosome difference between orangutans and humans. They are the largest tree-dwelling mammal on the planet, and also the most intelligent animal after humans. With their amazing intellect, they have the ability to reason and think; along with almost all other human feelings and emotions. They can undo bolts, screws, knots and even pick locks. An orangutan named Chentek, at Atlanta Zoo in the US, was taught American sign language as an infant and has a vocabulary of over 500 words! These bright, fellow-apes also have their own culture.

As the thirst for palm oil grows, wildlife is pushed into competition with people across Indonesia, resulting in the poisoning of elephants and the burning of orangutans.

Orangutans are also a vital part of the rainforest ecosystem in South-East Asia. They are a keystone species. For example, orangutans help spread many tree seeds; many of which can only germinate once they have passed through the gut of an orangutan. These beautiful apes are vital in order to preserve the delicate ecosystems of Borneo and Sumatra and maintain the rich bio-diversity of Fauna and Flora in these dense jungles.
Orangutans cannot live without the rainforest, and the rainforest cannot live without orangutans.

Palm oil is having a shocking impact on our planet. The production of this one vegetable oil is not only responsible for polluting rivers and causing land erosion, but when the plantation workers set fire to the remaining trees, shrubs and debris to make way for the oil palms, it produces immense amount of smoke pollution that is toxic to planet earth. This has been found to be the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gas in the world.

Please don’t buy palm oil.

to read the whole article go to http://www.saynotopalmoil.com