Everyone is born with an empty bottle.
There are many seven buddha, which makes us happy. What year is this year? (Answer: 20 12. ) 20 12 is a very special year, because it is an era of alternating old and new, so it is called a turning point. In such an era, the good and evil we do will multiply. We see in Buddhism, for example, the good and evil done on the day of the solar term, the good and evil done on the birthday of saints, and the good and evil done in the excessive time from one year to another. At alternate times of the day, such as midnight, many of us like to burn incense on the 30th of the twelfth lunar month. At this time, when the old and the new alternate, our strength will be different.
This year is a turning point, and the good and evil we have done this year are hundreds of times more effective than in the past. Therefore, it is a very good thing that we came here this year and so many people came to practice, which shows that our real merits are boundless. We are reciting one sentence of Buddha now, just as we have been reciting one hundred sentences of Buddha. We don't just recite Buddha for ourselves. Since it is an era in which the old and the new alternate in the development of human society, we should read Buddha for mankind, for all beings, for society and for mankind and society. You see, our Spring Festival is the same. We have been preparing for the Spring Festival since the 30th of the twelfth lunar month. We will pray for this year at the beginning of the year, so this year is the same. We use 20 12 for prayer and 20 12 for chanting Buddha.
Master showed us that life is priceless, so why should we exchange our lives for money? We still care about others with our lives. We argued with others for a few cents for an hour and finally got the money back. Do you think life is priceless? Obviously there is a price, fifty cents an hour. We worked hard to earn hundreds of thousands a year, tired, bitter, complaining, in poor health, in a bad mood and in a bad family, and earned hundreds of thousands. Do you say that life is priceless? Obviously, it is valuable, that is, it sells for hundreds of thousands a year. Although we all know that life is priceless, it is still not easy to implement it in our own lives.
For another example, if we spend a few hours playing mahjong, our lives will be wasted. 16 I am in Guiyang. Coming out of the hotel, I saw some migrant workers gathered together. I saw what they were doing and found them sitting on the ground playing cards and gambling. They are waiting for the passage of life. They say, "Hey, why is life so long? Come on. " They were tired of waiting, so they played cards. Many of us also feel that life is long. Sometimes, including me, we all feel that life is too long and always boring. We hope the end will come earlier, so we try our best to kill time, eat, drink tea and talk about boring things, and then we spend our lives.
When I came to Nanshan Temple, someone came to see me. I said, "What do you want from me?" He said, "Just chatting with you." A chat is a day. Life is priceless. If he doesn't pay to chat with me, then my life is worthless. This life is priceless. We should cherish it. How can we cherish it? We find out what life is made of. A: Blood and meat. ) blood and meat, well said, yes, our bodies are made of blood and meat. Listen, what do we say when a person is alive or dead? The first one will say how old this person lived, and what is a few years old? It is time. The Buddha tells us in chapter 42, where is life? Buddha said that life is in the breath. Breathing is also time. No breathing, no time. Therefore, the first criterion for measuring life is time. Cherishing life means cherishing time.
Even if you live to be 80 years old, you are only 40 years old except sleeping. Take away the time we spend eating, drinking tea and chatting, another quarter, another ten years, and there is still time to go to the toilet in the middle, and there are still thirty years. If we don't cherish other things, such as shopping, playing mahjong, watching TV, reading newspapers, buying lottery tickets and watching the stock market every day, then you can calculate that you have lost 15 years in your life. How many years have real people lived? There are fifteen years left, which is almost the life of a cow. So what should we do to save time and cherish it? Think about what we will do when we come into this world. Sometimes I can feel how many people come to this world like animals, but they look different and have the same lifestyle. They eat, drink, have fun, bask in the sun, have a few children, and then say goodbye and leave this world.
When I talked about this just now, I thought of the animals I saw in Africa. They just ate, drank and gave birth to several children. I also saw them basking in the sun, and that's the way it is all my life. How can people live like this when they come into this world! Sometimes it will be said that this person is noble, that person is low, that this person is meaningful to live, and that person is meaningless to live. Is it different? Don't! It's that people have different lifestyles.
I also have physical and mental experience when I study Buddhism myself. What should I give him in the future? What should we tell him? What do they need most? I sum up four words, called the way of existence. What is the way of existence? Let's look at this flower, it is so open, it has color, it has fragrance, it has beauty, and it chose this existence. We look at a pig, eat and sleep, then eat and sleep, and then gain weight and send it to the slaughterhouse, which is also a kind of existence it chooses. Let's go back to this flower. This flower can bloom in the wild, in front of the Buddha, and it is also a wild flower. It beautifies the world, but when it is placed in front of the Buddha, when it exists in front of the Buddha, its meaning changes. Although they are all flowers, they are two different ways of existence. Can you understand?
The value, happiness and significance of life lie in how we exist in this world. Everyone present, you are now in the Buddhist chanting hall of Nanshan Temple. Go out to the streets and see many people at the mahjong table, which is why you choose to be different from them. This is a different external manifestation. What causes the external performance? This was our idea, right? So how we exist depends on our values, our outlook on life and our world view.
In other words, how do we look at the world and how do we look at our lives. This is the value we look at things, which in our hearts invisibly determines our life choices. Therefore, if we want to cherish life, we must first clear bad thoughts, wrong thoughts and painful thoughts from our minds. Draw wisdom from our Buddhism and arm our minds.
More specifically, how we live is closely related to the role model we choose. Look at a child. If you are with a bad boy, he will go bad. He is with a child who smokes. He will smoke soon. He thinks about singers every day, so he sings every day. He has a dancing king in his heart and wants to dance every day.
Then what should we keep in mind? Are most of us beautiful or ugly at heart? Is the heart full of suffering or happiness? We pretend to be bad, and we pretend to be miserable. Including children who are studying today, what should we put in children's hearts? Who is the big boss, who is the big official, who is rich, who is famous, and who is the champion of the college entrance examination? No matter who won the college entrance examination, big boss, big official, famous and beneficial, they are all suffering beings! The role model in our hearts is suffering sentient beings, so this life is doomed to suffer! When we see an example of suffering in our hearts, we chase him and do what he does, and we learn from him.
Of course, there is no such person in our Buddhist temple. I'm talking about people outside the Buddhist temple, not just some people outside Nanshan Temple. Why? There are buddhas and bodhisattvas in our hearts, and we came to Nanshan Temple. Our hearts are full of bliss and amitabha, and we have just arrived at Nanshan Temple. Is that so? Why do we pretend to be Buddha? Because the Buddha is pure, liberated, peaceful, intelligent, bright, joyful and boundless, we have this idol in our hearts. They said that this "idol" is a bit derogatory, and it should be said that it is a fake image. Then there will be a power in our hearts that will affect our lives. Will it?
Last March 17, I started from my parents' grave, walked 160 days, and walked 2325 kilometers to Putuo Mountain in Zhejiang. On the way, I told the children what a person is. What is a person? Man is nothing, just like an empty bottle, he is what he holds. Can you imagine? Do you think this empty bottle is soy sauce or vinegar? It is what it holds. If it holds high, it will be noble; if it holds low, it will be humble; if it holds happiness, it will be happy; if it holds pain, it will be painful. We read Amitabha Nanwu every day, and our hearts are full of bliss. We live in happiness. There is amitabha in our hearts, and we are amitabha. Therefore, when we read Buddha, our hearts are full of the name of Buddha, the image of Elysium and the image of Amitabha. Let our hearts be full of sympathy, beauty, love for the world and cherish our lives, and our world will get better and better, and our life will get better and better.
Ok, let's install it now. Everybody close your eyes, sit still, sit comfortably, smile and relax. Let's begin:
Pray for the light of Buddha and Bodhisattva to come to earth and shine on us. We imagine this world to be a paradise. Each of us is sitting on the lotus, and the Buddha's light shines on us. We put all the body and mind into it, give it to Buddha, and give it to Elysium. We also bring our destiny world to Elysium, to Buddha and to Elysium. All life is calm, comfortable and happy.
The whole world, the whole universe and all beings are peaceful, comfortable and happy. The Buddha's light continues to shine on us, never giving up, bringing our suffering hearts, diseased cells and organs in our bodies (they are suffering beings) into the bliss world, bringing them into the Buddha's light, and they begin to be peaceful, comfortable and happy just like our hearts. Just like our hearts, we are happy and free from pain.
May the Buddha light shine on our world, 20 12 peace for all beings and 20 12 peace for our world.
Ok, slowly open your eyes and feel that what we think in our hearts is ourselves.
(Silent Master in the afternoon of the third grade) The way to reduce the problem by half immediately.
We studied life together this morning. Master said that life is priceless. We should calm down and think about this problem, including me. Sometimes we don't know that life is priceless without thinking, so we waste it at will. Even if you don't do evil things, it's a waste of life to live so flatly. Of course, using your life to do evil is the biggest waste.
Why should we waste our lives if we don't do evil? This requires thinking, what makes life come to this world, come to your home, and appear in this world with such an identity, such a gender, and such a state? Why did it appear? If you haven't thought about it, you will live in a daze, just like an animal. Life comes into this world with a purpose and a task. Usually, we are talking about a task.
I like to think about life and ask many questions since I was a child. Why did I come to earth and die? What's the point of coming to earth? It still hurts in the middle. So, isn't life just about suffering in this world? Does it look like suffering? Later, I continued to believe that life came to this world to transform our lives. Buddhism says that all beings are born by karma, that is to say, when we come to this world, we are like this. In this family, we are in such a state of life because of karma created in our previous lives and karma in this life, that is, our lives are controlled by karma.
A karmic existence cannot control what happens in life. We can't decide which one to have, whether it's a man or a woman, or even how many books to read in the future, or who to live with. Many links in life are not decided by us, but controlled by karma.
A child from Gansu once called me. He said he was in pain. He is twenty years old and drives a minivan to do business. He said he was sad to see all his peers studying. Seeing that his peers have parents, his mother remarried, and he lived with his father, who ignored him and had to support himself. He said that life was too painful and he didn't want to live. I asked him, "How did you get my phone number?" He said, "A friend of mine gave it to me." I said, "Where did your friend get it?" He said, "My friend took it from his friend." I said to him, "You are so bitter. Let me give you an idea. You should have been directly reincarnated at the head of a country from the beginning. Nothing will happen. You don't have to open this bun, and you don't have to be poor. " He said, "No way." Is there any way? I am a man, oh, I wish I knew I was a woman. Can you change it? What cannot be changed in life is called life.
How can we stand by and watch? Is to accept, remind yourself to accept every day. I always do. I have my pain, I have pressure, I have troubles, there are people in the world, and so do I. I just remind myself every day that I will accept it and face it. For example, I don't want to talk about it in the afternoon. If master wants me to say it, I can only accept it. I have never complained, and I can't say that Master is not good. This is called real acceptance. If you complain while doing it, it's not acceptance. So no matter whether we are in pain or worry, whether it is family problems, economic problems or physical problems, there is a quickest way to solve all these hardships in life. What is this? Is to accept. If we learn to accept it completely, the problems in life will be reduced by at least half at once.
Where do our problems come from? Refuse to resist. Look at today's human development, there are so many troubles and problems that countless people are troubled by these problems. How did it happen? It is to resist, not to accept. Look at those who suffer. How did they suffer? Look at those people in prison. How did they get into prison? Look at those people who were shot. Why were they shot? If we interview a man in prison and ask him, do you pursue happiness or pain? What does he pursue to get in? He will definitely answer: "I went to prison because of the pursuit of happiness." Let's interview another person. Are you here to pursue wealth or poverty? He will definitely answer: "I came in because of the pursuit of wealth." We can see that the root of the problem is excessive pursuit, which is called greed in Buddhism.
We have nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about, and we are still desperately pursuing it. Later, all kinds of problems, all kinds of sufferings and all kinds of troubles appeared. So I conclude that there are several kinds of people in this world. Where is the first person who pursues enjoyment and happiness? Where is it? Has been shot. Where is the second person who pursues happiness, happiness and enjoyment? In prison. Where is the third kind of people who pursue happiness, enjoyment and material things? Outside the Buddhist chanting hall of Nanshan Temple.
Why are we sitting here? We dare to accept the hardships in life. Therefore, as long as people dare to accept everything in life, the difficulties will gradually decrease and our diseases will also decrease. I once said to a person, "I have a special method that can make a person's illness better by half at once." How good is half? Is to let him accept his illness and stay with him, because it is his, because it is part of his destiny, because disaster is part of his destiny. When we refuse it, when we want to drive it away, we drive away a part of our life, that is, we lose a part of our life. So Buddhism tells us that the first thing is to accept. Whether it is good or bad, we should try our best to accept it. When we accept it, our hearts will slowly begin to restore calm.
For example, if someone scolds you, if you resist, you will get worse and worse. If you accept it, there will be no problem. I once met someone who sent money, but everyone did, and I was unhappy. I want to talk to the leader. Why isn't it mine? So my heart will be angry about it. Later, I thought, in fact, without this money, I accepted the same job and was very comfortable, so a very important way for us to treat life is to accept it.
Also, for example, I feel inferior. I may have been influenced by my family environment since I was a child. I feel inferior, timid, and I am afraid. Sometimes you sweat when you sit on it. But I'll pretend to be bold. However, I thought my body would not pretend to be like this, because my body was sweating. We sometimes tell lies and pretend to be true, but we find that our bodies can't disguise, we blush and our language will stutter. Let's just say I feel inferior. Many times, I always have to hide, for fear that others will see that I feel inferior. In fact, it will be worse for me how to pretend, others can see it, others can see it, so just tell yourself, stop pretending, face it truly, and then find that this inferiority complex will be reduced a little. Because I found that no one doesn't feel inferior, and people who don't feel inferior are pretending.
We all live in a world where everyone is acting. For example, I said that I am so wise and noble, and now I tell you that I am also pretending. We are all human beings, and we all have all our troubles and pains. Why are you talking about this? I said let's face life together. We once saw that others had no pain, only me, and then my pain became more painful. I don't think anyone feels inferior. Why am I the only one who feels inferior? I feel even more inferior. So when we accept it, our life will become more and more complete. Only by daring to admit your shortcomings can you correct them. When we dare to accept suffering, happiness will wave to us.
Recently, I have been studying some special ideas, that is, simplifying the troubles in our lives. In fact, it is as simple as that, that is, to be with what we have. Of course, we couldn't do it at first, so we always reminded ourselves that I accepted it and I was with it. As long as we do this, we will not escape and resist, and our life will be perfect.
Today, I talk about cherishing life. Life is priceless. How to treat your life? To repair our life and accept what belongs to us in life, whether it is bitter or happy, whether it is good or bad, first admit that it is a part of my life.
So how do we accept it in the Buddhist temple? Put it down by a Buddha, accept it first, give it to the Buddha, and ask the Buddha to handle it for us. We don't want bad things, so we ask the Buddha to deal with them for us.