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If you are truly sincere, the Master will not fail to respond.
In 1989, many people in Taiwan were speculating in the stock market and playing the lottery. When the Venerable Master stepped off the plane after arriving in Taiwan to hold a Great Compassion Guanyin Dharma Session for Protecting the Nation and Quelling Disasters, he said,
I'm prepared to starve to death in Taiwan. I wish to dedicate all my blessings to the people of Taiwan, and to take all their sufferings upon myself.
The Master never spoke in vain.
I will never forget what I saw and heard as a volunteer at the front desk during the Dharma Session. Some of the Master's disciples said, "Why should we let the Master suffer alone for the karma we have created? We should do our part, too." Many people fasted for one, three, five, or seven days, hoping to rescue Taiwan from its critical situation. I had been observing six days of vegetarian fasting a month, but during the session I began skipping dinner; and by the end of the session I was eating only one meal a day.
The Master had vowed,
As long as I am in San Francisco, I will not allow San Francisco to have an earthquake.
When the great earthquake occurred in San Francisco (while he was in Taiwan), many worried American disciples sent telegrams asking the Master for help. The Master immediately flew back to the United States. But then a great typhoon hit Taiwan, and the disciples in Taiwan beseeched the Master to quickly return. Only two or three days later, the Master flew back to Taiwan to continue hosting the Dharma session to its end. During that month in Taiwan, the Master only drank water and didn't ingest so much as a single grain of rice. I feel the deepest respect and admiration for the Master's spirit of forgetting himself to deliver beings from suffering, of "saving all with great compassion, sparing neither blood nor sweat, and never pausing to rest." He is the Good and Wise Advisor I have sought and hope to rely upon in life after life.
One evening in the Dharma session, the Master said, "If you want to leave home, come up to the stage right now." My friend gave me a push and said, "Don't you want to leave home? This is your big chance! Quickly go and tell the Master." I bravely went forward, and the Master said, "So you want to leave home?"
"Yes!"
"Okay, why don't you say a few words to everyone?"
After I spoke in a quavering voice, the Master said,
"It's not easy!"
"Yes, I know I have such heavy karmic obstacles and so many bad habits."
After walking off the stage, I bowed many times to the Master and prayed that he would help me leave home, if not in this life, then hopefully in the next life.
If you are truly sincere, the Master will not fail to respond. The strength I received from the Master enabled me to turn my life around. I began eating only one meal a day, learned to chant the morning and evening recitations and the Earth Store Sutra, and gradually changed my bad habits and faults. Two months later, one or two nights before I was to go to AIT to apply for a visa, I dreamed that I was already in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. In my dream, the Master was seated in the Buddha hall waiting for me, and he smiled and spoke to me. I interpreted the dream as a message that the Master wanted me to be patient. I left the home-life less than ten days after arriving at the City.
When the Master returned to Taiwan for the last time in 1993, he said to everyone at the Dharma Realm Buddhist Books Distribution Society,
All my life, my credo has been: 'Freezing, I will not scheme. Starving, I will not beg. Dying of poverty, I will ask for nothing.' However, today I want to ask for a great donation from all of you. Please give me all your ignorance, afflictions, and tempers, no matter how dearly you cherish them!
No one wants ignorance, afflictions, or a temper, but the Master dared to ask for them.
Although the Master is no longer physically with us, he has given us an inexhaustible treasury of Dharma. Each sentence of the Master's teaching, if truly practiced, yields infinite benefits. Many people have asked, "Who received the Master's Dharma transmission?" Whoever truly practices the Six Guiding Principles of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (no fighting, no greed, no seeking, no selfishness, no self-benefit, and no lying) has received the Master's Dharma transmission.
Forms and feelings are without number;
Thinking, process and consciousness are also like this.
If one is able to know this
Then one can become a great Muni.
Flower Adornment Sutra, Chapter Nine, Light Enlightenment
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