Left-home People

Left-home people serve as models for laypeople. If you cannot be a good model, then you cannot evoke faith in the laypeople, and you won't be able to influence them. Therefore, left-home people should comport themselves in a way proper for left-home people.

Left-home people should have proper knowledge and proper views. Without them, one will surely fall into demonic ways and be caught by the fifty skandha-demons. Left-home people should do things together as a group. One should not have a special style, or just do whatever one pleases.

"Concentration yields efficacy. Distraction leads to hindrance." What do we concentrate on? To attain concentration, one should get rid of desires and love. If desires and love are not cut off, then even if one leaves the home-life and cultivates for eighty thousand great eons, he will not achieve the Way. This point is of vital importance.

We have to cultivate the Way and nurture our virtue all the time. When our virtue and our cultivation in the Way are both perfected, then we will be worthy of being a left-home person.

Left-home people take propagating the Dharma as their main responsibility. Spreading the Buddhadharma is our basic duty and obligation. Therefore, our every thought should be devoted to propagating the Dharma. Our every move should speak the Dharma for living beings.

The Invisible Killer

The three poisons of greed, hatred, and stupidity are more toxic than opium, poisoned wine, or the most poisonous arsenic. While these are visible substances which poison our physical body, the three poisons of greed, hatred and stupidity contaminate our Dharma-body and Wisdom-life. They are the greatest obstacles to the Way.

The most damaging things are greed, hatred and stupidity. Whether you study science, computer science, or any other field, if you investigate this in detail, you'll find that nothing is more damaging than these things. However, since people are not aware of this, they carry the three invisible bombs of greed, hatred, stupidity with them. They take them wherever they go, and are reluctant to part with them. If you ponder it carefully, you'll see that they all come from ignorance. What is ignorance? It refers to a lack of understanding. Out of a lack of knowledge, we have built these bombs of greed, hatred and stupidity.

What is the mother of the atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb and death ray? It is greed, hatred and stupidity. Therefore, if we can put a stop to greed, hatred and stupidity, then the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb won't explode, and death ray will be inoperative.

I am soliciting great contributions from you, not small ones. What do I mean by soliciting great contributions? I am begging for your ignorance, temper, and afflictions. If you are free of these three things, you will be lucky and everything will go as you wish. If you have these three, you will be an evil fiend. Therefore, all of you must renounce what is difficult to renounce! Even more should you renounce what you can renounce! Give away your ignorance, temper, and afflictions, and you will all be alright.

On the Path of Cultivation

In studying the Buddhadharma, the most important thing is to have the Dharma-selecting Eye. If you don't have the Dharma-selecting Eye, then you will believe in anything. But in the end, you will have no accomplishment.

Being pure means not wanting money and having no lust.

"Do not fight; do not be greedy; do not seek; do not be selfish; do not crave personal benefit; and do not lie." If you can truly practice these Six Great Rules, you will receive limitless benefit. Of what I have said, you can keep the useful parts and forget the useless parts. If it is the Way, then advance. If it is not the Way, then retreat. Select what is good and follow it. Take what is not good and change it. You have not reaped anything, and I have not gained anything either.