Good and wise advisors! We are now in the Space Age. The distances between people on this planet Earth have been shortened, and language barriers have been transcended. Although there is still some distance between the audience and myself and there are still some language barriers, in general these are obstacles that we should overcome in the Space Age.

Since it is the Space Age, all nations should unite their strength and stand together; the people of all nations should form one great family. When people of all nationalities join together to become one big family, all nations will be united into one great nation. Once this great nation is formed, it will be stronger than any nation or race. Everyone will live together in harmony.

The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas has over five hundred acres of land and about eighty buildings. Up to twenty thousand people can live in the City. We want to present the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas to all the Buddhists of the world. We want to offer all the buildings on this piece of land to the followers of all the world's religions. Not only do we offer it to all Buddhists and the followers of all religions, we offer it to all living beings in the world. Anyone who wants to may use the buildings and land there without having to pay rent. They are for everyone to use free of charge.

The Buddhism of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is everyone's Buddhism. It is not the Buddhism of a particular country or a particular individual or a particular people. It is the Buddhism of all humankind. All beings—whether womb-born, egg-born, moisture-born, transformationally born, endowed with thought, lacking thought, not entirely possessing thought, not entirely lacking thought, sentient, or insentient—down to the mosquitoes and ants, as long as they wish to come to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, I welcome them.

Do you believe what I'm saying? Why do you believe it? It's not something that people find easy to do. There isn't anyone in the world who is willing to do what I'm doing. Ordinary people reserve their own places for their personal use, and even want to usurp the property of others. Why would someone want to let everyone use his place, and not even want other people's places? Why do you believe that someone would do this? Tell me your reasons.

Today I'm not going to worry about breaking the laws of this country. The so-called "sharing of property" [共產 gong can, the term used for communism] means taking other people's property for oneself, but not sharing one's own property with others. I, on the other hand, am giving my own property to others, without wanting other people's property. This kind of principle isn't found in the world. So how come I believe in it? And how can you be sure that I'm not cheating you? What method do you have to verify that my words are true? What if I'm using this scheme to trick all of you into going to the United States, and once you get there I keep you in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas? Then what will you do? But I wouldn't do that, so please don't worry.

Now I'll tell you why I'm doing this. It's because I see that people want to travel into outer space, and if the people on earth still can't get along with one another and work together, then we're really very stupid. If people on this planet cannot get along and everyone wants to go off into space, what will we do when there is no one left on earth? That's why I feel I should try to bring everyone together now, so we can live on this planet without having to run off into outer space. For this reason, we Buddhists have to work to unite all religions and all living beings.

This is an aspiration I've had ever since I was young. I wish to stand in for living beings and suffer in their stead. I wish to give any blessings that I am meant to enjoy to everyone else, and take everyone's sufferings upon myself. When the Japanese attacked China, they sent many Chinese people to labor camps, where they had to do hard labor. They didn't have enough to eat or enough to wear, and many froze or starved to death. Then the Japanese set the dogs upon their corpses. Witnessing the suffering of the Chinese, I began to eat only one meal a day. Prior to that, when I was eating three meals a day, I could eat five bowls of food at each meal. When I began eating only one meal a day, I ate only three bowls of food, leaving the twelve remaining bowls for people who didn't have anything to eat. If they could have food to eat, they could live a little bit longer. What I was doing was really "sharing my property," so I said to those Communists, "You aren't qualified to be in the Communist Party. I am one who truly shares his property, and so I'm the true father of the Communist Party." Do you all get it?

People who had nothing to eat all came to me to get food, and so wherever I went, I had several hundred people following me and eating with me. That's why I say I'm truly "sharing my property" and am the real father of the Communist Party. The Chinese Communists said, "You are not even as old as Mao Zedong. How can you be the father of the Communist Party?"

I said, "Mao Zedong learned communism from reading Marx and Lenin. I've been a communist ever since I was born: I give whatever I have to others, and I don't want anything for myself. I've even renounced the home-life, so if I'm not the father of communism, what am I?"

To be continued