Continued from last issue: Tuesday, August 19,1975 (evening)

Heng Hsien: Today we're in the third day of reciting the Buddha's name, and you can expect to be getting a bit of response at this point in the session. Yesterday the Master talked about how people who were sick, if they recited the Buddha's name, could be cured by virtue of their karmic obstacles being lessened through reciting "Na-mo A-mi-to-fo." Yesterday we had a "big cat" story. Today I thought I'd tell a couple of "little dog" stories. These are true stories of how reciting the Buddha's name has effected cures. The first involves a Pekinese dog who lived in Fresno. Pekinese dogs were developed in China as a response to the introduction of Buddhist Sutras. The very first printed books in China, printed from wood­block, were of the Vajra Sutra, and they depicted the Bodhisattva Manjushri riding on a lion. The ladies of the imperial court were very much taken by the lion, and so a new breed of dog was developed--the Pekinese--to look like the lion of the Bodhisattva Manjushri. So in Fresno, California, there was a small Pekinese-the runt of the litter. A runt, but a show dog. She wasn't shown, but her grandfather was the world's champion. She is a very special dog, and a very lively, good-tempered dog, with only a few minor failings--a little bit of vanity and a little bit of over fastidiousness with regard to food, but aside from that, there seemed to be no reason that what happened to the dog should have happened, except perhaps it was due to the jealousy of one of the older, larger dogs.

At any rate, when I went down to visit my great aunt, who owned the dog, the Pekinese was paralyzed from the waist down. Something had happened to her spine, and the whole back end of her. She couldn't move, but she could drag it along just barely. She was in tremendous pain. You could see that she was exhausting her strength and was going to die very soon. I'd been studying the Buddhadharma for a while, and I had great faith in the power of the mantras and the power of the Buddha's name. She was being taken for treatment with some kind of rays, but I saw that the people giving the treatment were more concerned with my great aunt's pocketbook than they were with the dog. The treatments were not doing anything for the dog. I sat down with a book of the Shurangama Mantra and recited it two or three times, and then I started to recite the Buddha's name, "Na-mo A-mi-to-fo." It was very strange and very wonderful, but as soon as I started reciting it, it's as if something clicked with the dog. I had her facing away from me, with the idea of concentrating on her injured spine, and she started looking around at me and making all sorts of noises and gestures as if she wanted to recite the Buddha's name too. And it occurred to me that perhaps--of course I had no way of knowing--but perhaps in previous lives this had been something that she was familiar with and that somehow struck a bell. At any rate, from that time on she improved. Within a few days, she was virtually normal with only a slight limp, and eventually she recovered entirely. This was by virtue of the recitation.

Another incident involved people from Gold Mountain--Upasaka Guo Kui and Upasika Guo Cong. Before they had their daughter Guo Fang, they had a dog named Lucy. Lucy was a very lively and intelligent terrier. She had a lot of tricks and was very rambunctious--a very human kind of dog. I felt I had a lot of affinities with the dog. One afternoon I looked out the window of Gold Mountain Monastery to see Lucy being hit by a car. I went running out and found her lying in the street, severely injured. The car had probably hit her on the side of her head and the front part of her body. Her eyes were starting to roll back, blood was coming out of her mouth, her legs were sticking straight out and she was going stiff. The driver of the car, a demonic looking young man, came out and started yelling at her, "Hurry up and die, dog!"

I asked him to leave, which he did, and started reciting the Great Compassion Mantra. Other people came out to recite, and someone went to tell the Master what had happened. Word came down to us that the dog was going to die, and we should recite, "Na-mo A-mi-to-fo." We carefully moved the dog into the office, washed her wounds, wrapped her warmly in a blanket, and recited "Na-mo A-mi-to-fo" for all we were worth. We recited for a couple of hours, and during that time, you could see Lucy coming back to life. By the end of an hour and a half, you had to hold her down--she didn't want to stay in the blanket. She'd been a dead dog out in the street, but she came back to life. We kept reciting until it was time for the Master to lecture. The Master immediately asked how Lucy was and had us bring her upstairs. Now some people figure that Lucy had taken refuge at some point. Someone else saw her being ushered out of the Master's quarters, presumably after an interview on another occasion. At any rate, she had a lot going for her in terms of studying the Buddhadharma. The Master scolded her and reminded her that he had told her that if she kept running out of the building, she was due for some trouble. But she hadn't listened, and that was why this hap­pened. All of this she meekly accepted. She was already running around in a subdued fashion that evening, and she was normal by the next day--completely cured.

To be continued