Master Zhenlin talked on the Comments by Master Chin-kung on the Death of Chen Xiaoxu (August 23, 2007)

All the hardships and upsets we face are a test meant to cultivate our faith, the faith in the Buddha Dharma, so that it is deeply-rooted in our mind. With firm faith, everything is empty, including disease. There is no disease to speak of. The key is one’s mind when the Buddha Dharma is applied to cure diseases. Read the sutra, and you shall realize all shall be brought to nothingness. All, as I said to you last time, a disease is not a disease. A disease is indeed a disease.What is the purpose of cultivation? It is to cultivate one’s faith through all kinds of means. The Buddha Dharma is born out of one’s mind. The power of one’s will can be tremendously huge. Nothing is possible by it, but also everything is possible with it. Therefore, a vow that we make from the bottom of one’s heart can change everything. Likewise, any doubt one harbours can always take away everything. That is why I say that a disease is not a disease and yet a disease is indeed a disease. When the demon of disease is stirring troubles for one, one can only be sick when one takes it seriously as a disease. A disease shall melt away, with medical treatment, combined with the Buddha Dharma, and that one does not take it as a disease and just let it go in one’s mind. This is what I mean that a disease is not a disease. This is also why many cancer patients get fully recovered soon after they meet me. This is how I teach them to treat themselves. Therefore, in the final analysis, we need to cultivate faith. Faith! Faith! Faith! Place faith in it in a way as if one is stupid. : ) Amitabha-Buddha! By doing so, we gain Samadhi. Well, that is to say, should you believe it firmly one day that I am holding a small cellular phone in my hand even though I am actually holding an apple. This is a mind without discrimination. This is firm faith, without any doubt. If your intuitive response is that it is an apple, not a cellular phone, it shows you are still viewing it from the perspective of a common person. Your mind is still dusted, and characterized by discrimination. If you firmly believe that it is a cellular phone instead of an apple, you can walk through a wall easily, let alone get rid of a disease. Well, Amitabha-Buddha! That is why Venerable Chin-Kung said that it is just difficult to have firm faith!!! Why do we apply efforts to read the sutra and sit in stillness everyday? It is to cultivate the power of our faith. We shall be enlightened once our faith in the Buddha Dharma is firmly rooted, without the least trace of doubt. No language is needed. All is united and in harmony. You shall be Guanyin Bodhisattva! You shall be World Honored One! You shall be Manjushuri Bodhisattva! There is no difference. Well… this is what the 32 attributes are about. This is the attainment of the Unsurpassed Perfect Enlightenment. It won’t be efficacious if you simply pay lip services. You need to apply efforts to cultivate the Buddha Dharma. Otherwise, you won’t receive any responses. You have to really delve into it, and place firm faith in it. When you can make it, all your wishes shall be granted. Believe in it in a way that everyone around you say you are stupid and enchanted. That is when you see the Buddha Dharma. In dhyana meditation, one is encouraged to contemplate who is talking, who is moving, and who is thinking, etc. One is released from the Three Realms once one is able to let it run in its own course. The Buddha Nature is not empty. Rather, it is formless and does not have any mark. There is nothing it can do, but also nothing it cannot do!!!
It is not quite right, to take the Buddha Nature as empty. All the living beings have the Buddha Nature. The Buddha is but a name. There is no Buddha to make. In the Chinese character, the word Buddha consists of the character Person in its left and None in its right, which means not a person. : ) A Buddha comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Who am I? Where do I come from and where shall I go? These are questions to be answered in our cultivation.