Don't be led by the nose by it -- Lingju (Zhenlin Disciple)

Snow walked to me looking upset. She’s a good friend of mine.
“Snow, let me hug you.” I said to her, “what made you upset? Would you like to share it with me?”
She was having her apartment decorated and that made her relations with her husband intense and herself tired. She was feeling bad.
I comforted her, “It is normal, Snow.”
Her husband was in poor health. She had to handle it all, the design, power, water, wood, paint, bricks, and don’t forget just how poorly regulated the decoration market is nowadays. Snow was so small and frail that she was hardly up to it.
I thought of the mom of a classmate’s. She was a retired teacher, and had gone through much of her life in the campus and the aged faculty apartment. She was finally able to have a new home, having spent most of her savings on it. She had little money left and therefore had to plan the decoration on a strict budget.
Nevertheless, she could never beat the decoration people on being strict in budget. The project was put on hold less than halfway finished. She was having a tougher time than Snow—could not sleep well, nor control her temper. She was fidgeted and would cry for no reason.
I had quite some experience in housing decoration. My husband was so soft that he could never deal with the tough decoration team while I was never used to haggling over price. As a result, I always spent thousands of yuan more, if not bigger, than others in housing decoration.
I get the life I want though at a greater cost. This is how I comfort myself. Isn’t it worthwhile to spend more money than to have more wrinkles? Such self-comforting does make it easier for me.
Sure, not everyone can act as I do to have less mental stress at the expense of greater financial output. Some cannot afford it financially, others mentally.
Master always tells us not to have our mind turned by the external state, but should stay in accord with conditions, and take the rough with the smooth.

Honest, we can hardly make it now as our skills of cultivation are not up to it.
There are many things that we cannot put down. We are still being controlled and influenced by the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind, and the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance.
As Master often reminds, mistake the “guests” as the host, and we shall feel mentally tired, as our mind is turned by the external state.
Again, Master also reminds us that the solution is that we cultivate with a singular focus, and take the Buddha nature as the host. How can the guest get the upper hand if the host remains firm and strong?
Master tells us the Buddha nature is an energy body that is neither produced nor destroyed, nor defiled or pure. It never increases or decreases. The human body is an energy body, too. As long as we keep cultivating, the Buddha nature will manifest and we will be able to put down all the secular emotions and desires, free ourselves from greed, hatred, and ignorance, and gain release from the Three Realms and five elements. We shall attain the Buddha’s state by then.
Master went into details on “contemplating at ease” and the esoteric Buddha principles it contains, with altogether 4,099 Chinese words in his commentaries on the Heart Sutra. In the final analysis, it boils down to “not to be turned by the state, and stay in accord with conditions.”
While our skills of cultivation now are such that we cannot make it not to be turned by the state, we should try out best not to be led by the nose by it.
I suggested to Snow, “Simplify the design and the decoration process, and make up for it with better-quality furniture such as curtains and sofa. Finish the project as soon as possible. Get time to cultivate the Buddha Dharma, and set your mind at peace.”
I also tipped her what I had learnt from Master: Recite the Buddha Speaks the Eight-Yang Dharani Sutra of Heaven and Earth, as it helps to improve Fengshui and can solve the challenges that people face in anything related to the house, but at the same time, cultivate with a singular focus and continue to uphold the Sutra of Longevity. Say with utmost sincerity “Master, please bestow power onto me” when in difficulties.
The second day when we met online at the Sina UC Chatroom, she asked me, “Can I just recite the mantra contained in the Sutra instead of the whole sutra text?”
She must be feeling tired. “No. You are not supposed to cut corners. You have to recite the full sutra text.” I answered, firmly.
Snow, though reluctantly, went offline away from the warm chatroom, to recite the sutra.

Pray to Honorable Master – Zhitong (Zhenlin disciple)

Pray to Honorable Master – Zhitong


Honorable Master, this is what you’ve said to us: “I am never away from those who believe in me, nor those do not. While they have never seen me, my children will be forever protected by my compassion.”



Honorable Master, you are the transformation of the kindness, compassion, and bestowal of power of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas! You are the only protector of the beings.



Without hesitation, I take refuge with you with all I have! Perhaps I am not able to make it now, but I know you have endless patience and confidence that your children will sooner or later get back to their true home from exile.



Honorable Master, you are the one who knows me the best, even more than I know about myself.



May you please, from now on till I attain enlightenment, make me mindful of you 24 hours a day, to rely on you whether in happiness or sorrow, in prosperity or adversity?



May you please guide me and enlighten me? I am ready to take all the guidance you have to me.



May you please make me aware, within the shortest span of time, that you are always around, in any circumstance, and never part away from me from the start till the end of the whole process, and that you are always there ready to protect me and make me safe once I pray for your help, to take me back to your warm bosom, and shall never, ever, suffer from exile?



Honorable Master, may you please take me in one with you, and never be apart?

A New Day Has Come – Ling Ju (Zhenlin Disciple)

A New Day Has Come

As I flip through the calendar,

I could not but stay at the page of the day

when you took me home

and showed me the beautiful moonlight.



Everyday after that day,

my heart is moisturized by Dharma water,

on which the plant of my cultivation diaries grow.

No longer do I harbour expectations about bubbles and shadows

nor feel self-pitying for being hurt.



Everyday after that day,

my heart is filled with Dharma sound,

from which I make the Bodhi vows.

No longer do I remain obsessed to secular love,

nor feel lonely when being alone



Everyday after that day,

my heart is immersed in the light of your Dharma body,

and my body full of power and energy.

No longer do I worry about the future

nor feel attached to fame and wealth.



I flip through the calendar and

come to the page of a new day.

A new day has come.

I feel as light as a feather.

The road of cultivation ahead is ineffably bright,

with your guidance.

Coming Soon!

Lingmei’s Travelogue and Master Zhenlin’s Commentary on Lingmei’s Travelogue (in both Chinese and English) will soon be published in the blog.



The series includes Lingmei’s sutra-lecturing trips to

the Heaven of Great Comfort,

the Trayastrimsha Heaven,

the Heaven of Light Sound,

the Heaven of Neither-Thought-Nor-Non- Thought,

Mount. Sumeru,

the Asura Realm, and

the Hell, where she lectured the Sutra of Longevity to ferry over the beings there,



as well as her visit to

Amitabha-Buddha,

Earth Store Bodhisattva,

Guanyin Bodhisattva,

Manjushri Bodhisattva,

Universal Worthy Bodhisattva,

Maitreya Bodhisattva, and

World Honored One Shakyamuni Buddha, from whom she brought back the valuable instructions to us.



A detailed commentary by Master Zhenlin on the series shall be published together to help you gain a better understanding about it.



We look forward to sharing with you the wonderful trips and the though-provoking instructions brought back by Lingmei.

Practicing Buddhism--Ling Wang (Disciple)

Practicing Buddhism is not only about making confession, feeling grateful for what we have been given, or helping us calm down.



Practicing Buddhism is more about how to make ourselves truly happy, and, more importantly, release the happiness in our innermost, so that people around us can also feel it and be happy.



It was my colleague Sandie that made this thought-provoking comment. She is not a Buddhist practitioner, but she loves life and is nice to her family and people around her.



She helps me realize that anyone, as long as she or he is kind-hearted and takes life seriously, can be a Buddha, and guide us for the better.

Master Zhenlin Talks on Body and Mind

Disciple: Master, I feel exhausted to the extreme, not even up to take a breath. How I just want to quit the job to practice cultivation with you at the Flying-to-the-sky Cave.



Master: It all comes from your mind. You feel tired becuas you take illusion as truth.



Diciple: I am thinking what kind of test on me it is this time. I don’t quite know how to tell the false from the true. If all is false, is my feeling exhausted false too?



Master: Every manifestation in the world is false. You will be afflicted if you take it as true.



Disciple: But at least I need to make ends meet and a living. In fact we don’t really need to be that rich if it is just to survive. I just don’t feel up to it physically once I am at work.



Master: You are taking it as true even if you are doing it casually or perfunctorily.



Disciple: What shall I do, Master?



Master: Do your best on it, but do not have your mind turned by the external states. Refrain from getting joyful when you make it, nor disappointed when you fail to.

Disciple: I don’t seem to feel tired mentally. I feel exhausted physically.



Master: The physical strength is subject to the influence of the mind. We are quite busy here at the Fly-to-the-sky Cave these days. They feel tired if they take what they do as a task, and do it without any passion. I don’t feel tired at all, but it is great fun to me. It is so because I never take it as a job. Exhuastion is non-existent if we leave behind the Self. Keep reciting the sutra.



Disciple: It is indeed thought-provoking a remark! Yes, as long as we do not feel tired mentally, we won’t noice how it is phsyically.



Master: You are too learned. It is difficult to enter the state of no-learning. Take time to appreciate what I just said.



Disciple: I have been reading the Sutra of Longevity for sometime. I feel what is the most useful to me is not the mantra, but the Twelve Conditioned Links of Caustion.



Master: Do not be engage in intellectual conjecture. You need to be able to read between the lines.



Disciple: That is the area where I am the weakest. Anyway, I will work on it. I feel better and less exhuasted now.



Master: The better educated one is, the more one is hindered by literary marks.



Disciple: Yes. This is a process of returning to zero.



Master: I had the same problem when I was a new culitvator of the Buddha Dharma, untile later I realized that the knowledge I had acquired was the biggest obstacle for me. I then learnt to put it down.



Disciple: Yes, as what you told us at the beginning to read it as if we were stupid, and in stupidity, one gets enlightened.



Master: Make you someone who do not think or ask why, but act as the mind wants you to do. Well…before you know it, you can read and understand the Buddhist scripture.



Disciple: Yes, Master. I am just preoccpuied by too much thining. I get exhausted because of it, too. Master, I did not like it when people said I got sick because of the mind. I just feel tired all day long. I used to think that you have never been tired like me and therefore do not know how it feels. But I now understand why. Perhaps it is true that I am tired physically, but I would not have felt it if I were able to ignore the physical exsitence of my body.



Master: Yes. Work on your mind. The disease shall have nothing to rely on and disappear.



Disciple: Do you mean I won’t feel tired if my mind is released from the body?



Master: Why do we feel it difficult? It is so because of our body.



Disciple: Thank you, Master. I learnt a lot today. Indeed big progress. My mind was so bound by my body.



Master: You took the false as true, and the objective and the subjective.



Disciple: I get your point, Master. Well, not sure whether the point I get is the one you want me to know. : ) Feeling exchausted and my physical body are the objective. My mind was bound by the physical exhuastion. As a result, the body takes hold as the subjective.



Master: The body is the objective, and the mind is the subjective.



Disciple: Master, I got engaged in sales almost the same time when I started to learn the Buddha Dharma. I found the two fundalmentally the same. Both require us to put down the knowledge we have previously acquired and start from zero. Both aim to provide happiness to others. Both take culitvation. Both aim to help people get rid of their pain and afflictions.



Master: You shall be a person of the superior grade if you can make it just to do it without giving rise to any thought.



Disciple: I will try to make it to reach such a grade. However, aren’t we taking it seriously if we try it, Master?



Master: Applying efforts to it is a process of culitvation. Taking it seriously finds its roots in your mind.



Disciple: Thank you, Master. You are so great! We do make rapid progress by talking to Master.



Master: : ) I am not great. It is that I have entered the real mark. There isn’t any hinderance before me. Whatever questions you have for me, I will answer them. But if there are people making nonsense, I shall only say “Amitabha-Buddha”. Those making troubles deliberately receive no response from me. I remain silent before them.



Disciple: I now know what my goal is. Often I hear people talk about becoming a Buddha. I don’t want to be a Buddha. I just want to be a good man, someone who does her best to make it, without giving rise to any thoughts. Thank you, Master.



Master: Become such a person, and you are a Buddha. It takes sincerity and honesty to be such a person.