December 16

The four most basic sufferings in the Buddha’s teaching of “Eight Sufferings in Our Life” are birth, aging, sickness and death.  Everybody comes across birth, aging, sickness and death in his/her life.  All of us had already experienced the distress of “birth”.  Perhaps, we don’t remember it because our mothers suffered the most at that time.  In addition to the distress of a mother to give birth of her child, the wind from the outside world is just like a knife to the baby, who has just come out from the mother’s womb.  We don’t remember the suffering of the wind like a knife shearing our bodies any more.  As for “death”, all of us will die sooner or later.  However, “aging” and “sickness” are the two sufferings that we feel deeply about.  “Aging” walks slowly along with the time.  In fact, “aging” and “sickness” are the two sides of a same object.  The older you are the higher the chance you will get sick.

Let’s don’t talk about the suffering of the major sicknesses!  Just take a look of some minor ones.  As we reach certain age, for example, in your the forties.  Sometimes, in the morning we cannot move our necks, or our waists are sore, and backaches making us groan several times when we get up.  We may experience this kind of suffering almost everyday after the middle age.

Why did the Buddha tell us that: “It is very important to have a grateful mind in our practices”?  Think about it.  We are very fortunate.  Why?  Because we can feel our bodies’ pain, some people, such as the vegetables and paralytics, who lay on the hospitals’ beds but they cannot feel anything.  If you went to a hospital today and saw a paralytic person who couldn’t move due to stroke, then you asked him: “What is the most thing you want in the world?”  It definitely wouldn’t be the fame or the wealth.  I believe that he would tell you: “The thing I want most in the world is to enjoy the feeling being bitten by a mosquito.”  Because his body cannot feel a thing, he cannot even enjoy the fortune of the feeling being bitten by a mosquito.  This is why we should be very grateful to many things for what we have.

Somebody said that a person who is grateful; every morning when he is waking up and opening his eyes, he will think: “I am still alive.  I can still see, hear, smell and feel things.”  Therefore, it is our fortune to have healthy organs, feeling, ideation, formation and consciousness.  Then, we get up to start our daily work and to deal with people.  Sometimes, we come across difficulty that we should face it with the grateful mind we had in the morning.

When Shariputra was practicing, he ran into an anxious person.  That person needed an eye to cure his mother’s sickness.  Because Shariputra had vowed to practice Bodhisattva Path, he dug out his right eye without hesitation and said: “Bring this back to treat your mother’s sickness.”  That person said: “Hi!  You did it too quickly.  The doctor said my mother needs the left eye not the right eye.  You dug the wrong eye out.”  Then Shariputra dug his left eye out and gave it to that person.  That person smelled it, then said: “This eye smells.  I don’t want it.”  He threw the eye on the ground and stepped on it twice.  I think about it myself.  I haven’t reached the stage of the Shariputra yet.  I can be disturbed by other’s little greed, hatred and ignorance.  This represents that my practice and meditation are insufficient.  The Eight Winds will not disturb a good practitioner.

The Eighty-Eight Buddha Confession Text mentioned that it is very easy to commit the Karma of Greed but it is very easy to correct it as well.  Because greed is very obvious we can discover our greed immediately.  It is very easy to commit the Karma of Hatred too.  Sometimes, you will get angry when you see a politician that you dislike or the party that you don’t support on the television.  Politic and practice are different things like two sides of a road.  If you don’t know how to lie and you aren’t cynical, then you cannot become a politician.  Some politicians have started to dig out their adversary’s scandals few years prior to the election.  Three or four years later, if their adversary decided not to run the election, then they would forget about it.  Otherwise, those politicians would use it as a weapon to attack their adversary.  Therefore, a merciful person cannot be a politician.  I believe that there are good politicians, but the politician’s point of view is very far from practice.  I hope that there will be practitioners to govern the country in the future because practitioners have compassion and wisdom.  It is very difficult to have politic and practice to be just right unless that person is a reincarnation of a great Bodhisattva.

The confession text mentioned that it is very easy to commit greed and hatred but it is also very easy to correct greed and hatred.  The most troublesome one is the “ignorance” because ignorance comes from our sub-consciousness.  The Karma of ignorance is a seed existing in our perception for numerous lifetimes of many eons.  We called it “the ignorant mind” and we are not aware of the seed of ignorance in our mind.  Ignorance means no wisdom.  Therefore, we don’t know what we are doing without wisdom.  Afterward we suffer a lot but still don’t know the reason why, then we start to blame others and God.  Because we are ignorant and don’t have wisdom, we don’t know that we had created causes to produce today’s condition.

It is hard to see human’s wisdom and ignorance.  We know whether we have wisdom or not, but we are not aware of our ignorance.  Therefore, the Karma of ignorance is subtle.  Because it is so subtle, we cannot see it.  Wisdom is like light.  As soon as the light is on, we can even find a thread that fell on the carpet.

All things that mentioned in the Text of Confession Ceremony are not superstition.  It is the supreme philosophy for living, but many people don’t understand that.  They thought that attending a Confession Ceremony is only to receive blessing.  Attending a Confession Ceremony is to study an excellent book combining Buddhism and philosophy in one.  The truth written in this book can help us to solve many problems in our lives.  Therefore, everyone should do his/her best to practice and to discover his/her wisdom.  Each one of us has different kind of light.  No matter your wisdom like a firefly’s light, a match light, a candle’s light, a bulb light, or like sunshine as Mahavairocana, your strength won’t be ignored.  As long as you have a little more wisdom, then your ignorant darkness will be a little less.  Although the Text of today’s Confession Ceremony indicates that it is not easy to correct our Karma of ignorance, but we still can slowly correct it little by little.  It will be the greatest achievement for our practice.