Whether to repeat the Buddha’s name, to meditate, or even to practice the esoteric dharma, our motivation must be pure right and aim must be definite. Now I will tell you the most direct, practical and genuine method. What’s it? It is the core issue written in Ji Wen’s book of “the Practice of the Three Essentials of Buddha-dharma”. What are the three essentials? No matter of practicing the Esoteric sect, the Pure-land sect or the Zen sect, if not holding the three essentials (the mind of renunciation, the mind for Bodhi and the pure view), it’s impossible of you to achieve the Buddha-hood in this life, and it’s also uncertain of you to go to the Pure-land after death. Why? Because you only learned a method of practice, without grasping the fundamental essential of it. Before, I usually told you that, for people learning from Buddha and practicing, the first is to generate the mind of renunciation and the mind for Bodhi. If not generating the mind of renunciation, you cannot succeed in your practice. Even for a monk, his practice cannot have achievement without generating the mind of renunciation. Why? Because all practices without having generated the mind of renunciation is only accumulating the good reward for men and deva. You haven’t understood the source of pains in the world, nor have you understood what are you practicing for. If having not generated the mind of renunciation, how can your motivation of practice achieve the extent that generating the mind for all beings while despising yourself? Our nowadays practicers, disciples who are able to learn and practice Buddha-dharma, at least in several previous lives generated the mind of leaving home to become a monk. Without this karma base and that groundwork that leaving home to be a monk in several past lives, you cannot get the transmission of Buddha-dharma. That is to say, that having the chance to meet me here and get the transmission of Buddha-dharma which comes down in one continuous line, shows that you must be monks in several past lives and made the great wish, so can have today’s precious chance. If you’ve getting the transmission of Buddha-dharma since several past lives till now, yet haven’t generated the mind of renunciation, it indicates that you haven’t cultivated enough merits, virtues and wisdom even in hundreds, thousands and trillions of past lives. So, I always told you, many people put forward the same question, why our nowadays practicers have such a disordered mind? And why the vexations are more and more? Why the mind of practice can hardly be settled down, always looking for higher mountains without any fruit of practice? Some said: “before learning from Buddha, my mind was more pure and quiet; why it became more disordered once I started to practice and repeat the Buddha’s name? Why?” Don’t you ever think of that, when you are practicing, your evil karmas of all past lives will be reversed, thus your vexations will become more; being whimsical and uneasy, many adversities or bad karmas will be generated. I tell you that, if you are a really practicer, the arising of these phenomena is indeed a good thing. If not eliminating these evil karmas of all previous lives, but simply relying on repeating a sentence of Buddha’s name to get achievements for own practice, or just depending upon practicing the esoteric dharma to attain the body of diamond, or merely lean on meditation to acquire the dhyana thus open up the wisdom, I would say that once the evil barrier has been generated, you will not conquer it, instead it will conquer you. So, for some practiers, the more progressive they are in practicing, the more vexations or illnesses they have, that is the turning over of evil karmas. That is a good thing, which is called the elimination of own evil karmas. At least I can say that you won’t totally conquer the evil karmas of all your past lives only by saluting, kneeling and touching the forehead to the ground, or reciting mantras. Should you recite mantras less? I’m not telling you to recite less, but the key rests with that, for what on earth is your reciting the mantra, repeating the Buddha’s name or mediation? That is why I often told you that, if only for own practice, our people of learning from Buddha can hardly achieve the Buddha-hood. Why? Because you cannot eliminate your evil karmas. Referring to this point, what’s the simplest and best method for nowadays practicers? That is to generate the mind of renunciation and the mind for Bodhi. In our practice, we repeat the Buddha’s name not for the curing of our own sickness, and recite the mantras not for our own good fortune; we shall return all merits and virtues accumulated through repeating the Buddha’s name, reciting the mantras and all our activities of practice, to all beings including those enemies and haters. We shall make that great wish. If both of your great wishes and repeating the Buddha’s name are for others, for all beings, and both of your learning from Buddha and practicing are for others, for all beings, I can say that, you’d have no mind of greed and anger only if generating the mind for supreme Bodhi. Your mind will be clean and pure if eliminating the mind of greed and anger; you can eliminate various kinds of evil karmas of many previous lives by even just start the idea. This is absolutely true!

The last time in Nanchong, I asked many Upasakas, is it the best to recite more mantras or repeat the Buddha’s name more? To explain this issue, I’d take the example of two people’s courses of learning and practicing; one is Shi Longzhen, the other is Mr. Huang. Shi Longzhen began to repeat the Buddha’s name from 14 years old; when she met me, she was already 74 years old. She still had many vexations though she had repeated the Buddha’s name for over 60 years. When she met me, she told me that her vexations had never been eliminated and even become more and more since she left home to be a nun on the Wu Tai Mountain. Finally, I imparted her the dharma on the Jiu Feng Mountain. Similarly by repeating the six word of ‘Na Mo E Mi Tuo Fo’ (the Chinese pronunciation of Amitabha), any yet she eliminated all of her vexations only an hour after. When I taught her the dharma, what she was asked to do is also repeating the name of Amitabha, why the outcomes were different? Because her motivation, direction and start point of repeating the Buddha’s name are different. She got the unbelievable effect in repeating the Buddha’s name. She told me that, this time she eventually saw Amitabha after 60 years of repeating the name. On the second day of that Chinese new year, when she was practice the dharma, her cloths were all wringing, her serious illnesses were all drove away and all sicknesses were healed. This is an actual person and event. The second example is Mr. Huang, who was best known by the Upasakas of Nanchong, as he was introduced to me from Nanchong. He was originally the professor of a Taiwanese university, and his wife was the chairman of Taiwanese Association of the White Sect of Tibetan Buddhism. They agreed that, one of them would go to India and the other to China, to see who can find the right dharma. He firstly went to Nanchong and found Xie Shaoying, a Nanchong Upasaka, when he didn’t learn the Buddha-dharma well. In 1995, he was introduced by Xie Shaoying to Zhongjiang’s White Tower Temple, and learned with everybody thus received my teaching of dharma. I taught him the Six-Syllable Charm that is the Avalokiteshvara’s Heart Dharma. He said: “Alas, I’ve learned that mantra for more than ten years, while today you started to teach me to recite it. This time I was caught with chaff.” That night, after my teaching, those tens of people all learned successfully except him only. On the way back, everybody’s talking about his or her experiences and feelings, and then he felt something wrong thus came back to the White Tower Temple. As soon as he came back to the temple, he ran to ask me, “Guru, everybody had feedbacks on last night’s practicing of dharma, why I didn’t have?” I also asked him, “you and other tens of people came together, why the others all have responses yet you don’t have? You haven’t check yourself.” He asked: “for what reason?” I said: “because you were too balky, and had the hindrances of partial knowledge; you were not earnest when practicing; and you didn’t put down your air of a professor to practice.” He immediately made the wish to earnestly practice according to the method taught by me, in spite of any conditions or disturbances (at the great hall, which was a temporary hall at that time). On that night, after two hours of practice, he eventually succeeded, and completely attained the dharma-nature. Afterwards, he lived at the White Tower Temple for one week, and solved his problem that cannot be solved for many years. Mr. Huang repeated the Buddha’s name for many years, and also recited over one thousand kind of mantras, which caused the paralysis of his whole right face, and his mouth was skew when speaking. Through one week’s practice in reciting the Six-Syllable mantra, the miracle happened that Mr. Huang’s right face, which had lost sensation for many years, gradually recovered to normal. He signed with emotion: “I learned from Buddha for tens of years and recited more than one thousand kinds of mantras, which was not as good as just reciting one mantra.” This example man explain one issue, that it is not depended on the quantities of the Buddha’s name you repeated, the mantras you recited, or dharma you learned. The key is if you’ve really held the essentials of it, that is, if you have generated the mind of renunciation and the mind for Bodhi, if you are repeating the Buddha’s name or reciting mantras wholeheartedly, and if you are not for your own but for all beings. If repeating the Buddha’s name for your own, you’ll only get a few rewards for men and deva even when you succeed; if for all beings, you can achieve the Buddha-hood in this life.

We nowadays people of learning from Buddha, shall not go to look for the so-called supreme great dharma. The more dharma you learn, and the more complexities you learn, the more disordered would your heart be, without knowing what on earth should you learn. Northern people went to south for study, yet southern people went to north; Han people went to Tibetan area for learning from Tibetans, while there were also many Tibetans who went to study in Han area. In fact, learning from Buddha is similar everywhere. I often say that some people’s two legs would be soft once see a Tibetan monk and insist on going to Tibetan area or Ganzi canton to learn dharma. I don’t mean its not good going to Tibetan area to learn dharma; it’s sure a good thing. But I can say that, going to Tibetan area to learn dharma or staying at Han area to learn dharma is all the same. I usually told the monks of the White Tower Temple, “it’s just like your cloths were wet in the rain; you couldn’t dry it in the White Tower Temple, so you insisted on taking them to Chengdu to dry. Which place’s sunshine is stronger? The sunshine is all the same! The Buddha’s light is shining everywhere!” Going to the Wuming Buddhism Institute (in Ganzi), the first problem is that you cannot understand their language. Without understanding Tibetan, will you become Buddha after having your head touched by them? Is it the better dharma if more difficult to understand? I’ve told you before, learning the Buddha-dharma must understand its real meaning and hold its essential. If you could become Buddha relying on someone’s a touch on your head or a breath blowing towards you, well then Buddha Sakyamuni wouldn’t have had the need to teach dharma for 49 years. Up to now, no one’s ability exceeded Buddha Sakyamuni’s. After entering into the way of Bodhi and seeing all beings’ suffering, what should he ask everybody to do? If everybody could become Buddha by repeating his name, he would have exerted his theurgy on seeing those suffering beings, thus only by his waving hands, everybody could have gone to the western most joyful world; if that was true, Buddha Sakyamuni would have blew an immortal breath, with which everybody’s wisdom could have been opened up immediately. Then who would need to study and practice? That was an impossible thing! So, learning from Buddha shall rely on own generating the mind, and one shall correct oneself. I told you early in 1980s that, we learners from Buddha must be rescued by ourselves, instead of supernatural beings or emperors. The Buddha told us long before, that he couldn’t directly rescue us, and we could only be rescued by ourselves. You shall generate the mind! You shall do as the method guided by the Buddha. The sutras in the Tripitaka and the 84,000 ways of practices are all teaching us one method: how to correct our own behaviors, and how to well read this sutra of ourselves, which is the true sutra without a word aiming at ourselves. Well, now, the best sutra laying in front of us, is to hold the three essentials of learning from Buddha, generate the mind of renunciation, know the sufferings of the temporal world and the life. We caused many evil karmas in the previous lives, so we shall return our merits and virtues to everybody, which can resonate among everyone and solve those obstacles of all our past lives that cannot be solved simply relying on our own strengths.

In the past, it was said that there are many Buddhas. How many on earth? To what extent? The sutra said: they are as many as sands in the Ganges. How many are the sands in the Ganges? India has a big river called Ganges, in which the sand is smallest. There are Buddhas as many as sands in the Ganges, so there are Buddha-dharmas as many as that. With so many Buddhas and their great wishes, why we people in this temporal world still have so many vexations? Some said, “you shall do obeisance in front of Kshitigarbha, because that Bodhisattva made the wish that ‘I swear not to be Buddha unless the hell is empty’”. However, today, beings in the hell are more and more, how long will it take him to become Buddha? Buddhas made wishes, well, can our nowadays practicers achieve what they wished? If cannot achieve the wishes and don’t do according to the methods taught by Buddhas, we cannot attain the aim of learning and practicing.