practicing MAKES THE WORLD MORE CIVILIZED



Columbia University, NY, USA. November 3, 1989.

Brothers and sisters, let us join in a few minutes of prayer to your own God, your own good Self or your own Buddha Nature. Pray that our seminar will be a helpful time for you. Thank you.

Well, brothers and sisters, you are the children of the Great Intelligence, the Great Wisdom. I suppose you do know something about yourself. Do you feel it sometimes - the greatness within your own heart, the Father or the Mother, which is the Creator or what we call the Buddha Nature from which we came and to which we will return, if we so desire?

There is free will, absolutely free, for each individual to choose between this world and the higher kingdom. Most of the people prefer to stay here and some people prefer to go home, go back to the Kingdom of God or to the Buddha's land. It's just that - let us not be deluded about what we want. If we truly prefer to stay on this Earth, to be useful to humanity and the earthly citizens, then we must also consider some conditions, without which, our life, our sojourn in this world will not be very pleasant. If we wish to go back to the Kingdom of God or to become a Buddha, to go back to the Buddha's land, then we should also consider some factors which will enable us to go there.

Now let us first speak of the conditions which enable us to stay in this world and lead a comfortable, pleasant life, in case some people prefer to stay. Our planet is a very beautiful 'spaceship'. We can say 'spaceship,' which carries a lot of sentient beings in mid air and circles around. Our planet gives us a lot of comfort and joy, gives us a lot of treasures, and sustains our lives through many ways and means. But then, we also have a little duty towards our Mother Earth, to help her to remain in such a powerful position so that she may be able to help us. In order to do so, all the religions have taught us what to do. But if I may take the opportunity, with your permission, to remind you a little bit; also for the sake of those who will listen to the tapes of this seminar in the future.

Please do not have the opinion that I'll be your lecturer, teacher, master or whatever. Forget all about this. Just take me as your brother, sister, daughter, just a well-wiser, a sincere person, who would like to offer whatever she has in her best ability. It is just like if you are an engineer, then you try to help the society with your knowledge of techniques. If you are. a doctor, then you try to help the society elevates by eliminating the suffering of humanity, treating their sickness, etceteras.

I was born with the tendency to have spiritual knowledge; and as much as I've attained some of this spiritual knowledge, I am obliged to feed it back. Just like what we have learned in college about machinery or medical treatment, we have to offer back again to the society later on. So I'm only doing my duty and I'm grateful to you that you have given me the permission and the welcoming atmosphere to do my job.

We Only Use Five Percent Of Our Intelligence

In order to put our society back in a pleasurable condition, we should also observe certain precepts, mutual respect and understanding. The way most of the people live their lives is harmful to themselves and harmful to other beings visible and invisible. If we do not believe in the invisible existence of other beings, at least we believe in the existence of our own race, humanity, and all the animals who are the citizens of the Earth.

Lately, there is a kind of fashion, that people are becoming vegetarian. That is a good tendency, because as we know, everything carries energy. Every action is registered. Nothing is lost, as far as we can prove by science. So if we have caused some violent condition, then the violent atmosphere will hang around us or our planet and that causes some disasters. That's why we always wonder, "How come there are so many wars?", "How come so many earthquakes, so many disasters are befalling our planet?"

Now there is nothing from nothing. The Bible states very clearly: As you sow, so shall you reap. Now we do not see what we have sown, we only see what we reap sometimes. It is because our intelligence is so limited. According to science we only use five percent of our intelligence. Now fancy we only use five percent, then how can we know so many things? There must be many things that we have not discovered, that we do not understand. This we have to accept. There is no escape from this.

Two thousand, six, seven hundred years ago, the Buddha said to His disciples, Be careful about the water you drink. You have to filter your water before you drink and repeat some sacred words in order to avoid killing beings in the glass of water. He said there are 84,000 beings in a glass of clear water. Now 84,000 is not exactly 84,000. It is a way of saying plenty in Indian custom. So the Buddha said to the disciples that they had to filter their water.

In India at that time, to filter water was not something very popular like we do nowadays. Now the Buddha had seen this already ahead of His time, that there are bacteria in the water. Of course the people in His time found it so difficult to believe Him, as they could not prove there are any sentient beings, or what we call bacteria, in a glass of clear water. But nowadays, due to scientific advancement, we can prove it so easily.

Great Practitioners Create A More Civilized World

It is good that our society today has become so advanced, so intelligent. The scientific research and hard, diligent efforts have brought a lot of comfort into our lives. Now we could wonder to ourselves: Why didn't we have these a few thousand years ago, all these electronic apparatus? We were not that intelligent. We were not advanced in science. So suppose there is a God, then why didn't Hes make people intelligent before? What happened to those God's children a few thousand years ago? Did God treat them like adopted children? Not the real children?

So you see, the advancement of our world has been brought about by the diligent efforts of those so-called practitioners, the bearers of Light in this world the yogis, the realized ones, the mahatmas, the masters. Those greatest ones are more beneficial, are working in a greater dimension. But even the so-called less high level yogis, practitioners, bearers of Light, are also making their contribution to the whole atmospheric change in order to bring about our worldly condition today. If these practitioners of Light, bearers of Light, did not exist and had not been existing throughout the centuries, then our world would not have come to this condition as it is now.

So we are grateful to science and the discovery of scientists for all our comforts and all the advanced apparatus. They have brought comfort into our lives. But we truly forget what is the 'behind' benefactor, the invisible one, which brought about this condition. If these so-called practitioners or bearers of Light were absent from our world environment, then the world would become like hell. There would be no symbol of virtue, no examples of higher living, no light. It would be like a countryside without any electricity - all dark, like in the olden days.

Therefore, what makes our world different from hell is that we still have Light-bearers; and what makes our world different from heaven is that the Light-bearers, the virtuous people are fewer in number. If there were none at all, it would become hell. Hell is the absence of Light, of virtues. If we have more Light-bearers, then our world would become heaven. That's what makes all the difference.

Everyone would like to live in comfort and in a heavenly world, but not all people make an effort to build a heaven for themselves and those surrounding them. So we should refer back to our religious scriptures like in Christianity, in Buddhism, in order to know how to build up a heavenly environment for our world. This I would not like to emphasize too much. Maybe it will bore you because you'll say, "I know all this already." You would tell me, "I know the Bible from the first page to the last. I am a Christian. No need to tell me.

The Buddhists would also tell me, "I know the five precepts of the Buddha. I am a lay person, I took refuge in the Buddha, maybe forty years ago. I have a dharma name, a Buddhist name - special."

A Buddhist's name is like a Christian name, when you are baptized, I think you have a saintly name Maria something or Joseph something. According to Christian tradition, apart from your own name, you have a Christian name. Now in Buddhist tradition it is a similar thing. When you take refuge in the Buddha, the sanga and the Dharma, you are also given a name. Some beautiful name like Perfect Light, Buddha's Light, Wisdom Light, Perfect Wisdom, Perfect Virtues, Liberation, Great Soul or whatever.

It is good to have these names, whether Christian or Buddhist. But, it's better if we live up to our names. If we are given Saint Francis, then we should try to read the biography of this saint. See what he did to become a saint, how he lived his life so that now he is revered throughout the centuries and throughout the world. If we happen to have the name Ananda - Ananda means bliss, ecstasy, happiness, boundless joy in Sanskrit, according to Hindu tradition; then we should see to it that we also attain this bliss through virtues, through diligent practice in inner contemplation of our inner bliss.

Our real Self is that bliss, is that virtue and connection with God. If we forget our real Self, then we are very lonely and we suffer much arduousness in this world. Once we are connected with this real Self, things begin to take a turn for the better; and we will be more clear about which direction we take and what things we do to offer to ourselves, the society at large and also to the whole universe.

Everything we do affects everyone in this world and the next. Every religion mentions to us that all things, all beings are one in essence. Just like our body has many parts. If our hands hurt, it affects our whole body also. Just because the universal body is so great, and we the many beings in this great body cannot understand, cannot see the whole universal body, so we may not believe that our actions concern any other beings. Should we develop the kind of Celestial Eye, Wisdom Eye, we would see this for ourselves that we are indeed connected with all beings. Then we would be very careful about what we do.

Jesus Christ, Buddha had developed this kind of Eye of Wisdom. Therefore they knew what are the laws of the universe; what to do in order to beautify our world; also to make our lives more pleasant, more comfortable and more suitable to our taste. Therefore they laid down the rules from the heavenly abode, about our behavior and the direction we should take in our daily living. These rules are very valuable, what we call precepts or the commandments of God. Should we follow these, our lives would be much more smooth. But that is as far as the worldly connection is concerned - the worldly contribution is concerned.

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