Practicing Makes The World More Civilized
Columbia University, NY,USA. November 3, 1989.

Q. When you attain enlightenment what happens to the personality?

M. Do you mean if you are a very angry person, will you become more calm? It happens. Yes, it affects our personality to become more perfect.

Q. Buddha emphasized mediation, now Catholics struggle to learn meditation in a Buddhist way. In Catholic meditation we use some Bible, use the words to learn, read, use word meditation. In the Buddha '5 way, meditation is emptying the mind. How we can use this way of meditation to reach God?

M. Once we are enlightened, we know things differently, from the ordinary understanding. Before I also did not understand what was meant by 'emptying your mind'? What's the Kingdom of God? What's Buddha Nature and all these terms? It was so big for me. After enlightenment, everything is like a child's game. In the Catholic tradition, some have meditation. You know that Christianity has many retreat centers, many hideaways, what we call secret orders. No one can enter even. What do they do? They contemplate, they pray, they meditate.

What's meditation? I'll tell you. After prayer or maybe worshipping God for long hours, our arms ache from tearing the beads apart and our knees are sometimes tired. So then we might just drop down and sit there or kneel there in silence, to have a rest. At that time, God's instruction will come. That's meditation. We have to be quiet in order to listen. We always talk and God has no chance to tell us. So the prayer is the talking, the demand; and meditation is the listening. Most people just keep praying all the time or always make noise or always talk, and God has no chance to tell them what to do. No wonder their prayers are unanswered. God has no opportunity.

So the meditation is a must from a logical standpoint. Whether you are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or whatever, I don't care. If you cannot make time to listen to God, then God can never be communicated with. Even if you talk to a friend - you telephone, you talk and then you must listen. Even if you ask me, you must first ask, and then now you must be quiet so I have a chance to tell you. How can we treat God even worse than a friend. We keep talking all the time, and give Hirm no chance. Meditation is the time of quiet listening. That's all there is, and God will come.

Q. You say a genuine master should not perform miracles, yet Jesus performed miracles and healed people.

M. Remember what Jesus said to His mother: Why do you tell people that I can perform miracles? He was very reluctant to do this. Because His mother had already told people to prepare water and leave it there, this forced Him to do it. Many other times He cured the lepers, He cured the sick people; but He waited until no one was there and went and told the person to get up and get healed. When He saw people come after Him, He immediately disappeared. Do you remember? He hid Himself. He didn't want to let people see. He also told the patient not to tell other people. But that person came out and told everything.

So even if masters have miracle powers, they seldom openly use them to attract the attention of the masses. They only want to attract the sincere seekers for the Kingdom of God; because if you are after miracles only, then miracles are all you will have not the Kingdom of God. If you are after the Kingdom of God, you seek the Kingdom of God, then all things shall be added onto you. You'll have miracles and all things. Therefore most masters avoid attracting people by miracles, for fear that they will pay their attention only to that part of the God power and forget the whole.

Q. My life is in danger. Do You feel it?

M. I understand; but whether yours or mine, everyone is the same. Whether you know it or not, our lives are always in danger at any moment. So if you want to protect yourself, then get enlightenment. Use your wisdom to protect your own life. No one else can do it!

Q. To be a lifelong vegetarian, without mea1-eating is prevent from killing. But can we eat eggs?

M. Eggs contain half of the life. They unite together and become a chicken. This is the first reason why we should not eat eggs. Now some eggs are unfertilized, but still they contain half of the life in them.

The second reason is that chickens they eat all kinds of worms with bacteria and disease. So when we eat them, the eggs are not that pure not good for our delicate system. The more we practice, the more we become very sensitive. It's dirty.

The third reason is that all the black magicians, witches, they use eggs to attract so-called dead souls, controlled souls. If we eat them, we also attract these souls to ourselves. We add more negative nature to our own beings. It's not very helpful for spiritual progress, so we don't eat eggs.

Q. As the Buddha asked His disciples to filter the water,; do we have to filter our environment and our actions so we may attain enlightenment easier?

M. Yes, we do! Therefore the emphasis is on keeping the precepts, the commandments.

Q. What do You think of astrology?

M. Doesn't change much. Doesn't help much. We have to change from a higher plane of consciousness. Not just by knowing what happens tomorrow. We have to change our life, our way of living in order to better our life and smooth our path not by consulting an astrologer; because he might tell you to avoid one disaster, but the next will follow. You cannot always have an astrologer in your pocket. Whereby you have your wisdom all the time with you and this is the best 'astrologer,' the best guide to tell you everything. In the course of time, even he doesn't tell you.

It takes care of you even if you are not yet at a very spiritually perceptive stage. The Master inside will take care that you do not run into so much trouble, and smooth your path for you. That's the best thing to do; not to consult an astrologer. Besides, once we are very highly developed in wisdom, we are above astrology. No one can read your palm any longer. No one knows under which star you are influenced anymore. Finished, you are above the stars, the sun and the moon. Nothing affects you.

Q. Why is there so much suffering in this world? Is there innocence involved in suffering?

M. No one is innocent. Except we are born again, we are not innocent. Born again means repenting our past misdeeds and promising God to lead a better life, a virtuous life. Then God's grace will descend on us, will help us, clean us, purify us, and make us become a child. Then we can say: "I am born again, I am innocent." After the initiation we can say we are innocent.

If we follow the virtuous path, then we will always be innocent; but not before that. We are burdened with the so-called original sin, or the past karma. We cannot say we are innocent. We, everyone of us, are responsible for the condition of our world today. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, we have done some damage to the world. We must repent. We must change our way of life. We must live in wisdom, in virtue.

Q. If there is only one God, Buddha, why are we God ourselves?

M. Because we are all one. It is an illusion that we are many. After enlightenment, you see we are all one. It's only one spirit, one unity, one great being in all of us. For example, the sunshine, is it the whole? Sun rays are from the sun. It's a part of the whole. But because the sun has to shine in different directions to benefit in different aspects, therefore we have many sun rays. We cannot say that a sun ray is a separate sun ray. It's an illusion to say a sun ray is a separate sun ray. It is not at all. It's an illusion, ignorant, to say that the waves are different from the ocean. Is it not true?

Q. What's wrong with occasionally having a beer or a glass of wine with friends?

M. It looks like nothing is wrong, but people start from there. People start from a glass of harmless wine and a beer with a friend, and become alcoholics. They couldn't suddenly become an alcoholic, no? It develops from a glass of beer, a glass of wine, and becomes more habitual - take more and more and become possessed with it. So don't start. Don't play with fire. Also any drop of wine, anything that's alcoholic dulls your wisdom, kills your memory, takes you further from the Truth, makes you forget who you are, and disconnects you from the glorious path and your highest wisdom. Therefore we better avoid it.

Many people were born mentally damaged. It's due to them having killed their own wisdom with too many intoxicants in the past, like alcohol, drugs or such things. So do not play with fire! We do not know how much we can control ourselves. No one knows until it is too late. All mistakes come from the overestimation of our control of will power. It's easy to say, but hard to practice. So better not to try. Now you see the world is already very mysterious and foggy. Why do you want to add more confusion to your mind? Our vision is already blurred, already not clear. Why should we add more to our, unclear mind with alcohol or drugs.

Q. Why can't people control themselves sometimes?

I told you already. It's easy to control people, but not easy to control ourselves. It's because we do not learn controlling. Also it's because of the karmic set-up which we do not understand. Some people we see for the first time, we fall in love with. We call this love at first sight. Someone we've just met for one second, we want to start a fight with him. It's not that we do not want to control our emotion or anger, we just can not because of the karmic background.

Maybe that person was in love with you before or made some nice, good impression in your mind. So when you meet that person for the first time, you feel overwhelming love and sometimes mistake it for love at first sight. It's affection from the past. The one whom you want to get into a fight with, it was maybe because in a past life he was angry with you all the time and troubled you a lot.

Q. Can an ordinary person, a worldly person, also get enlightenment? Can they attain the supraworldly state? Please explain, Master!

M. Of course! No one is an ordinary worldly person!You are only cheating yourself. The Most High is in your heart, so how could you be an ordinary worldly person? No one is an ordinary worldly person, but you deliberately make your-self one! We do not wish to know that we are the Almighty. Everyday, we just earn money, sleep, eat, raise children, and never seek anything else. It is all right to work, eat, sleep, and have children; but we should also be enlightened, know why we are doing this, and know that we are the Most High. If you are not enlightened, and engage only in worldly work, of course we will stay forever in the world, and forever be an ordinary worldly person.