Entries 91–101

Strictly speaking, what merit does the immense toil and suffering expended by cultivators on the path of cultivating and serving actually amount to? Even if there is some small measure of merit, one must still repay karmic debts, return ancestral kindness, pray for peace, and prepare provisions for the journey — and furthermore deduct the negative ledger of daily transgressions. My disciples! Do you still dare to praise yourselves and boast, to be conceited about your own merit?

Last time, your teacher urged you to learn the Matriarch's "concealment." Perhaps you did not deeply understand. Now let me explain clearly. A cultivator of Dao should learn from her, the venerable one — her name concealed from the human world, her form concealed from the three realms, her merit concealed within the aspiration of heavenly purpose. Your teacher's crazy reputation and crazy appearance the whole world knows. Yet how many can perceive the Matriarch's wisdom-virtue? She truly surpasses me by a full measure. Therefore, in these final times, conceal brilliance and nurture in obscurity. Restrain your name and conceal your virtue. Do not let external forms steal the light of Divine Grace and Saintly Virtue from the heart-fields of sentient beings.

In the future, the strange phantasms of thirty-six false patriarchs and seventy-two false Maitreyas will arise — all born from within the mind, not from external circumstances. What we see now — temples splintered into factions, fighting over power and seizing influence — is caused by selfish minds taking root, demonic spirits exploiting the opening, and the heavenly sovereign within abdicating its throne. If you do not become aware, you will fall into deviation without even knowing it. I hope my disciples will diligently cultivate the three trainings of discipline, concentration, and wisdom, using true wisdom to shatter boundless ignorance, and cultivate Dao with openness and integrity — only then will you not be led astray by temptation.

Those who cultivate Dao must be proper and upright, sincere and earnest. Even the humblest junior disciple who sweeps latrines and wipes towels can one day attain Heaven's rank. If you only seek to put on a show, cling to merit, consider yourself a noble person yet lack the generosity, compassion, and gentleness to guide others, then it will be hard to accord with Heaven's heart, and your attainment will be limited. Moreover, attaining Dao in one lifetime does not guarantee you will never regress. Therefore cultivate the utmost purity, sincerity, and authenticity, bearing toil and blame without complaint — and above all, always treat with kindness those beings who have not yet been saved and not yet awakened.

Those who serve as the Three Talents must be clear, still, and luminous — purely aligned with Heaven's heart, turning heaven and earth. Hold constantly to the mindset of non-action, selflessness, and seeing and completing Dao; only then can you bring to completion boundless sentient beings, and your merit will be no less than that of an Elder who pioneered Dao across an entire region. But if you dwell too long in human intentions and forget the seal-contract between Heaven and Buddha, you will easily fall into difficulty, unable to access the subtle mysteries, and find it hard to enter the perfectly harmonious great transformation of all Buddhas. With your vows unfulfilled, how will you one day return to South-Flower Palace to report on your mission?

To have jumped free of the worldly arena of fame and profit is already no easy feat — do not fall into yet another whirlpool: treating organizational forms and external structures as the purpose itself. These are merely expedient arrangements — assign dedicated people to coordinate with governance requirements and be done with it. Grand Elders need not cling to their positions. Know that the universal salvation of the Heavenly Way still silently draws in the worthy and virtuous, and the gentleman's virtue is subtle yet daily more radiant. Do not only hear applause in media promotions while losing the heart of the ancient sages who accepted their charge in times of crisis and bore the weight of sacred entrustment. What your teacher and the Matriarch left you is the Dao arena, not a church.

Those who cultivate Dao in the age of declining dharma must carefully guard their thought-impulses, for the slightest deviation leads to their own ruin. The karmic creditors of sentient beings, accumulated over countless eons, and the asura realm have already tacitly agreed: they will no longer demand lives or seize merit, but will wait for the person's own thought-impulses to deviate, causing the sacred spirit within to rebel, implicating nine generations above and seven below, and thereby fragmenting and dissolving the Dao work. Disciples, just look at the chaos in certain temples — will you not quickly alert yourselves, reflect, and awaken?

Never contend for merit or seize accolades in the temple, pass judgment on whether other lineages' Heavenly Mandate is real or false, or force fellow devotees to be re-initiated. Some even say, within the same Grand Elder's congregation, that each other's initiations are invalid. Can it be that the most sacred pointing entrusted by Heavenly Mother and the Patriarch turns to gold only in your hand but to iron in another's? Absurd! A single thought of greed and delusion, a single word of false accusation, injures the painstaking effort of patriarchs through the ages who protected this lifeline, and commits the grave offense of shedding the Buddha's blood and splitting the sangha. So long as you do not defy Heaven, betray the patriarchs, or exalt yourself, each lineage's Heavenly Mandate is the responsibility of its own Elders, who answer to Heaven. The golden thread of the Heavenly Mandate is anchored in the moral foundation of those who truly cultivate and earnestly serve. I hope my disciples will respect the lineage origins, perfect one another, and together protect the harmony of the temple across the three realms.

Your teacher has just returned from the northeast of China, where the asuras' methods were savage. Nearly a hundred disciples shouldered the catastrophe, and in their extremity still upheld their vows, going to righteousness and laying down their lives, crying out for the compassion of their teacher. I knew they had to complete their humaneness along a path where power could not bend them. I wished to save them but could not — my grief was beyond measure! For decades, countless disciples in that land have protected the wisdom-life amid an ocean of blood and purgatory, truly cultivating and earnestly practicing, neither craving nor seeking. Disciples in temples of free nations are far from their equal! If you still do not cherish Divine Grace and cling to disputes, then the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first levels of hell await your descent!

100

It is not yet time for large-scale Dao work in mainland China, though if conditions permit, you may go to plant seeds. But you must be cautious and protect yourselves — do not come to harm through carelessness. And do not contact the Grand Elders of former days, lest you endanger them. This is the Maitreya Patriarch's strategy for protecting the Dao seeds. The Heavenly timing has arrived for the great reckoning — my disciples! Those who cultivate and serve must entrust their lives to Heaven, giving heart and strength to truly cultivate and earnestly serve. Be confused no longer!

101

In those years when your teacher cultivated and served, I was merely a transmitting master, bearing largely the responsibility of transmitting the orthodox lineage. From the time the Matriarch and I received the Heavenly Mandate at the Eight-Trigram Furnace, I served only seventeen years before departing. All accomplishments are Heaven's grace — how would I dare claim credit! Now many transmitting masters have served in Dao longer than your teacher did, so ask yourselves: do your moral character, genuine merit, and real virtue match your titles and positions? After the senior generation departed, instead of repaying grace, fulfilling vows, and protecting the temple, you erected your own hilltops, recruited junior members to your factions, and attacked one another, leaving tens of thousands of devotees lost and bewildered. How does this answer to Heavenly Mother and the Buddhas of all directions? Your teacher lacks virtue — perhaps I should surrender the title of Honored Teacher of the Three Realms! Disciples, summon your resolve: everything in this world is merely external forms — do not let external forms invert your true suchness and Buddha-nature. Can you understand your teacher's anguished heart?