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Vietnamese | English The
Offspring of the Demon King If
the Shurangama Sutra is gone, the Proper Dharma will also be
gone. When
the demon king competed with the Buddha, the Buddha used his samadhi
power to overcome the demon king・s spiritual penetrations. The demon
king then said to the Buddha, ：I cannot win now, but in the future
when your disciples lack sufficient samadhi power and proper knowledge
and views, I will worm my way into your religion, wear your clothing,
eat your food, and then relieve myself in your almsbowl. We・ll see
what you do then!" Shakyamuni Buddha said very sadly, "I
won・t be able to do anything then.； Now
a left-home person has actually declared that the Amitabha Sutra
is spurious, his reason being that there is no proof that, ：Passing
from here through hundreds of thousands of millions of Buddhalands to
the west, there is a world called Ultimate Bliss.； ：What surveyor
has measured it?； he asked. ：Maybe the distance is slightly more
or less than ．hundreds of thousands of millions of Buddhalands.・
How could it be exactly ．hundreds of thousands of millions of
Buddhalands・?； What a stupid, ridiculous argument! Recently,
another left-home person proclaimed that the Shurangama Sutra
was spurious and should not be believed. He based his statement on a
passage of the Sutra which says, ：Then King Prasenajit, for the sake
of his father, the late king, arranged on the day of mourning a
vegetarian feast and invited the Buddha to the side rooms of the
palace. He welcomed the Tathagata in person with a vast array of
superb delicacies of unsurpassed wonderful flavors.； He thought this
passage did not comply with the customs of India at the time, because
Indians did not stress filial piety. Thus, he judged that the Shurangama
Sutra was spurious and was not spoken by the Buddha. This is
equivalent to destroying the Sutras and slandering the Buddha. The
retribution for such behavior will be inconceivable. His ideas are too
childish. Can you possibly imagine what his intention might have been? The
Sutra of the Complete Extinction of the Dharma says, "The Shurangama
Sutra will be the first Sutra to disappear in the future
Dharma-ending Age." That・s because the Shurangama Sutra
is the symbol of the Proper Dharma Age. If the Shurangama Sutra
is gone, the Proper Dharma will also be gone. Nowadays, there are many
mountain spirits and water monsters who maintain that the Shurangama
Sutra was not spoken by the Buddha, and that people should not
believe in it. If the Shurangama Sutra is not to be believed,
then we can also forget about all the other Sutras. Why? Because there
is no evidence that the other Sutras were spoken by the Buddha,
either. So, you can see how malicious the demon king is! The
Shurangama Sutra reveals the truth all too clearly. The demon
king cannot follow the Four Clear Instructions on Purity, nor can he
cultivate the Dharma doors of Perfect Penetration of the Twenty-five
Sages, or face the states of the Fifty Skandha-demons. He is afraid of
being exposed and having people find out what he really is. For that
reason, he tries to destroy the Shurangama Sutra. His method of
destroying it is not to burn the Sutra, but to make people lose faith
in it. The
things going on in this world are just that strange and mysterious.
The truth is recognized by very few. Business is booming for those who
sell fake medicines, while those who sell the real thing have no
customers at all. Why is this? It・s because no one recognizes the
value of his merchandise. That・s why I say that while no one
recognizes what is true, everyone is infatuated with and deluded by
the false. This principle is very easy to understand. We
are now in the Dharma-ending Age. Most people slander and fail to
believe in Dharma Masters who truly cultivate the Buddhadharma. On the
other hand, phony Dharma Masters who give boisterous, entertaining
speeches attract large audiences. The hall gets so crowded that people
can hardly breathe; they are like sardines in a can. There・s even a
monk who promotes a nonvegetarian diet. He says to everyone,
：Vegetarians are all greedy. Only nonvegetarians have no greed.；
This is an absurd statement, but it really blinds people and makes
them muddled. Being muddled from the time they were born until they
die, they muddle their way straight to the hells and can never come
out. Therefore,
in studying the Buddhadharma, we need to have Dharma-selecting
Vision so that we can distinguish right from wrong and good from
evil. Otherwise, we・ll be like the blind men examining the elephant.
Not being able to see the truth, we just repeat what we・ve heard
others say. When someone says the elephant is like a wall, we say that
the elephant is like a wall. When someone says it・s like a pillar,
we say it・s like a pillar. What is the elephant really like? We
don・t know. In studying the Buddhadharma, we have to understand the
truth and not just blindly follow others. Everyone should pay special
attention to this! A
talk given on April 17, 1984
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