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Vietnamese|English If
We Don’t Uphold the Precepts, It Becomes the Dharma-ending Age After
we receive the precepts, if we can accord with the spirit of “stopping evil
and guarding against transgressions, doing no evil and practicing all good
deeds,” then we are upholding the precepts. After
we receive the precepts, we must uphold them. Precepts help us to do no evil
and practice all good deeds. They are a means of stopping evil and guarding
against transgressions. If we can accord with the spirit of “stopping evil
and guarding against transgressions, doing no evil and practicing all good
deeds,” then we are upholding the precepts. In our behavior and thinking, we
should do our best to stop evil, do good deeds, and help others. We should
guard ourselves from thinking or doing things that do not accord with
principle or with the Dharma. That’s the meaning of the precepts. Buddhists
who uphold the precepts should pay attention to this and see if you can follow
it. After
you take refuge with the Triple Jewel, you should respect the Buddha, the
Dharma, and the Sanhga at all times. Since everything is made from the mind,
if the mind always respects the Triple Jewel, after a while it will naturally
unite with the Triple Jewel and become the Buddha Jewel, the Dharma Jewel, the
Sangha Jewel, and the Precepts Jewel. After we take refuge with the Buddha, we
should bow respectfully whenever we see a Buddha image. All Buddhist Sutras
should be placed respectfully and neatly in a clean place higher than worldly
books, not in places such as by the stairs where the traffic is heavy. We
should always respect the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, and the precepts and
never treat them lightly. When
we uphold the precepts, we purify our own nature by sweeping out the dismal
darkness that was there. When the precepts are not upheld, the dark clouds
accumulate layer upon layer. The less we observe the precepts, the more the
dark clouds gather. When people fail to uphold the precepts, defiling dark
clouds form in their own nature. If you don‘t uphold the precepts, no one
gets hurt but yourself--your own nature. Therefore, it’s essential to
sternly uphold the precepts. When the precepts are upheld, the Proper Dharma
exists. When they aren‘t, it becomes the Dharma-ending Age. When
we listen to the Buddhadharma, we should not be greedy to hear a lot. The most
important thing is to stop evil and guard against transgressions, and to put
into practice whatever we know. It is enough if we can "Do no evil and
practice all good deeds." When the Buddha was about to enter the Nirvana,
the Venerable Ananda asked the Buddha about four matters. One of them was:
“The Buddha is our teacher when he is in the world; whom should we take as
our teacher after Buddha enters the Nirvana?” At that time, the Buddha
solemnly told the left home and lay disciples, "Take the precepts as your
teacher." Therefore, when we recite the refuges, we also take refuge with
the precepts. That‘s how we take the precepts as our teacher. If you truly
want to learn Buddhism, you must take the precepts as your teacher. Precepts
are not something you pay lipservice to; you must actually keep and uphold
them in your mind. If
you do not violate the five precepts, your mind will be bright. If someone has
violated the precepts, you can tell from the way they talk that they have a
ghost inside; they aren‘t able to speak in a frank and righteous manner.
They always seem to have a string pulling them from behind. It’s as if a
ghost were pulling their tail, making them afraid. Though
I don't carry a gun, bullets, or any other weapons, for some reason that I
can‘t figure out, wherever I go, certain types of people who are kind of
suspicious and shifty are always scared of me. Some are so frightened that
they don’t even dare to talk to me or look at me. Let me tell you why this
is. It’s because they don‘t observe precepts, so it’s as if they‘re
living in dark clouds--hiding in the dark--and unable to see light. Failure
to observe the precepts is a sign of the Dharma-ending Age. If you want to
protect the Proper Dharma, you must uphold the precepts. Upholding the
precepts means upholding them yourself, not telling others to uphold them. If
we don‘t uphold the precepts, our own nature will get hurt. When our nature
gets hurt, that means it becomes defiled and dark, like a mirror getting
covered with dust so that it can’t reflect a person‘s image anymore. Our
own nature is as bright as a mirror. We are originally endowed with the Great
Perfect Mirror Wisdom, the Wisdom of Accomplishment, the Wonderful
Contemplative Wisdom, and the Wisdom of Equality. Our own nature is
limitlessly bright, but because we don’t uphold the precepts, that light
cannot manifest. And so our memories become poor, along with everything else.
Why are people ignorant? Because they don‘t uphold the precepts. There are
some retarded children who, because of not observing precepts in their
previous lives, are no smarter than horses and oxen. Though they have human
bodies, they lack human intelligence and are deluded as well as foolish. For
example, today someone came and asked me what stage of Bodhisattvahood he was
on. Basically, he doesn‘t even know what a Bodhisattva is, yet he asked such
a question. Wouldn’t you say that‘s pathetic? He’s the type of person
who didn‘t observe the precepts and consequently became mentally insane. The
Buddha is one with great wisdom. Who has great wisdom will be just like the
Buddha. If one cannot become a Buddha, it’s because one has not upheld the
precepts. The Buddha upheld the precepts in every life and never committed the
slightest transgression. Therefore, he realized the Buddha body and came to
have the Three Bodies, the Four Kinds of Wisdom, the Five Eyes, and the Six
Penetrations. If everyone can "do no evil and practice all good
deeds," they will be upholding the precepts. A
talk given on September 3, 1986
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