Living Buddha Dechan Jueren, June 3, 2003
Dari Rulai Temple, Los Angeles, CA
Translator: Kuo
Transcriber: Decheng
Dharma is only attained by ones own practice. As long as you are able to let go of your own hindrance in your heart, any one of you will attain and eventually accomplish. To see clearly and let go, then you will certainly understand that existence. If you never experience what letting go is, then you never experience for yourself what being at ease is really like. All I have to say is to continually stress this point. Many things, many tasks are only accomplished by doing it, not by talking about it.
Now of course if I talk about the first part of my life, you can write quite a good novel and people could read about it. Why is that I was able to attain to great dharma, great accomplishment? I often talk about my example but most people who heard what I say they dare not to try it this way. I was able to do this, for those who do know my past, I was a very wealthy man in my home town region. A very influential person. I was able to resign and give away everything in a few days. Any one of you, can you do that?
Many people in this temple that have visited Chaoyang, my home town in China, certainly there are many students here that have also visited the north pagoda in Chaoyang, they have held the Buddha relics, the very Shakyamuni Buddha’s relics, sharira in their hands. That north pagoda the government had spent 880,000 dollars renovating it. However, that was not enough, so the rest of the money came from me. I put in the remaining 1.38 million dollars to finish renovating the north pagoda. For those who went to Chaoyang, if you ever remember any of this, I didn’t say this myself. We were at a banquet with the mayor of the city, they were the ones who were talking about how they got the north pagoda renovated from my donation.
Before I attained enlightenment, when I was still a big boss, I had donated my own company, my own factories to the government for the welfare people, doing welfare work. That factory is still operating. My own factory at that time, net assets, was nine million plus dollars, and also 20,000 pieces of old gold coins, very valuable, I contributed it all to the temple.
At that time my father was still around and he learned about this and he became very mad that I was doing these kind of things. People in the Chaoyang area that knew me were all talking about…the rumor was that Mr. Yu had wasted all his money, he was studying Buddhism and he went crazy and he squandered all his money away like that. But what I have now is accomplished dharma. That amount of money a billion times over cannot buy it.
To be willing to renounce, then you shall receive. But if you want to give, you have to give to the right place. If you give to the wrong place, then you are only furthering bad stuff. There is no such thing in this world, that you can have them all. You want to attain enlightenment, at the same time you want to have a lot of money, at the same time you don’t want to give up anything, you want to keep everything for yourself, its impossible for this to happen. Whether you want to practice the dharma to attain to enlightenment, or whether you want to have more money by doing the practice, its two different ideas, two different aspirations.
I talk about this right now to clearly point out something for you, and whatever that is…think about it. If you wish to live a better life only when you treat others from the bottom of your heart will you ever accomplish that aim. If you want to become a great one of merit, then first you must be able to bear all kinds of trials and difficulties in your life.