Belief and Vow

If one wants to quickly be free of the suffering in samsara, there is no method better than mindfully chanting the Buddha-name and seeking rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

If one wants to be absolutely certain of attaining rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss, it is best for one to be led by belief and compelled forward by vow.

When one’s belief is firm and vow is earnest, even if one chants the Buddha-name with a scattered mind, one will surely be reborn in the Land of Ultimate Bliss. When one’s belief is not sincere and vow is not resolute, even if one chants with One Mind Undisturbed, one still will not be able to be reborn in the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

What is belief? First, one believes in the power of the vows of Amitabha Buddha. Second, one believes in the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha. Third, one believes in the extolment by all the Buddhas in the six directions.

When people of integrity in this world do not speak any untruthful words, how would Amitabha Buddha, Sakyamuni Buddha, and all the Buddhas in the six directions do so? If one does not believe these Buddhas’ words, one truly cannot be saved.

What is vow? At all times, one feels aversion to the suffering of the cycle of birth and death in the Saha world and believes and yearns for the Bodhi bliss in the Western Pure Land.

When one does a deed, if it is a good one, then one dedicates the merit to rebirth in the Western Pure Land; if it is a bad one, then one repents and vows to be reborn in the Western Pure Land. One has no other aspirations. This is vow.

When one has both belief and vow, mindfully chanting the Buddha-name to attain rebirth [in the Western Pure Land] is the main practice, and correcting wrongdoings and cultivating good deeds is the auxiliary practice.

~ Great Master Yinguang

"Whatever you do will be insignificant,

but it is very important that you do it."

 ~ Gandhi ~

On What to Rely

Rely on the teacher’s message,

not the personality.

Rely on the meaning,

not just the words.

Rely on the real meaning,

not the provisional one.

Rely on your wisdom mind,

not your ordinary, judgmental mind.

Where Can A Baby Get a Birth Certificate and Hunting License in the Same Year?

Yesterday I was doing some research for "Here Sweetie, Have a Gun for Your Fifth Birthday." I could have said "for your third" or “for your first” birthday, but I decided no one would believe me. The fifth birthday was unbelievable enough.

I’m from the U.S. so I did some more research on children and hunting, this time for the U.S. As we all know, parents taking their young children hunting is hardly just an Australian occurrence. On the state of Vermont website I found the following fee schedule:

A resident or nonresident lifetime fishing, hunting, or combination fishing and hunting license may be obtained from the Fish & Wildlife Department. Fees are as follows:

for children under 1 year old = 5X current adult license price.

for children 1-15 years old = 15X current adult license price.

for adults 16-24 years old = 30X current adult license price.

for adults 25-64 years old = 25X current adult license price.

What on earth are we teaching our children! Apparently in Vermont, a one year-old child can have a license to hunt.

This week in the news is a story of seventeen year-old boy in Germany who shot and killed fifteen schoolchildren and then shot himself. He had taken the gun from his father's collection of sixteen. In Alabama in the US, a man shot dead eleven people: seven family members then three people he didn’t even know, and finally himself.

The very understandable reaction to these tragedies has been shock, anger, grief, and disbelief. How could this happen? The commonly-heard comment after such tragedies is “I never would have thought he would do something like this. He seemed like a pretty avarage kid.”

Maybe in today’s world, where children aged three and five go hunting with their fathers, where babies can get a hunting license, where teenagers play games in which they perfect their skills at killing virtual people, for many people this is the terrible new “normal.”

Here Sweetie, Have a Gun for Your Fifth Birthday

A few years ago, I was speaking to group of about twenty Australians. We were deep in the heart of a state forest, surrounded by pine trees and listening to the sounds of the breeze rustling through the pine needles and the ever-present birds. I had just concluded a Dharma talk and people were raising questions and discussing what had been said in the talk. It was a safe environment, one in which everyone felt comfortable with one another as most were friends and the strangers had soon felt at ease.

One newcomer raised a question about parents and after my response he replied that he had been abused as a child. After he spoke, another person said she too had been abused. As each person spoke, it was gradually revealed that with the exception of two people, myself and a gentleman from the UK, every person had experienced some form of abuse, neglect, or abandonment as a child.

The gentleman spoke fondly of his mother and of the wonderful meals she had cooked for her children. I remembered forays into the woods like the one we were in with my father who taught me to identify various leaves and who had posted his property with “No hunting” signs. But apparently we were very much in the minority, the two people who had good childhoods. Eighteen others had experienced very different childhoods.

Amazing.

And terribly frightening. And sad.

Since that day, I have had several discussions with this gentleman about the high level of family abuse here. Was it because of the isolation of few people in a large country and the absence of a good support system? Was it related to alcohol and drug abuse? A failure of public education? Is it something built into the culture since the arrival of Europeans and even before as suggested by Carolyn Worth from the Victorian Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASA) Forum in an ABC interview?

On March 11th on the Herald Sun website is an article “More Victorian families taking children hunting.” There is a poll on the page with the question: Should children be encouraged to shoot animals? It’s a simple poll with only two choices: “Yes, it is character building” and “No, it's too brutal.” I checked the latter, clicked submit, and saw the current results.

And was horrified.

Out of a total of total of 15280 votes, 89% (13648 votes) said “Yes.” Only 10% (1632 votes) said “No.”

Almost ninety percent of responders thought it okay to encourage children to shoot animals, that it built character. As the person who emailed me about the poll said, this was probably not an accurate representation of Australians as a whole, but due somewhat to the newspaper’s demographics.

But whether the number is 90% or 50% or whatever, children as young as three years old were going out with their fathers and watching as animals were killed. One person interviewed for the article said “You do get a lot of kids out with their dads as it is a traditional family activity.”

A traditional family activity. That "builds character."

(Picture from the Herald Sun)