Propagating Buddha Light To Home

The attendees started to stream in before 4pm yesterday to our home. And at about 5 minutes before 4pm, while we were looking out into the carpark expectantly through the kitchen window, two Buddhist nuns in traditional Chinese monastic wear stepped into view. They were Venerables Chueh Yen and Chueh Fan from the Buddha Light Temple in Orlando. They were here to grace our home for the Propagating Buddha Light to Home (this may seem a mouthful but that's the best I could do with the Chinese translation and yet do justice to the significance of the term. Suggestions are welcome.) program, a facet of the humanistic Buddhism advanced by Venerable Hsing Yun, the founder of the Buddha Light movement.

The Venerables first led off with a blessing chant, invoking the Heart Sutra, complete with chiming. This was followed by a pray and vow recitation by Venerable Chueh Fan, praying for health, for loving kindness, for family bliss, for career success, for peace and equanimity, and for purity of mind and wisdom on the path to Buddhism and in the sea of Dharma.

Reciting the Heart Sutra.

Excerpts from the Pray and Vow Recitation.

Another purpose of the gathering was to seek feedback on the proposal to initiate a Buddhist study group in Tampa where interested lay Buddhists in the area can meet under the guidance of Venerable Chueh Fan to partake of the Buddhist teachings in an organized way.

Venerable Chueh Fan driving home a point.

A larger view of the setting.

Education in Buddhism starts from listening. By way of an example, Venerable Chueh Fan circulated a copy of an excerpt from a Buddhist text, The Dharma Forms, entitled the Three-Life Cause and Effect. She then led us through a reading of the text.

Next up is reflecting, mulling over the content. At the initial level, questions are framed such that the answers are readily available from parts of the text itself and require a rudimentary understanding of what different sentences in the text mean, and their inter-connections. For example, the text says:

“The Buddha has given two analogies to characterize karma: seeds and habits. The karma is akin to a seedling undergoing germination, growth, fruition, seed propagation, emaciation, and decay. After some time, the new seeds, under the right condition, will sprout forth and the cycle of Life is repeated. The effects of our action are similarly manifested.

As an analogy to habits, we can visualize a bottle of perfume. Once depleted, the fragrance stays with the bottle. This analogy underscores the efficacy of karma: once the karmic seed is planted, all it takes is the congruence of the right conditions for the seed to bear fruit, an euphemism for retributions.”

So a direct question could be: what are the two analogies for karma? This requires a mere cognitive response, the aim being to let the concepts sink in. An advanced level of questions would go beyond the superficial terminology recognition to tickle the mind, to stimulate more in-depth thinking such as to draw parallels from personal examples.

A case in point is my interaction with an American friend newly introduced to Buddhism. It's often said that Buddhism is rationality-driven, dispelling blind faith and dogmas as belief conduits. For a westerner to accept the Buddhist teachings, the toughest hurdle would be the apparent absence of a clear nexus linking the facets of the teachings while trying to make sense of and reconcile with what is perceived in the world around him/her.

While karmic retribution is easily understood in the context of the present life: one can see with one's own eyes and relate to instances of crime does not pay and you reap what you sow. But then Buddhism also adds another element: the conditions. When conditions are not ripe, the effect will not materialize until the next moment, or even next life as embodied in the doctrine of Three-life cause and effect. But I'm sure we can cite personal cases when bad things happen to good people (to borrow from the title of a book that I have checked out but have yet to read, by Harold S. Kushner, Schocken Book, 1989). Thus, many life instances of a crooked person living in longevity while a compassionate one meeting an untimely demise can be cited to render the concept fallible.

This was the question the American friend posed to me: If such is the case, how would one in the next life, seemingly having done nothing bad, rationalize that one was paying for what one did in a previous life, when mishap struck since this would require that he knew what he has done in a previous life? Would that even be possible, knowing or remembering that one has lived before and done things?

Honestly, I was stumped. And the lacuna presented a blind spot to me too. Until yesterday. I was telling wify after the fact that Venerable Chueh Fan seems to have telepathic power, able to sense what was troubling my normally clear chain of thought. Because the plausible explanation lies in the very first set of verses appearing in the circulated excerpt, which reads when translated:

“To know the cause of a previous life, just look at those who are experiencing the effect in the present. To know the effect in a future life, just look at those who are causing it in the present.”

The text of Three-Life Cause and Effect, with the set of verses translated above in blue box (please click on the image for clarity).

In a nutshell, the three-life notion is not necessarily a rigidly compartmentalized time horizon of the previous life, the present life, and the future life, all in generational sequence. Rather, it can be interpreted as an inter-year sequence as in last year, this year and next year, or an inter-day sequence, even inter-moment sequence. That is, the three life embodies the past, the present, and the future, irrespective of the chunks of time involved.

Also, I have been clinging to, as with most people, with the notion of self/I. I do this, so I must get this, a rather linear and individualistic way of life as it is, as if nothing else or no other matters. Once we suspend this illusion of self/I, clarity reigns and blind spots dissolve. That, to me, is the realization of the day and I would remember to transmit the message to my American friend when I meet him next.

To complete the learning process, there are the actualizing/correcting phase and the verification phase. After all, Buddhism is the practice of life, in a wise and compassionate way, and that one can only realize the benefits of Buddhist teachings by self-application. As Venerable Chueh Fan intoned, "whatever I teach and talk in a session remains mine". And yes, absent actualizing and verification, the wisdom embedded therein remains embedded, unable to be invoked at will to serve us well in life.

Therefore, an integral element of a beneficial Buddhist study group is participation. All need to relate to their personal life, and to share the experience. Venerable Chueh Fan also suggested that while she is committed to a monthly schedule, it will be instructive for the group to meet more frequently, perhaps fortnightly or even weekly, for the members to interact and to come up with a more advanced line of questioning that could be deferred to her.

In any case, it will be efficient to elect a convener to serve as a point of contact for her and to coordinate organizational matters, and to have a roving venue, each member taking turn to host the group, so as not to unduly burden one host and to help propagate the reach of the Propagating Buddha Light To Home program. In that regard, Sister Yu Tze has been given the honor to be the convener.

More interaction followed but I'm sure these and other matters would arise again in the subsequent group sessions to be featured in latter blog posts. For the occasion at hand, we all celebrated and shared in the Dharma bliss that permeated the gathering throughout the entire evening. We all partook of the vegetarian culinary delights that were served by all, including the Venerables who brought along a dish to share. Thanks to all for a blissful evening. We all have been enriched by the grace of the Buddha, in the persons of the Venerables, and may the Buddha Light extend to envelop the whole world with compassion and wisdom.