é™æ€è¯ Readings For Silent Reflection
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Rather ask oneself for kindness to others than ask kindness of others.
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Always recite "Nanmo Amituofo" _/|\_
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Spend our time wisely, use it on cultivating blessings and wisdom. Don't spend time on afflictions.
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Don't let your stomach be the animals cemetery.
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Question: Amituofo’s (Amitabha Buddha) Pure Land is to be reached with his guided lotus vehicle, which is also what one will have transformed birth from. As this seems fantastical, how is it possible?
Answer: As kids, when we learnt about how we were born in this life, did it not seem fantastical? Imagine being babies growing in our mothers’ wombs for nine months, before emerging with much blood, pus and tears. When we first saw videos of human birth, were they not like horror movies ‘out of this world’?
Yet, such footages do depict how we were born into Samsara – with much impurities, labour pain and suffering, on both parts of mother and child. In more frightening cases, there are caesarean sections needed, that involve surgery, with more pain and loss of blood. Prior to birth are pains from conception and carrying the child too. Understandably, even refined spontaneously born gods who are ignorant of the difficulties of human birth find the gross human birthing process unbelievable!
If even the ‘extreme’ human way of birth truly exists, likewise is it totally credible that there is the opposite kind of birth – which is pure, bloodless and even blissful. The lotus flower is a symbol of purity, as lotuses are able to blossom untainted, which represents spiritual ‘flowering’, even if they have their roots in the muck and mire of muddy water, which represents worldly defilements.
Of course, being entirely pure, Pure Land has no mud in its lotus ponds; but only the finest golden sand, that represents Amituofo’s supreme spiritual purity and meritorious virtues. Also for mostly relatively brief ‘incubation’ for clearing of strong spiritual obstacles, since birth in Amituofo’s Pure Land is possible through his pure aspirations and ours, what more appropriate manifested means of birth is there, than by lotuses?
– Shen Shi'an -
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If one is not attached to "I" and "others", one is carefree. If one is not attached to "wordly stuffs" and "emptiness", one has realised one's Buddha's nature which is our true nature.
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We often wonder: “How will I be when I die?” The answer to that is that whatever state of mind we are in now, whatever kind of person we are now, that’s what we will be like at the moment of death, if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
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Vexation withers in a pure mind, but grows in a entangled one.
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Always recite "Nanmo Amituofo" sincerely and religiously. _/|\_
