Chapter 25 - The Cement Master

There is a student with the refuge name Lian-tsao. He is a poor cement worker who usually works as a bricklayer. Around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1984, while he was working for someone building a house, an idea suddenly came to him. He thought of borrowing the new porcelain statue of the Master from a friend. From the statue he could make a mold using sand and mud .Then, he could pour cement into the mold and let it solidify, and he would have a statue of the Master for himself.

He thought of doing this because he was poor. The money he earned was just enough to support his elderly parents, a handicapped sister, and his own family. Lian-tsao was not successful the first several attempts in making the statue. However, he finally made it and it turned out rather well. After polishing the statue, he added colors, making it look magnificent.

Lian-tsao told the Master that the most difficult part of making the statue was making the Master's hand-held implements, which had to be done separately and then joined to the statue. Apart from that, the statue was exactly the same as the original one. Lian-tsao was very happy and placed it in one corner of his bedroom, covering it with a piece of yellow cloth at night when he went to sleep. Both in the morning and at night, he would light an incense before the statue, then perform prostrations and recite the Guru's Heart Mantra.

Lian-tsao is an honest person. The Master taught him to chant the name of Amitabha each time he laid a brick. So, he always chanted the name of Amitabha. This came to the knowledge of the contractor and his co-workers who frequently teased him with "Amitabha, eats pork, not carrots." Lian-tsao did not mind; he only smiled and kept on chanting.

One day, some of the cement workers were trying to organize a gang in an attempt to carry out some gambling frauds. One of the leaders tried to coerce Lian-tsao to join, threatening to harm him if he refused. This fellow had in the past frequently harassed Lian-tsao, either hitting him or forcing him to lend him money, which he never paid back.

Lian-tsao was very frightened and extremely worried.

When he got home that night, he lit an incense and started bowing before the Master, invoking Padmakumara for help and protection. He cried as he begged and chanted the Guru Heart Mantra, confident that the Master could get him out of this difficulty.

Nevertheless, that gang leader did not let him go, but gathered the gang, armed with weapons, and surrounded Lian-tsao's residence. He forced Lian-tsao to come out to negotiate. Lian-tsao was then seized by his arms on both sides and taken to the woods, where he was beaten with a whip by the leader. Strangely, Lian-tsao did not feel any pain at all when the whip landed on him. Another fellow hit him on the neck with a rod. The rod broke, but Lian-tsao still did not feel any pain.

Luckily, some neighbors had seen him being taken away and informed the police. At the critical moment, the police arrived on the scene, causing the gang to disperse haphazardly.

When Lian-tsao returned home, he lit an incense and bowed to the Master. He was taken aback-some of the colors on the chest and back of the statue had fallen off. There were stripes on the statue, as if it had been whipped. Even stranger, there was a hole in the neck which corresponded exactly with the spot where he had been hit by the rod.

Lian-tsao recalled the moment in which he was beaten-he had felt nothing and his body was completely unhurt. Instead, the statue of the master had stripes on the body and a hole in the neck. He realized that the Master must have been superseding in his place. Extremely touched, he quickly bowed and recited in earnest the Guru Heart Mantra.

Later Lian-tsao added some more colors to the statue and mended the hole in the neck. His confidence in the Master grew even more.

The gang and its leader were summoned by the police and ordered to disband. After this, it was peaceful and quiet. The leader even became remorseful.

When she was alive, the grandmother of Lian-tsao was a Buddhist. She could not read but had the Universal Gateway Article of the Lotus Sutra committed to memory. She was very fond of Lian-tsao.

One night, the grandmother, who had passed away, came to talk to him in a dream, "You have accumulated many merits as a result of your sincere devotion to a true vajra-master. This is exactly what the Universal Gateway Article of the Lotus Sutra says,

Or, one might by an evil man be chased
Down from a diamond mountain,
By virtue of constant mindfulness of a Sound-Observer
He could not harm a single hair

"Vajra Master Sheng-yen Lu is really an incarnation of Padmakumara. He came to the world with the intention of bringing happiness to humanity and releasing them from their sufferings. Your escaping from harm was the result of your constantly chanting the Guru Heart Mantra. You must bow to the east to thank the Master for his compassionate help."

Lian-tsao heard his grandmother very clearly. The next morning he got up and, without any hesitation, he visualized the Master in the space to the east and started to bow twenty-one times. Then he bowed to the statue three times. Ever since he has upheld without fail the Guru Heart Mantra and the name of Amitabha.

Lian-tsao told the Master that, ever since he had enshrined the cement statue, there was peace and fewer sicknesses in the family. Although his sister was still handicapped, she started to chant the Buddha's name on her own and was happier than before. Then there was the neighbor's child who could not stop crying at night. Lian-tsao used the "rice clothes" method, in which he put some of the child's clothing on top of some rice on a tray and stuck incense in the middle. This was to absorb the fear. Miraculously, the child stopped crying at night.

In addition, due to the effectiveness of the "Cement Master," neighbors started to find out about the statue.

Not only did it cure children's fears, it also cured older people's illnesses. There was an elderly woman who had been sick and bedridden for two years; her legs had become feeble. Her family used the "rice clothes" method in front of the statue. The next day, the woman could walk around.

Because there were so many people coming to pray, the statue had to be moved from the bedroom to the living room. People in the neighborhood came to make their wishes. The Cement Master started to wear more and more golden pendants around his neck as people offered the pendants to the Master when their wishes were fulfilled.

The villagers did not know what kind of deity the statue actually was. Some thought it was the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, some thought it was the Kitchen God, or the Taoist Master Ch'ing Shui. But Lian-tsao told them it was the Red-Crown Buddha.

Now, everyone in that village knows that there is a Red-Crown Buddha who is very efficacious and popular. The Red-Crown Buddha is the Cement Master who is the Holy Red Crown Vajra Master, Master Sheng-yen Lu, the incarnation of Padmakumara. This legend is completely true.

The names of Lian-tsao and his village are not disclosed in this article in order to avoid too much publicity.

Amitabha!

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