Venerables, fellow students, good evening.

This evening, Venerable Lian-kai led the group cultivation and he talked about the health seminar we had earlier today at the school. In the future, besides offering classes on Buddhist studies and practices, our school will include Tibetan language and tangka painting in our curriculum, and we will also invite experienced Tibetan lamas to come and teach us construct sand mandalas.

In addition to conventional knowledge, we also have to teach people how to achieve optimal health through diet and how to attain liberation through dying. Otherwise, even if one is rich and famous, when one's health is poor and karmic retribution is catching up with one, one will find oneself in a pretty helpless situation.

Yesterday at school we watched a video tape on the Tibetan bardo teaching. I learned from the tape that in the San Francisco area, there is already an organization using the knowledge from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to help terminally ill patients during their last moments. By explaining the kinds of phenomena one encounters after death, volunteers from the Living and Dyiny Organization assist the dying persons to make the right judgments, so they can avoid being trapped in the bardo and be able to be reborn to the Pure Lands.

Such counselling service is the same as one of the three tasks Grand Master recently discussed in the True Buddha News that we have to do: to establish a care center to help people cope with the transition from living to dying. It turns out that there is already a group in the San Francisco area doing this.

After watching the tape, I was very moved. This is something we must do. We often have discussed how the last leg of life's journey should be walked, and we can teach people the Seven Days Buddhahood Visualization Practice during their last days and provide guidance to them even after they die. This is a service we must develop and it will eventually grow into an organization in the future that can offer help to many people.

In the video tape we watched yesterday, there was a segment about an AIDS patient who was a Stanford graduate and a well off accountant. But, at the time of his death, his ravaged body was only skin and bones. It was very sad to watch. A spokesperson or volunteer from the Living and Dying Organization was explaining to him that his soul was about to be liberated and the kinds of phenomena that would happen and the states of mind he should have when encountering them. The patient was listening to all these advice and, during those critical moments, what he would recall and use would be of great importance.

Generally at the moments of dying, people are confused and frightened. Where am I going? The people around me are healthy and alive, and I am going to die all alone. If one has been ignoring death all along, not paying much attention to it, not having had much contact with it, or putting any effort into studying it, one will not know where one is going. Now when death stares squarely into one's face, many questions would pop up. Many people have never heard of other worlds, transmigration, or that one can be born into the realms of hungry ghosts, hells, and animals. They would not have known about these if they had never been exposed to this knowledge.

At the dying moments, if there is someone who can provide words of comfort and guidance of wisdom, explaining to one how to conduct the mind, the situation will be completetly different. It is just a remarkable thing if one is able to receive this kind of guidance continually before, during, and after one's death. I of course wish the same thing for myself that, when my final moments come, there would be many people chanting the same mantra or Buddha epithet for me and focusing their minds on the same direction and the same luminous Pure Land.

For example, there is someone over there who has lost his way, and we are all here, calling out to him, "Come here!." If only one person is calling out to him, he might only have turned his head to take a look. If two people called out to him, "Come, it is very nice here." He would have given the invitation some consideration. If, however, there are fifty or a hundred people calling out to him, the momentum would be great and he would run over very quickly. Especially when this group of people are spiritual practitioners who can visualize Light clearly, the power generated by their chanting would be tremendous.

In one of Grand Master's recent books, he wrote about this incident experienced by a person who was severely ill and dying. This person saw himself being tied up and brought to the Yama-king to be tried for something that he had done wrong, and he was about to be sent to the three lower paths. He felt shameful and remorseful, and when this penitance rose up in him, suddenly he heard the chanting sound of "Om Guru Lian-sheng Siddhi Hum." When he heard that, he joined in chanting the mantra right away. Once he started chanting, he found himself sitting on a lotus flying up. The faster he chanted, the faster was the soaring speed of the lotus, and he was soon out of the reality where he was to receive his karmic retribution. The spirit guards were about to chase after him, but the Yama-king said, "Since he is now somewhat remorseful and, there is the power from the mantra helping him, just let him go."

Why did this person hear the mantra sound of "Om Guru Lian-sheng Siddhi Hum"? It turned out that someone in his family was a True Buddha student, and as he was dying, this student went and asked several fellow students to come chant the mantra at his bedside. Om Guru Lian-sheng Siddhi Hum. When this mantra sound entered into his consciousness, a power was generated and he was able to immediately be uplifted from his predicament. He woke up and did not die. The power generated by group chanting is very tremendous.

Chanting mantras for a dying person or those in the bardo realm can generate great healing power. In fact, helping others through mantra chanting can also heal ourselves; the help we render to others also would be reciprocated.

Tomorrow we are going to the Skylawn Memorial Park to perform a bardo deliverance service. Some people are scared of cemetaries and worry that they would be assaulted by noxious spirits. This thinking is wrong. It is at such places filled with homeless wandering ghosts that no one has done any bardo deliverance for that one is able to provide the greatest help. For a hundred years, no one has paid any attention to them, and now you are going to raise up a bright lantern, a sense of orientation will immediately appear and they will at once focus on the light. They will run over to the light right away and be guided to be reborn. This is the best kind of bardo deliverance and the best kind of help that can be given, without any strings attached. We only wish them to go to the Pure Lands. These people buried there are not our family members or relatives, so the help you are rendering to them is based on unconditional love, not because you are hoping to get something in return. This is what I enjoy doing most. If you help someone only because someone begs you or because it benefits you, then it is not genuine help. Helping these souls in the cemetery and bringing peace to them through performing a bardo deliverance would quiet them, so they would not cause disruptions to people living in the area --- can you imagine how much good karmic seeds you have sowed? This is something many people do not understand.

I remember that during my near death experience after giving birth to Engih, I was lying in the intensive care unit in the hospital and in great pain. My whole body had become so edematous that my face was almost twice its normal size. Although I was in great pain, I kept on chanting the mantra continually. The physical body was suffering, but my mind was very lucid.

Once I started chanting the mantras, all those spirits who had died in the hospital through illnesses, accidents, deliveries, etc. started hovering around me. This is because when we chant mantras, there is the generation of light. Also our visualization of light generates the light. It was a dense crowd of spirits. As soon as I saw these spirits, I felt great compassion. Who knows how long they had been dead and stranded in the hospital, with no one knowing of their existence, paying attention to them, guiding them, or performing bardo deliverance for them. Since we were able to encounter each other and I had such a precious thing with me, I felt that I needed to share it with them and give them guidance. So, seeing them gathering round me and asking for it, I immediately sent out the thought to them that I would stay in the hospital for seven days to do bardo deliverance for them. It was an intent on my part.

Although the hospital was needing bed and wanted to send me home with special nursing care, those spirits would not let me go since I had promised to help them for seven days. As soon as the doctors wanted to discharge me, I developed an allergic reaction with red bumps all over the body. When the doctors saw that, the discharge was cancelled. So, after transferring from the intensive care to a regular room, I lay in bed twenty-four hours a day chanting the mantras for them. After all, I was quite immobilized, unable to take anything by mouth and being hydrated intravenously and resorting to using the bed pans. So, while chanting the mantras with my eyes closed, I visualized thousands and thousands of luminous lotuses sending out to them and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas coming to guide them away. Although my entire body was red and swollen, I held no grudges and kept on chanting. As I had promised seven days, at the end of the seventh days, my skin recovered and I was able to go home. It was a quite remarkable incident.

And I know it was such a heart that has helped me to very quickly stand up again. Since my spinal cord was injured during the whole ordeal, I should have been paralyzed, but I have stood up, notwithstanding some sequalae. I have never complained about the pain. You have not seen me showing you my vertebral pain. I still walk and talk and keep on with a busy life, although my spine has been injured and I should not have been able to stand up. But, for all these years, you have not seen me fall down even once from this injury.

This is my understanding: when I was at the verge of dying and still cared about other beings and wanted to share what had benefited me so much with them, I was able to stand up very quickly. This was because the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and the Devas were aware that such a person was good for other people, good for the society, good for the country, and good for the earth, and they decided that "she should live." I also started to live my renewed life with a conviction and take my mission very seriously. I did not put all my love on just my husband or think about how to pursue a career that would bring more money to myself.

I remember there was this person who had a large tumor in his stomach. When the doctors opened him and saw the size of the tumor, they sewed him back up again. The tumor was so large that the doctors thought excision would certainly have killed him. He came to the Purple Lotus Society, I gave him three energized Fu's and taught him that he needed to dedicate himself to spiritual practice. He said he would definitely do so and chant the High King Avalokitesvara Sutra daily. He ingested the Fu's, and with help from his family, they finished chanting one thousand times of the sutra in three days, and the tumor was gone.

But after he was cured, he went to open his own computer company. A high-tech wizard, only thirty-three years old, he had a great education and experience in the computer industry and had been recruited to California from another state. But, six months after starting his new business and making more money, he came back to see me and was again in pain. This time he had cancer in his bones. He wanted me to give him three more Fu's. I knew it would not do him any good. When one experiences such a spiritual intervention, one should be thankful and not just be glad that one is cured. One should thank the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas for taking pity on one and intervented on one's behalf, so that one can have a new lease on life to amend the past and accumulate more good karmas. The miraculous disappearance of the tumor was meant to be a transformative experience to start a new direction in life.

However, very few people think this way. Once they get a new lease in life, they immediately abandon themselves to creating more negative karmas for themselves, then it would be worse off than before. This is what I am most afraid of now. The encountering of negative situations is a way of having retribution neutralized, and when the retribution is neutralized, one is well again. However, without gaining such an insight, such a person goes on to create more negative karmas. This is what I am most afraid of now. There were many times I had to take over the suffering for other people because their attached spirits wanted to get even with me. That is why I am now more careful than I was before. If one is supposed to experience the retribution, then going through the retribution would set one free from it. Paying what one owes frees one from the debt. Carrying an unpaid loan would only result more accumulative interests.

It appears that I must be doing very well in my spiritual practice because I only sleep two to three hours each day. In fact, as I have explained before, that is not the case at all. To help stave off someone's disasters, I have to give something back in return. I have to meditate on behalf of that person and do meritorious deeds for him, so that person's disaster can be eliminated and he can obtain a new lease on life. So, often times while that person is cured, I still have to meditate and practice for him. While that person has moved on and forgotten about it, I still have to keep on paying the debt for him. This is in fact the reason that I don'tget much sleep at night.

So, it is not that I am spiritually advanced and need little sleep. How can I sleep with so many [spirits] coming to ask for payback? I have to pay on behalf of people whom I had promised to help. All I hope is that it would generate enough faith and interests in them to start a spiritual practice, a wisdom life, or sprout a seed of enlightenment. But I have found this to be quite difficult. I can offer my life and have my heart scooped out for them, but they don't understand. One can only say "let it be." If the necessary factors for awakening are not there in the present life, then "let it be" and try again in the next life.

I have been having this kind of thoughts lately, and that is why I think establishments such as the Living and Dying Organization are very good. To help sow the seed of enlightenment and instill the Light of the Buddhas in someone before and when they are dying would reinforce the chance of meeting with the Dharma in a future life, and there will definitely be one life wherein one will awaken. Life after life of spiritual cultivation enables one to come into contact with and accept higher levels of teachings.

I have been thinking, one of these days I am going to request Grand Master to write me a calligraphy for this one word. I have been forgetting to bring it up each time when I met with him. So many people are requesting words and paintings of auspiciousness from the Grand Master. I shall make an offering to Grand Master and request instead for this one word, and then I will make copies of it for all of you. This word is "Death." I will make a special request for the word "Death" and its empowerment. Take for example, Buddhist masters such as Master Yin Kwang and Master Lotus Pond have highly commended the practice of mindfulness of death. They teach that one should constantly be mindful of death. It will bring one numerous benefits when one is constantly mindful of death.

First of all, when you are constantly mindful of death, your greed and desire would be substantially lowered. It would occur to you, all these money and material possessions you want to accumulatewould not be yours at the final moment of exit. When you die, none of these things would make a difference: how beautiful your wife is, how smart your kid is, how large your house is, how expensive your car is, and how well exercised or well toned your body is. At the moment of death, you have to say good bye to all of them.

Mindfulness of death would lead to fewer thoughts of greed which would lead successively to fewer actions of greed. One then becomes calmer, more peaceful, and not so easily upset. This is the first benefit.

If you are always mindful of death, it would occur to you to do more good deeds and be more helpful to other people. After all, you have to die one day, so why just think of yourself? When you die, everything you have will not be yours anymore, so why not give them away now when you can? When you are able to think of other people and entertain thoughts of benefiting and helping other people, it would lead to thoughts of "egolessness." This is the second benefit.

The third benefit is even greater. As you think daily about death, you are actually getting closer to death day by day. Look at the children, teenagers, and young people, they practically have no idea about death. Perhaps middle aged folks would sometimes think about death. To the old people, to live one more day is to be one day closer to death. Take my mother for example. When she was young, she never mentioned the word death. Whenever she heard the word death, she would make the sound "nay, nay, nay" to counteract whatever negativities her mind conjured up. Now in old age, as years went by, she has started to gradually come to face the worddeath when friends and relatives of her generation are dying off.

One day several years ago, when Engih was about six years old, my mother was getting ready to return to Taiwan, and she told Engih to take good care of himself after she left. When Engih said yes, my mother started feeling sad and mentioned that she did not know when she would come to the United States again, and Engih then blurted out, "You are going to die." He said it in a very innocent way, but when my mother heard that, she felt so sad that she could not help but crying out loud. "Then I won't be able to see you again," my mother said to Engih as she wiped her tears, and Engih also started crying when he thought of not able to see her again. And the two embraced and cried together.

I walked in just at that time and saw the two of them with eyes all swollen. When I asked what was wrong, my mother started telling me the episode and how sad it was when she thought of not able to seeeveryone and losing everything she had. Engih then said, "Grandma, when you die, I would help you with a bardo deliverance." It was very strange, he probably had heard us talking about bardo deliverance so frequently that he started saying it, although he did not really know what it meant.

So, this is how one eventually comes to face death. When the older one gets and the more contact one has with death, one will start counting the number of days as they go by. It may seem absurd to young people, yet fear of dying can motivate older people to do more practices and chant more mantras and Buddha epithets. Better hurry up to start saving some resources for the afterlife. There is not much time left and who knows when one would have another opportunity again.

Generally people consider death an unlucky word and avoid bringing it up. But as spiritual cultivators, we have to wear the word across our chests and in our hearts and minds. If you can taste death now, you would be able to develop your inner potential. This is what we have to do, this is the gateway that everyone has to go through, the gateway that leads to liberation from life and death. Why are we doing the same practice everyday? It is in preparation for this one moment that no one can escape from. We all have to die, even the rich and powerful have to die.

We are not born equal, but we die equally. We all have to stop breathing one day, and there is not a single item in the world we can take with us. Some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths, some are born into starvation, and there are great differences among the immediate environments one is born into. The circumstances of death of course are different: some are well dressed even in death while others may not even have a mat to cover them up. Nonetheless, once one closes one's eyes, one is separated and disengaged from everything in the world.

Recently I have received several faxes with news of aquaintances dying. Some of them were even younger than me. When one is young, it is natural to hear of an elder member of the family dying. When all the elder members have died and only members of one's or the younger generations are left, one has to beware. One's time has come. The signal to move on has started to broadcast amid members of one's same generation. It is time one asks oneself, "What am I still running around for? Why am I still engaged in all these emotional afflictions of anger, resentment, hatred, and disputes?"

Perhaps I have experienced death once, I feel very strongly that one has to stare straightly into the face of death. It also seems that the signals I have been transmitting bear more messages of this vein. People who are not afraid will engage in it and accept it. People who are afraid will flinch and stay away. It is a pity because sooner or later one has to encounter it. One might as well face it earlier. Do not think that meditating on death will make one pessimistic, it actually helps one to live happily with more satisfactions.

It is because you do not realize that death will nullify everything that you are fussing about gains and losses, that you are unhappy and living a grayish life. If you know that at death everything is gone, you will yield and surrender to here and now. You will make other people happy and live peacefully with them. Sow some good karmic seeds to be ripened in future lifetimes. Your outlook on life will be different, and you will be more generous and tolerant of other people in your daily dealings. When you are more generous and tolerant, you will sow more good karmic seeds, and the road you walk on will be wider. Meditating on death can bring you this third benefit.

I am constantly mindful of death. Why have I not thought of asking Grand Master to write a calligraphy of this beautiful word for me? All these other auspicious words cannot arouse or alert us. Remind me next time when I see Grand Master. Dharma sister Moolan Au can get the ink and brush ready for me, and I will request Grand Master to write several versions for me, a long one, a short one, a straight one, and a cursive one. I will make copies for you all, and you can enlarge it and put it up on your headborad and pay homage to it every day. Pray for an early death and a good death. Things won't be the same after that. You have to have this state of mind. Only spiritual cultivators who have this state of mind can succeed in generating the Light within themselves. This is my encouragement and blessing to all of you. Om Mani Padme Hum.

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