The world of Tzu Chi (Vol.108)

TZU CHI 108 45 The Buddha repeatedly taught his followers to align their minds with the Buddha-mind, so he encouraged them to always keep him in their minds, to be mindful of him. The simplest and most convenient way to be mindful of the Buddha is by chanting his name. But does that help us to penetrate the teachings? The primary purpose of being mindful of the Buddha is for us to gain insight into the spirit of the Buddhas so that we can learn to cultivate both blessings and wisdom. By being mindful of the Buddha, we remind ourselves to earnestly create blessings and develop our wisdom. Wisdomoriginates from the root of goodness, sowe should nurture our roots of goodness with care. To grow in goodness, we must rid ourselves of afflictions, bad habitual tendencies and unwholesome views, and turn deviant thinking and deviant views into right thinking and right views. Once we have eradicated discursive thoughts and afflictions, our roots of goodness will naturally grow and manifest wisdom and awakening. This is the point of chanting a Buddha’s name and remaining mindful of Him; it is so that we take his compassionate heart as our own. In chanting the name ofAmitabha, we are mindful of him, and so we take his infinite wisdom and light as our own, his unwavering heart as our own, and his wisdom-life as our own. By so doing, we cultivate our roots of goodness. When we have reached this level of mindfulness, our wisdom will gradually accumulate and manifest itself. However, stressing only the cultivation of wisdom is not the right thing to do. We must also work to benefit others, during the course of which we cultivate blessings. To cultivate blessings, we must give to others through concrete actions. Take for example the missions of Tzu Chi: as we work to help relieve suffering, we are in fact nurturing our roots of goodness and blessings. Our world is full of people who have failed to cultivate blessings in their past lives and thus are now suffering in their present lives. These people need our help. THREE WAYS TO THE PURE LAND RECOGNIZE, CHERISH AND CULTIVATE BLESSINGS at temples, we must help them and give them money to spend as they wish. The second quarter should be used for raising our children. It is our responsibility to put aside some funds for our children to complete their education. The third quarter should be used to pay family expenses and maintain a stable family life. The fourth quarter of our fortune should be used to make offerings for the Three Treasures, to undertake the improvement of society, and to help the poor. The Buddha taught us that we should extend his wisdom-life. How do we accomplish that? By working to benefit others. When we use the last quarter of our fortune for charitable causes, we are cultivating both our blessings and our wisdom. We have been born in a prosperous country and are well fed and clothed because we have accumulated blessings in the past by working for the well-being of other people. The Buddha wanted for our blessings to be endless, so he encouraged us to use a quarter of our wealth to give to others and bring blessings to their lives. That is what it means to relinquish worldly wealth to obtain spiritual wealth. Hence, I hope every one of us can manage our money as the Buddha taught us, to cultivate blessings for ourselves.