News 90, Master Says
Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Hsihu Center, Formosa • June 24, 1990
(originally in Chinese)

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I teach you meditation to find your own nature. I want you to recognize your own God and wisdom, and let Hirm appear to you so that Hes has opportunities to guide you and make your lives more bright and comfortable. That’s why I tell you not to worship the outer deities, ghosts or Buddha statues. All statues are useless! The Buddha is in our hearts and God is within us. If we don’t look for Hirm inside, where else can we find Hirm? All methods of seeking outside are wrong. (Applause) So I don’t have to tell you a lot to get you to understand.

Here the Lord said, Thou shalt have no other gods besides Me. Hes was right! Worship “Me,” the inner wisdom, not any idols. What Hes said was correct! Hes didn’t try to intimidate people. Hes is indeed the supreme, the greatest and the highest. Hes doesn’t need anyone to worship or admire Hirm. If we recognize Hirm and believe in Hirm, it’s only our good fortune. Hes teaches us only because of our suffering and our sincere prayers. So Hes says, “All right! If you want to feel good, want comfort, and to be wise, intelligent and relaxed, believe in Me and worship Me only. Then you’ll be fine.”

God didn’t force anyone. Hes only spoke the truth. Apart from the truth, what can you tell your child? You can’t, only out of politeness, tell your child, “All right! It’s fine whether you recognize us as your parents or not. You can go next door and take the people there as your parents.” Can you tell your child that? If he does what you tell him, he’ll go astray, live a difficult life, wander around, and have no money and no food, and no one will take him as their child. People usually don’t take care of other people’s children. Although he may get food and clothes in an orphanage, he won’t have a comfortable life, family feelings and the pampering love of real parents. Humans not only need food and clothes, but also the love of the parents. If children are brought up by their neighbors and have no relationship with their parents, they’ll look dull when they grow up.

Due to love for their child, parents should clearly tell him, “You’re my child. If you leave home, you’ll have a hard time. If you want to have a comfortable and nice life, just trust us and let us take care of you!” Do parents have to be polite or feel embarrassed to say that? When we tell the truth without being arrogant, we shouldn’t feel embarrassed.

Sometimes when you hear what I say, you think that I ought to feel embarrassed, but I don’t. I would feel afraid and embarrassed if I were deceiving you. Could I deceive so many of you? No way! Some of you are teachers, doctors and business people with high IQs. I couldn’t deceive you for long. So I just tell you the truth. Since I tell you the truth, it’s all right whether you believe me or not. I won’t feel embarrassed. If we want to be good to a person, we should always tell the truth. Only when someone has a bad intention for others, then he will speak cautiously.

We’ve Gone Too Far Away From God If We Worship Graven Images Of Hirm

We’ve gone halfway through the second commandment, which is, Thou shalt not make any graven image; thou shalt not bow down to it. Why was God especially concerned about these things? Because human beings have intelligence, wisdom and the ability to do things. So if we worship a piece of wood or a stone which doesn’t move and has no consciousness, aren’t we being very dumb? Then why do some people still do it and think that they’re fine?

The father of our nation, Dr. Sun Yet-Sen, was wise. No wonder people all revere him as a national father. He broke a wooden statue and asked people why they said that it was the Buddha, didn’t he? (A: Yes!) I think that he was great. A person who has wisdom possesses strong charisma. No wonder he succeeded and is venerated by people until today. We can’t envy him, because he deserved it!

I heard that he saw Quan Yin Bodhisattva when he went to Putuo Mountain. This indicates that he had faith and was pure. He was a Catholic. If he had been attached to the Catholic idols, he would have seen only Jesus Christ. Since he saw Quan Yin Bodhisattva, it meant that he had no discrimination and was really pure. Hence, the Bodhisattva didn’t discriminate against him, “It’s all right that you worship Jesus Christ. I’m just appearing to you to let you have a look.” This indicates that he was very pure and was a very good person.

Of course, he had taken part in battles and possibly killed some people, but that was inevitable. I’ve told you that you should apply the precepts according to the situation! If you’re a soldier and you have to kill the enemy to defend your country or due to your national law, then you don’t commit a crime. Even if you kill a hundred people, you don’t commit crimes or break the precepts. However, if you only injure a person due to personal animosity, you incur heavy karma. It’s because of your intent to kill. But soldiers are different; they’re compelled to do it, so they don’t break the precepts.

Therefore, you can’t judge yourself by how many times or how badly you’ve broken the precepts, how many people you’ve killed, or what your morality is like, but by the situation and your intention. We can’t only look at actions. Sometimes, it’s very difficult for ordinary people to judge others. We have to be very careful distinguishing between good and bad. Otherwise, we always misjudge. When we see that a person kills, we say, “Oh! He’s bad!” When we see a person donating money to build a temple or a hospital, we say, “Oh! He’s good!” It’s not necessarily true! We don’t know where his money came from and what the intention is of his donation. He may want to become famous or get other things by donating the money. In that case, he won’t gain any merit by his action.

If we worship an image, it means that our level is too low to be repaired, that we have no wisdom and no ability to make a judgment, and that we don’t know that the image is only made of a piece of wood. If we worship this piece of wood, it would be same as worshiping any piece of wood. Then it’d save the time and effort of carving and painting as well as the money. To worship an image means that we can’t tell good from bad, don’t know where our wisdom is, and don’t understand what’s recorded in the scriptures, that “The Buddha is in our hearts” or “God is within us.” We just ignore the scriptures, ignore the teachings of all the masters, and ignore the words of God and the saint. We’ve gone too far and been too ill! Even if we have a little bit of wisdom left, when we bow down to an image, our wisdom is gone.

There is an Indian story. A woman acknowledged a master. Once she saw her master appear to her inside, and she was very happy. However, when she mixed with other people, she forgot about it. Hearing people making pilgrimages to mountains and rivers, she followed them. One day, she was ill and wasn’t healed after she prayed to her master. Perhaps her master deliberately let her become ill in order to erase her bad karma. But she blamed her master for not helping her. So she worshipped images! There are many gods in India. If you go there, you can see all kinds of big gods, small gods, medium gods, fat gods and thin gods. So she just bowed down to them. Before that, she could see her master appear to her for a while. But after she bowed down to the images, her master disappeared.

When she came home, she thought, “How strange! How could this happen? The master was there a moment ago. But as soon as I bowed down, he disappeared.” She felt sad and kept thinking about it for several days. She didn’t want to eat, but meditated, demanding her master to appear to her and explain why he had suddenly left her. (She blamed her master again.) Since she was quite sincere, her master was moved, appeared to her, and told her, “When you worshipped the wooden statues, you degraded me to be even lower than they were! So I didn’t have a place to stand. Since it was too low for me to stand, I had to run away.”

Why are we called “human beings?” Because we’re different than animals. We can distinguish between good and bad, high and low, moral and contemptible. We have the ability to make our own choices. Animals are different. They’ll become whatever they are trained to become. Even tigers can be tamed to behave like cats by people in the circus. Lions and elephants can also be trained to do whatever they’re told to do and dare not resist. In this respect, animals are rather stupid, and they can easily lose their independence.

Human beings aren’t like that. Sometimes even when people are imprisoned, they’ll try to escape. When they’re oppressed, they’ll try to resist. When they’re wronged, they’ll try to clear themselves. This is because human beings have wisdom. If our great wisdom has been deceived and becomes confused so that we worship the statues of ghosts and deities, of course we’ll become the most miserable and drift too far away from God! It’s stated very clearly in the Buddhist scriptures, The Buddha is in one’s heart, and You can’t perceive the Tathagata (Buddha) through tangible light and sound. Rather than worshipping tangible forms, it’s more meritorious to go home and worship our parents. This is the truth.

If you like to worship, go home and worship your parents. They’re living Gods and they have God’s nature within them. If you break wooden statues to have a look, you won’t find anything inside them. Even if your parents are ignorant and haven’t recognized their God nature, at least they have God’s nature within them. It’s just that they don’t know about it. However, there’s nothing inside wooden statues! If you truly want to worship wooden things, just worship trees. At least there’s a little bit of God’s power inside living trees. Without God’s power, nothing can go on living. So if we worship dead wood, a material form of a very low level, of course our wisdom and level will be degraded to an inconceivably low degree.

Therefore, God particularly reminds us to be especially cautious! Hes keeps telling us not to create images and worship them. This is because Hes is very compassionate and wants us to preserve the tiny bit of wisdom remaining in us. If we keep on worshipping images, we’ll be finished! Our tiny bit of wisdom can be developed or be destroyed. When we’re with spiritual people and wise friends, our wisdom will glow more brightly and develop more. But when we’re with ignorant people and follow them to worship images, we’ll be contaminated and pulled down by them and our level will be degraded further. The Lord wanted Hiers people to avoid this undesirable situation, so Hes told them not to do such things; because if they did, the tiny bit of wisdom that they had would disappear.

Suppose you have a little money left. If you save it, you can use it to buy bread. However, if you’re cheated by people and use the money to buy stones, you’ll lose the money and then starve to death. Besides, you’ll have to carry the stones and become more exhausted. You’re tired already, and yet you have to carry the stones. How can people be so stupid and be cheated to such an extent? How can stones be edible?

Therefore, your parents advise you not to buy stones and save your money, because they know that this is all you have. If you save it, you can sustain yourself for a while and think of a way later. Perhaps when you have regained your strength, you can find a job. But if you use it to buy stones, you’ll be finished. You’re weak and hungry already, but you’ll have to carry the stones; then how can you survive? You’ll die immediately! Similarly, when we worship images, we’re incurable! Unless someone quickly pulls us up and imparts to us the superior wisdom, then we’ll be cured; otherwise, we keep sinking down.

Yesterday, I let you watch a documentary film, which was about a group of people in India, how they make pilgrimages to mountains and rivers, how sincere they are when they bathe in the Ganges, and how sincere they are when they worship gods. However, you can see that the population in India hasn’t decreased, but it’s increasing, instead. And they’re getting poorer. This is because they apply their sincerity in the wrong place!

Therefore, before, when I saw them doing such things, I got furious. I kept scolding as I came down the Himalayas. (Laughter) I wasn’t satisfied to scold by myself. So I told some monks about it and let them scold with me. (Master laughs.) I was angry with those gods! I pointed at their noses and scolded them fiercely. Of course they didn’t hear me; I was only venting my wrath. They were made of wood, so how could they hear me? I knew that very well, but it’s just that I was really mad. I saw that millions of people were being deceived, and had wasted a lot of effort, vitality and money, as well as risked their lives to climb up to the summit just to make a bow. They didn’t know whether they would be able to make it home alive, because the road was very dangerous. Some people were very poor. They could only borrow or earn just enough money for the trip and they would have no money after they returned home. In order to gain merit and to worship the wooden statues, they had to come a long way. Sometimes, they had to walk on foot and their soles cracked and bled. Some of them were too poor to have shoes, so they had to walk barefoot on the icy road. I cried when I saw that! Innumerable people were deceived. Even though they were sincere, it was useless.

If we have no spiritual friends, our wisdom will become smaller and smaller and gradually disappear. Then, we will transform into animals, plants, stones or minerals. The less wisdom we have, the lower our status will be; while the more wisdom we have, the higher our status will be. It’s similar in society. If you’re more knowledgeable and more intelligent, your work is more effortless, your social status is higher, your job is better, and you can make more money. But if you have no knowledge, aren’t intelligent, and have no ability, you have to do low level work. The lower level your work is, the more toilsome it is and the less the money you’ll make.

A similar situation happens in the universe. If we have more wisdom, we’ll become superior sentient beings; conversely, if we have less wisdom, we’ll become inferior beings. Therefore, due to differences in wisdom, there are all kinds of sentient beings in the world, including insects, frogs, animals, cows, human beings, immortals, enlightened beings and God. We should aim to go upward instead of downward, because we’ll suffer more on lower levels. It’s not that we’re afraid of anything, but that if we have a choice, why choose to suffer? If you choose to suffer for the benefit of others, like what I’ve told you earlier today, I agree with you. However, if you choose to suffer not only alone, but also involving your offspring of five or six generations, I’d beg you not to do it!

I’ve chosen this hard path and I’m willing to stay here, because of other people’s needs, and because I want to make them happy and encourage them to pursue spiritual practice and rise to higher levels. Therefore, I willingly take on this hardship. If I had chosen the hardship because I liked it, it would be different, understand? (Applause.) Our world is very painful already. So if you can choose happiness, just do it. Don’t say, “Since Master has chosen hardship, we should do the same.” Then you’re being too stupid! If we can make many people happy by our individual suffering, it’s worthwhile. However, if we deliberately look for suffering, we’re idiots just like committing suicide, which isn’t good!

Thou Shalt Not Take The Name Of The Lord Thy God In Vain

Now let’s talk about the third commandment, which is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Who is God? How can we respect God if we don’t even know Hiers name? If we don’t know Hiers name, we can’t revere Hirm as God, the Supreme Master, Anuttara Samyak Sambodya or Buddha power! We must not make use of Heirs name to swear, to vow or to curse others. Even when we use it to swear to God, it’s no good. You shouldn’t say, “I didn’t do this. If I’m lying to you, I’ll be struck by lightning...” or things like that. We must not force others to take oaths, nor must we swear in the name of God. Some people are even worse. They use God’s name to wage wars. They use God’s name to kill people, to invade another country, or to abuse other people’s children or women. These are examples of making bad use of God’s name.

When God sends a person to Earth to represent Hirm, such as Jesus Christ or Shakyamuni Buddha, when He’s in the world or after He’s gone, we must respect His name, too; that is, we must respect God’s name or a Master’s name. We must not slander or joke about Their names nor must we say Their names casually without respect.

Why does God want us to respect Hirm or Hiers representatives? It’s because, the more we respect them, the greater blessings we’ll gain. Otherwise, we may never see masters and the sun for many lifetimes; we may fall in a dark place where there’s no sunlight, no parents’ name and no masters. That’s why God tells us to respect Hiers name or Hiers representatives’ names, that is, the masters’ names. Only then will we have light and our inner Master will have a chance to develop. When there’s a cause, there’s a consequence. Like attracts like. If we don’t respect God, we’ll have bad consequences. God reminds us about this only out of Hiers compassion.

It’s not that God needs our respect. Many people have been worshipping Hirm or not worshipping Hirm throughout the ages, but Hes has never changed a bit. Hes is forever neither unborn nor destroyed and neither defiled nor cleansed. Hes only gives but never takes. Hes doesn’t need anything, because everything in the universe is created by Hirm.

The Seventh Day Is The Day For Group Meditation

The next commandment is, On the seventh day, thou shalt not do any work. Respect the Sabbath Day! In the Bible, it’s stated that God created the universe in six days and hence rested on the seventh day. I’m doubtful about why God needed a rest. Hes doesn’t need it at all! You also think that I don’t have to rest. So, every Sunday and holiday, you always come here for a vacation and tire me to death. In that case, God is more fortunate than I am, (Master laughs) because Hes can take a rest on the seventh day.

Hes even asked us to rest with Hirm. Why? Because Hes worried that we work so hard throughout the whole week that we don’t have time to remember our Selves and God. God is our inner Kingdom and our inner Buddha nature. What Hes meant was that we should get together for group meditation on the seventh day! It’s stated clearly in the Bible that people must not do labor or physical work and can only get together to worship God. It implies that we should practice spiritually to look for our highest status and the greatest wisdom within.

This tradition has been passed down to today. Every Sunday, people group together in church to recite the scriptures written in the past. However, they just come to a church, read the Bible, and then go home. Besides, they have some refreshments. They eat biscuits that aren’t blessed. In the past, biscuits symbolized the blessed food from the masters, for biscuits were convenient to store, cheap and light. Since there were too many people, they made biscuits very thin. People ate them not for the taste but for the blessing power contained in them.

Our popcorn here is also not very tasty but looks rather cheap. You can buy popcorn easily with money, yet you like to get it here, because ours is different! You’d be even happier if I personally gave it to each one of you. This is what it meant. It’s possible that when someone outside sees me handing popcorn to each one of you, he’d think that you came here only for popcorn. Then he may build an ashram and hand out popcorn every day, without knowing the real meaning. The person who gives popcorn must have power so that the popcorn will be blessed; otherwise, doing it is meaningless.

We spiritual practitioners naturally emit loving power that attracts people to us. After they leave us, they feel that they’ve lost a very important thing, as if their vitality had been taken away. When I left Costa Rica, people cried like babies. They said, “Oh! It seems like my flesh is being cut off, or a part of me is being cut off and taken away.” That’s why we like to stay together with spiritual practitioners, not because of their attire or that they’re Buddhist monks with their hair shaved, but because the intangible vibration emitted from them makes us feel very comfortable. This is just like if we have water to drink when we’re thirsty, have food to eat when we’re hungry, or have effective medication when we’re ill. We feel very comfortable, but we can’t describe it.

Similarly, the blessed biscuits are good only when they’re given by a powerful person; otherwise, they’re nothing if they’re bought from outside. However, the biscuits are useful. They can remind people of God. Then when they go home, they may ask, “Who is God?” They may long to see Hirm. Later, they may hear someone giving a lecture and saying, “I can help you to find God.” Then they’ll go to that person quickly out of curiosity. In that case, the biscuits are useful; otherwise, they’re virtually useless. It’s not that we should group together and recite all day long, “I long to see God. I love God.” No! Although God is within us, Hes can’t help us if we don’t find Hirm.

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