佛教于印度教有重要的关系之证明 － Proof that Buddhism has Important Connections with Hinduism

‘复次、曼殊室利！若有净信男子女人，得闻药师琉璃光如来应正等觉所有名号，闻已诵持。晨嚼齿木，澡漱清净，以诸香花，烧香、涂香，作众伎乐，供养形象。于此经典，若自书，若教人书，一心受持，听闻其义。于彼法师，应修供养：一切所有资身之具，悉皆施与，勿令乏少。如是便蒙诸佛护念，所求愿满，乃至菩提’。

“Still more, Manjushri, there may be a pious man or woman who hears the name of the Buddha of Medicine and repeats it and fosters it, he chews the Dantakastha (a stick for cleaning the teeth) in the morning, takes bath and rinses his mouth, until he is quite clean. He then prays with incense and flowers, he burns the incense and rubs the body with perfume, sings the Sutra and proffers offerings before the image of the Buddha. He copies the Sutra or has it copied, learns it by heart, has it explained to him. He makes offerings to his Buddhist teacher and gives alms generously and not let him be in want of anything. Then all the Buddhas will protect him and keep him in mind. His prayers will be granted, he will eventually attain perfect Enlightenment.”
—— 药师琉璃光如来本愿功德经 The Medicine Master Crystal Tathagata Fundamental Vow Meritorious Sutra

这个行为不可以名为印度教的话，我真不知道什么可以如此而名。

If this behavior can’t be called Hinduism, I really don’t know what could be so called.

南无药师琉璃光如来
NAMO BHAGAVATE BHAISAJAYA-GURU-VAIDURYA-PRABHA-RAJAYA
TATHAGATAYA

性平
Xing Ping

Are We a Nation of Hindus?

Read the Xtian Post Article

…The exclusivity of the Gospel is not merely a facet of the church’s message. Indeed, a Gospel that does not affirm that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone is not the Gospel of Christ, but a false gospel. As Lisa Miller correctly recites, Jesus did say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” [John 14:6] …

But Jesus Christ was silent on the subject of whether He, the very Son of God, could come at another time in another form. Meher Baba, however, was not silent on this. He declared himself to the be reincarnation of Jesus Christ, among other Avatars of God. Finally, the literal interpretation of the Bible fails to reveal either perceptual or intuitive truth. If Jesus Christ were the only way to God, God would be the greatest of all possible losers, because the vast majority of this planet fails to believe in Him. How could the Creator of all make such a wimped appearance in His own creation? The whole idea makes no sense at all. It is also (painfully to Xtians) obvious that if God is in fact infinite, then how could he possibly be limited to only one Son, or only one appearance of one Son? These are, on the face of them, absurd assumptions, and the more familiar you become with God, the more absurd they get. The kind of blind Xtian mindlessness underlying these assumptions, which Xtians falsely attribute to “faith,” universally makes them unable to communicate Christ’s message of love and truth.

…Another aspect of the story is this: Many Americans have such a doctrineless understanding of Christianity that they do not even know what the Gospel is — not even remotely. A greater tragedy is that so many who consider themselves Christians seem to share in this confusion.

Many observers who trace these trends see this doctrinal shift among Christians as a good development. After all, if you hold to nothing more than a functional view of religion, this might seem to promise less conflict among religious believers. But, if you believe that truth is essential to Christian faith, there is every reason to see these trends as nothing less than catastrophic. Nothing less than our witness to the Gospel of Christ is at stake.

Are we becoming a nation of Hindus? Well, in this sense it appears perhaps we are. The really urgent question is whether the Church will regain its theological sanity and evangelistic courage to resist this trend. If not, being described as a nation of Hindus will be the least of our problems. (end of article) Adapted from R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s weblog at www.albertmohler.com.

A functional view of religion is a real view of religion. A religion which cannot save you is a religion which you are morally obligated to abandon. Short of that, neither you nor that religion will be able to grow.

We’re not becoming Hindu, but we are growing into a truly pluralistic culture. It’s a natural and inevitable part of our growth as a human society, individually and collectively. Extremist views, such as what unfortunately still constitutes the Xtian mainstream, are not, say again NOT helpful in this very vital and necessary evolution.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

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The Greatest Gift – 108-day Lay Precept Check-in

The Dharma is the greatest of all possible gifts. The world is full of people and institutions which are constantly giving us gifts, good and bad, and every single one of those gifts, without exception, tends to bind us further to the terrible wheel of rebirth. Dharma is the only gift that liberates us. The Buddhist Path, when actually trod the way it was spoken by the Buddha, is very simple, very straight, and very short, and anyone can tread it to Enlightenment in this very life. Anyone. The Pure Land Sutras speak of the liberation, in the current life, of people who have committed such offenses as the murder of pure renunciates. The Buddha has this power, and anyone can call on it. Anyone.

On 1 Mar 09, I received the Five Buddhist Lay Precepts at Fo Guang Shan, Honolulu. This ceremony is an empowerment. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy about results backed by the power of a lineage. It is an opportunity to coincide one’s personal will with the unlimited Will of the Buddha for our liberation, and by doing this, one can drop the beginningless ignorance that obstructs every single one of us from Enlightenment from birth. Left to our own devices, this could never happen. Without our personal dedication to it and desire for it, it could not happen. The egg-shell of Avidya must be simultaneously pecked, from the outside by the parent, and from the inside by the chick, and then Avidya (beginningless ignorance) can fall away. And what comes out in that case? Something wet, ugly, and powerless, no? NO! What comes out is the beginningless Light of the Buddha, aka Fo Guang (佛光）. It only may look, to start with, kind of like it might not belong here yet.

In Chinese, I could use three roots － 成功了 － meaning “it has succeeded,” and everyone would know what I was talking about. Some of them might not agree with it, but they would know what I was talking about. They would know the implied war, because they would have at least attempted it in their own case. In English, it becomes a huge hairball from lack of cultural context, and it was for the purpose of cutting through this hairball that I took birth in the West in this life. I have kept pure Precepts for 108 days. That is enough time to forsee that I can keep them indefinitely, and that fact constitutes a huge step forward on my Path. It is not the prized stage of non-retrogression yet; I can still screw up and fall back into another perfectly stupid birth, but it means that if I only do what I am already doing, I can be forseen to attain that stage, and even Enlightenment itself, in this very life. This is not because I am so extraordinary, please. It is because the Buddha-Way is so effective. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

The three obstructions that I personally had to cut through to keep the Lay Precepts were smoking, eating meat, and sexual thoughts. The worst of these, of course, is the latter. Even St. Francis of Assissi, who was God’s Perfect Saint, was bugged by sexual thoughts. Occasionally they still come back, typically at 3:30 AM, and I am blessed to be able to let them go by. At 4:30 AM I rise, take a cold shower, and do walking Buddha Recitation. This goes back to Meher Baba’s instructions for his intimate circle, and I doubt that it will become automatic any time soon. It is a fresh decision every single day, dreaded by every single cell in the carcase, every single day. And all of this needs to be anchored by my attendance at Temple on most Sundays. Otherwise, it would become not orthodox, and that would be dangerous. The detailed metaphysics of this are another subject for another time. Suffice it to say here that I’m not going blind in this. I know exactly what I’m doing and where it leads. And this is pretty arrogant, some of you are thinking, and that alone bodes ill for continued keeping of Precepts. NO, that’s not what this is. In my culture, at this stage, to hide my attainments would be arrogance. What I’m doing is to enact Bodhisattva vows brought forward from previous lives. If it looks arrogant, then so be it. I have no choice in this.

It should be understood that there is no compromise with respect to sexual thoughts. You either live by them implicitly, or you set your entire mind against them irrevocably, seek help in doing that, and live a life of free renunciation. I was a renunciate by previous attainment at birth, and I have returned to that birth-right. I am also 62 years old, which is to say in Hinduism, the mother-culture of Buddhism, I am of the age at which it is permitted to take renunciate vows, called Sanyas in that culture, and to spend the rest of my life in service to my own final renunciation and the teaching and transmission of Dharma to others. This is undoubtedly my choice. The lay vows are the root of the Dharma, and this is also true of Sanatana Dharma, aka Hinduism. If you can keep these, you can keep them all.

May all beings bound to the terrible wheel of rebirth be freed in this very life. And having attained again in this life, may I return again as a fully Enlightened and fully Empowered Boddhisattva, to take my birth in America in every succeeding life, until the Lion’s Roar of Buddhadharma is heard continuously from one end of my beautiful homeland to the other.

By my vow.

GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI, SVAHA !

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Heather Graham’s “Tantra” — Kludged Beyond Recall

All Headline News

… Graham owns an investigative mind when it comes to Hindu spirituality and religious philosophy. Coincidentally, she played a porn star offering mind-body mystical guidance in 2002’s “The Guru.”

While promoting her upcoming bit part in “The Hangover”, Graham told U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail that she “first got into it (what she ahllucinates to be “tantra”) when I was filming The Guru in 2002 and I haven’t looked back”. She added the intense ritual “works for me”.

But it’s not just sex. Zed contends Tantrism extends way beyond the healing power of sexual energy.

The Tantric method is a divinely-sourced tradition dating back to 4th century India. It deals with metaphysical revelation and contemplative exercises that place the seeker on a conscious journey to inner peace and self-awareness.

In a recent press release, Zed furthered his argument stating, “Hindus welcomed Hollywood bigwigs to immerse in Hinduism but taking it seriously and not just flirting with its terminology and concepts and using it as a fashion statement.”

Zed added, “Graham and other Hollywood celebrities needed to have more patience and go beyond the superficial because Hinduism concepts evolved over thousands of years and needed serious study.”

It’s about time that bona fide Hindus started to go online about this kind of nonsense. Real tantra takes at least ten years of preliminary meditation, and in the western case, no less than twenty years, in every single case of a westerner.

The tantra is 99.99% meditation, and .01% sex, and you can become a full-blown tantric adept with no sex at all. Milarepa was an example of that. On the other hand, westerners who piss around casually with these ideas, without a guru, and without any accumulated cultural wisdom about how truly dreadful the tantra can be when attempted by an unqualified person, are to be deplored, criticized, and abandoned.

There are only a tiny minority of people on this planet who truly need the tantra and/or are even capable of it in the first place. The truly blessed amongst us are simply not burdened by the need to involve themselves in this abyssmally dangerous and extremist path.

Sex is great. Get married and have children. If you were destined to be a tantric adept, you would have taken birth in an Asian society in which that lifestyle is respected and supported.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The Vajra Varahi Mandala – Proof that the Kagyu Sect is Descended from Shaivite Hinduism

(click image to enlarge)

Read the Whole Story.

Oh, and hey, you did see it first on American Buddhism. Please remember to attribute my work to me. Where I come from, we call that Right Effort.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Buddha Bhagavan Album

I have stashed these beautiful Hindu conceptions of the Buddha, of which the above is an example, in my new Buddha Bhagavan album. Please read bhagavan.jpg first. (enlarge the image to see the text clearly).

In general, American mainstream conceptions of the Buddha suffer severely from the Nihilist heresy, which asserts that phenomena do not exist. That was NOT the teaching of the Buddha. What He taught is that phenomena have no self-nature, in other words, that they do not exist in the way we percieve them. This is not hair-splitting, please. It is the cataclysmic chasm between someone who, having never practiced on the Path given by the Buddha, has absolutely nothing in his or her mind by which to anchor the Buddha’s teaching to the meaning of anything, on the one hand, and someone to whom the Buddha’s teaching has become transparent because it is the person’s spiritual Path.

The Buddha’s teaching is an industrial-grade spiritual Path, arguably the shortest and most effective Path that has ever been uttered, or which could ever be uttered, on this planet. In demographic terms, it has had a wider effect on the culture and institutions of this planet than any of the other great religions. No teaching obtains that effect by denial, on any level.

The Nihilist heresy of Buddhism which has become endemic in America has arrived from three sources:

1. Pseudo-Buddhist Beat poets of the ’50’s in general, and their ring-leader, the drug-addled gas bag called Dr. Alan Watts, in particular.

2. The largest Japanese Buddhist sect, the Jodo Shinshu, which also happens to still be the largest “Buddhist” sect in America. This sect is not even strictly Buddhist. It is rather the ancestor cult of its founder, Shinran, who taught that human beings do not have the Buddha-nature, among other Nihilist phantasies. The top man in the Jodo Shinshu is, by definition, is the keeper of Shinran’s mausoleum in Kyoto. The official symbol of the Jodo Shinshu is the official seal (Mon) of Shinran’s family. What else could be an ancestor cult, please? There’s nothing wrong with an ancestor cult per se, but when it is asserted to be the teaching of the Buddha, this is patently false, wrong, unacceptable, heretical, and untransmittable to the American mainstream.

3. The ongoing hallucinatory phantasies of web-wonks who think, like the approximately 125 generations of intellectual deadheads that preceded them, that the Buddha’s teaching is nothing but words.

The antidote to the Nihilist heresy is no verbal concoction, but rather an accurate perception of Who the Buddha actually was. That’s what we see in this collection of Hindu graphics. What a guy! The Buddha was a huge and powerful personality, who profoundly and irreversibly altered the entire course of human history on this planet, and who was a profound personal influence on everyone who encountered him, including the women, nay, especially the women.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping