Recognizes and Repays the Buddha’s kindness

Dharma Master Guo He said because of her lack of proficiency in the Chinese language, she reads the repentance text using the phonetics of the Chinese characters. She goes through the characters speedily to keep up with the pace and just focuses on reciting the phonetics of each character correctly. Even though she doesn’t understand what the Chinese characters mean, the people who know the Chinese language can understand as long as she pronounces the characters correctly. This illustrates that one should not think too much of oneself and should simply concentrate and work hard on the assigned task. Isn’t it better that others understand the meaning of the sutra text because of our effort even though we ourselves don’t understand the meaning? When we can’t benefit ourselves, then we should bring benefit to others first. This is learning to apply two of The Six Great Guiding Principles, i.e. No Selfishness and No Pursuit of Personal Advantage.

I commended Dharma Master Guo He on her recitation, “Good indeed, good indeed!” Her recitation of the repentance text was truly a job well done. Now that I praised her in front of everyone, I hope she’ll keep up with the good work this afternoon.

Every living being is replete with the Buddha-nature. We ourselves ruined our inherent Buddha-nature and ended up undergoing all kinds of suffering. Now we understand why we were beset with afflictions.

This living being, “I”, has been through countless transmigrations in the six paths. In this life, I’m a human being; next life I’m a ghost; then the next life I am a cat or a dog. Sometimes “I” become a celestial being, and then revert to being a human. It’s impossible to reckon how many forms of living beings “I” have been through. One of the Four Great Vows states, “Living beings are boundless; I vow to save them all.” Here, “living beings” refer to the living beings within the “I” which we take as the self.

Within our self-nature are numberless living beings that are full of greed, anger, and delusion. We need to cross over these living beings first, before we talk about crossing over other living beings. To achieve this goal, we have to make the Four Great Vows — the Bodhisattva vows, which truly embody a heart of kindness and compassion.