(Continued from issue #302)
Lunchtime Instructional Talk by Dharma Master Heng Gwei on November 18, 2018,
at Gold Wheel Sagely Monastery Emperor Liang’s Jeweled Repentance Dharma Assembly
“Life is but a dream; Death, a dream as well. Dreaming, we enjoy glory and wealth.” In your state of dreaming, you exulted, “Wow! I will soon be a high official with great social status, or I’m a specialist! In my whole life, I have struggled for success in all aspects, i.e. career, occupation, family, riches, successful children. I want the best in everything, and I pursue them with all my effort.” So now you have it all. In your dream, everyone congratulates and praises you on your achievements, “The great professor X, the great doctor X, prime minister X, President X, etc.” Waking up, we are back in poverty. When you wake up from your dream of glory and wealth, you find everything has disappeared without a trace, and you realize it was just an illusory dream and you are still in poverty.
Why? In your life, you did not spend any time and effort accruing your internal wealth and internal jewel, so your conduct is impoverished. Deficient in moral character and devoid of virtue, you have a big pile of karmic offenses. That’s why when you wake up, you are still in the gutters.
Day after day, we dream on. Every single day we are dreaming, and we keep pursuing our dream. We think, “I wish for this and that; tomorrow I am going to do this and that. I am going to make my home this and that.” Unable to fulfill our dreams in this life, we continue chasing our dreams in our next life, continuing with “I am going to do this and that….” Every day, we keep dreaming. Every lifetime, we keep dreaming. In every life, we dream on.
“If we fail to wake up to our present dream, then we’ve dreamt through it all in vain.” In our dream, what do we need to wake up to or realize? We need to awaken to impermanence. After we take refuge with the Triple Jewel, haven’t we been warned of impermanence?
What do we need to realize in our dream? We need to realize impermanence. We must realize that with birth, death will certainly come. We have come to this Saha world of our own volition, carried by our past karmic forces. Once we are born into this world, we will certainly die. There is birth, aging, illness, and death. This is an inevitable process.
From birth to death, there is a little bit of time in between. When we still have our breath of life, we have hope. Therefore, we must efficiently utilize our essence, energy, and spirit, With the remaining time we have, do a little bit more, cultivate more merit, cultivate more virtue, bring more joy to others, extend more help to others, and alleviate more sufferings from others. Why? Because everything is impermanent.
(To be continued …)