"According to righteousness, not by words. Rely on wisdom, not on knowledge. According to the Book of Righteousness, not according to the Book of Righteousness. According to the law, not according to people. This is the famous "four non-dependence", and everyone who studies Buddhism should know it. Our teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha, walked seven steps after his birth, and then pointed to the sky with one hand and the earth with the other, and said, "I am the only one in heaven and the world."

What does that mean? Why exactly seven steps, not six, not eight? You see, that's the real thing.

To study Buddhism is to complete the self, to use philosophical language, to find the true self. I really found it, it is heaven and earth, there is no God, Buddha and Bodhisattva, there is only me between the Three Realms, and everything else is empty. When you understand this truth, you will understand why there are four non-dependencies in studying Buddhism.

"According to the meaning and not according to the word" means that even if you can memorize the Buddhist scriptures upside down, if you do not understand the truth of the scriptures, it is useless. You have to absorb the meaning of the scriptures as if they were nutrients, and do not stick to the words and language of the scriptures.

"According to wisdom and not according to knowledge" means that we cannot interpret Buddhist scriptures according to our mental consciousness and habitual reasoning, but we must use the wisdom of Prajna. In the future, when you go out to preach the scriptures and preach the Dharma, you must be like what Zen Master Yantou said, "Words flow out of your mind and cover the heavens and the earth", otherwise you will not miss a word and it will be of no benefit to all sentient beings. Wisdom is not intelligence, let alone a degree, life is full of Dharma, no words are used to express it, you have to rely on wisdom to understand.

"According to righteousness and not according to righteousness", many of the twelve books of the Three Tibetans are not righteous sutras, that is, the righteousness is not thorough, and many Hinayana scriptures are like this. To study Buddhism, we must follow the righteous scriptures, and the righteousness is thorough and thorough.

For example, the title of the "Lengyan Sutra" is "The Great Buddha Tops the Righteous Shou Lengyan Sutra", which has already told you that you are a righteous scripture. But to be honest, in my opinion, the "Lengyan Sutra" is not completely righteous, and it still has a little tail.

True and thorough righteousness is just a blank slate, nothing. Where is your Sutra of Righteousness? It's all in your house, and before you go out to listen to the scriptures, you've already finished reciting the Vimala Sutra, and it's not righteous for you to come here to listen to me. If you understand this meaning, you can study Buddhism.

What is Buddha? The Zen patriarch replied, "The Buddha is an idler who has nothing to do. "It's hard, it's not easy, I see a few of you are very idle, but it's very troublesome to be idle.

The ancients wrote in a poem: "People can't be idle unless they have a product", this product is not a character, it means that if you don't go beyond the realm of "getting rid of", you can't be idle, and you will be miserable if you are idle.

Confucius said: "It is not good for a villain to live idlely", and it is not a good thing for a person to live idlely for a long time. So sometimes I advise some older friends to rely on what they can and put it off a little longer. I see some people who have been doing things for decades, and as soon as they are idle, they collapse and start to get sick and have bad spirits. Why? It is "people cannot be idle unless they have quality".

There is also a Zen patriarch who said, "The Buddha is an ordinary man who can do things." Therefore, to learn Buddhism, you must follow the Sutra of Righteousness, not the Sutra of Righteousness. You should also not be attached to all the words in the Buddhist scriptures, if you are attached, I'm sorry, although it is not an evil view, but it has become a side view, that is, a religious prejudice.

Religion is the most prejudiced and the most exclusive. But I think every religion is the same, because basically they teach people to be good, and there's nothing wrong with that!

You don't have to say that you are the one who taught me, I am the one who taught me. You take a nap, I sleep late. There is a difference at the highest point of religion, but you should not look at people from the top, but from the line of equality.

So some friends told me that they wanted to find a religious home, but they didn't know which religion to choose, so I told them to go to the streets, see the church and temple, and feel comfortable to go in and sit and listen. I'm not a salesman who teaches anything, it depends on personal karma, not that I don't want to recommend it.