All to improve a small realm, although there are factors that everyone has accumulated for a long time, but this difficulty is extraordinary, and this favor is great.

Chen Lu'an and Yun Yiqi were also very surprised when they learned about it, and they were very surprised, and personally found the tree master to express their gratitude, and the master only said that this was the blessing brought by the purple gold bowl.

Verbal thanks are far from enough, such kindness can only be reported later.

Master Shu gave such a big gift, Chen Lu'an and Yun Yiqi, as the elders of the sect, can't be stingy, just because everyone needs to steadily improve their cultivation, and said that they will set off for Guangji Temple in three days, so they will guide the disciples to cultivate during this time.

Chen Lu'an paid close attention to Hua Lanting, and he called Hua Lanting and Feng Qingjun together to give instructions alone.

Yun Yiqi and Feng Huolun, as Hua Lan Ting's masters, were even more afraid when they thought of the danger he faced in the battle with Huang Yi, and after the two discussed, they decided that Yun Yiqi would provide materials and Feng Huo Lun would make efforts to create a self-defense weapon for Hua Lan Ting.

The three days passed in a flash, and the night before the departure, the disciples of the Vientiane Sect gathered together according to the instructions of Chen Lu'an, who practiced Buddhism and Taoism, and continued to listen to Master Shu's lectures on Buddhism.

Art is not pressing, and listening is clear, and there are not many opportunities to ask the living Buddha for advice.

Master Shu answered some doubts about studying Buddhism tonight, and he did not talk about his own experience, but used the content of a high-ranking monk in the Divine Domain Buddhism, Master Zongling, when he taught sentient beings.

This Venerable Zong Ling was a general, and at the same time a profound Buddhist scholar, and later escaped into the empty door, and when he was young, he famously said:

Get on the horse and kill the enemy! Get off the horse and learn Buddhism!

Venerable Zong Ling believes that learning Buddhism is a very logical thing.

The Venerable Master said that people worship the Buddha for a variety of reasons, some people have heard that believing in Buddha can cure diseases, some people have heard that the Buddha is very powerful and can bless themselves to be promoted to an official and become wealthy, some have felt the peace and joy that they have not seen for a long time in the monastery, some say that they are very enlightened after reading a sentence of Chicken Soup for the Soul Buddha saying, and some just because they want to be quiet.

But when people's needs are not met in the short term, or when they encounter other spiritual alternatives, many people give up.

The Master believes that the right motivation is based on the right logic and the right view of the world, values and life.

If we compare the three views of corrupt officials and corrupt officials in the world and the three views of Buddhism, we will find that both are very rational, and the essence of the logical process is to "get rid of suffering and be happy".

The only difference is that they are based on a different worldview – Buddhism believes that there is reincarnation, while secular people believe that there is none.

Everyone can be a "corrupt official" because people's desires are limitless.

An ordinary person who hates corrupt officials, if one day he sits in the same high position and faces the same temptation, there is a high probability that he will also become a corrupt official.

Interestingly, corruption is often attributed to external institutions by perpetrators, who believe they are fine.

If we "seek inward", the root cause is not in the system, but in our own world view.

On the surface, some people do not believe in Buddhism or have no faith because they are afraid that their freedom will be restricted, and if they dig deeper, they do not believe in cause and effect, and they feel that there will be no "evil retribution" if they act willfully, and there will be no "good retribution" if they do good deeds.

When the Venerable Master was preaching, he joked that everyone is a wise person after being knocked unconscious and amnesia, because as soon as they wake up, they will ask the three major questions of life one after another: Who am I, where am I, why am I here?

If you are a doctor, the answer to three questions: you are the fetus, you are in the womb, and because contraception failed.

And the answer of the Dharma Master is: You are an ordinary man, you are in samsara, because of karma.

If you don't believe in the existence of samsara and are determined to renounce, copying sutras is just practicing calligraphy, meditating is just quiet, and being vegetarian is just losing weight.

If reincarnation cause and effect did not exist, Venerable Zong Ling said that he would definitely be the first to quit Buddhism and resolutely choose to "be a bastard and love life".

The Venerable Master said that Buddhism is the most complex of religions. The scriptures are vast, and the theories are unfathomable. At first contact, there is a feeling of overwhelming and nowhere to start, I can't finish reading the Buddhist scriptures, I can't understand them after reading them, I don't know how to practice them, and I don't know how to practice them, and no one can guide them, and I don't know whether they are right or wrong.

What's even more tiring is that Buddhist theories are very speculative, and basically each point of view will provide more than two perspectives on its own, and there may be one, two, three, four, five, and they do not contradict each other.

It's not hard to see why. For example, if you have a dream of eating an apple, you think that the apple is real in the dream, and when you wake up, you feel that the apple does not exist at all, so it is right that the apple is "there", and it is okay if it is not "empty", depending on which angle.

For example, what is the fundamental force that drives the world to work? Buddhism believes that it is a thing called karma. Karma, on the other hand, operates according to the law of cause and effect.

To put it simply, good is rewarded with good, and evil is rewarded with evil.

When you encounter some strange phenomenon, a sentence of "karma dictates" will shut your mouth with a bang.

Karma is a natural law, and unlike some religions, the Buddha is not the creator and does not consider himself to be "omnipotent", so the suffering of the world does not depend on the Buddha's head.

Buddhism believes that there are countless worlds in the universe, but the world of ordinary people can be roughly divided into the "six realms". When ordinary beings die, they will be reborn in one of these paths according to their karma, and as long as they have not practiced to a certain level of liberation, they will go back and forth among the "six paths", which is called "samsara".

Venerable Zong Ling found that Buddhism believes that most ordinary people are unable to remember their past lives due to the "mystery of the shadows", but there are still a few people who are able to remember their past lives due to special karma. It's like most people can't remember things before the age of three, but a few people do.

He studied a large number of cases and concluded that the chances of reincarnation being present are much greater than not existing. In other words, some parts of the Buddhist "theory of reincarnation" have a greater chance of being true, while others cannot be falsified.

One of the core theories of Buddhism is "dependent voidness."

To put it simply, there is nothing in the world that can exist independently of other conditions, and there is no permanent thing, everything is born of causes and conditions, and therefore, the nature of all things is empty. This is true from the physical to the spiritual, from space to time.

The secular view is that matter is real, and time and space are real. Matter exists independently and has nothing to do with human cognition.

Buddhism, on the other hand, has a completely different stance from these two secular views.

A carriage was parked there, and the Buddha said it was "empty."

Continuing to analyze, it was found that the carriage was composed of horses, carriages, wheels, wheels, seats, etc., and it was only when all these "causes" were gathered together that a thing called "carriage" appeared in an instant, so it was said that it was made of "dependent origination".

It is common to cling to the belief that "the car" must exist during the life of a carriage. But from the perspective of dependent voidness, the real scenario is:

Before assembly, it was just parts one, two, three, four, five...... There is no such thing as "this car".

After assembly, in the first moment, a "new car" is formed due to the aggregation of various dependent causes, in the second moment, some dependent causes change, resulting in a "half-new but not old car", in the third moment, it becomes an "old car", and then it becomes a "discarded car".

There is no such thing as "this car".

When the carriage is scrapped, it will be broken down into six, seven, eighty or ninety parts....... so there is no such thing as "this car".

If you continue to disassemble to the invisible dust level, you will find that the car has long since disappeared, leaving only the "infinitesimal" particles of impermanence.

Tiny particles are like beating strings, and everything is nothing but music played by the strings.

The strings vibrate at different frequencies to give people the illusion that there are all kinds of tiny particles, and these particles that are not real are like bubbles in water, which are constantly being produced and annihilated, presenting a colorful world before our eyes, and all this is just a game of illusion.

Space and matter are "illusory and unreal", and the same is true of time, which is only an illusion. In Buddhist parlance, time is a delusional and has no self-nature.

The nature of time is not real and continuous, as many people believe, otherwise it is impossible for a person to foresee things in the future, and there would not be so many unexplained supernatural events.

At present, some views of natural research have gradually diverged from the Buddhist view of the universe.

The general view is that whether we observe or not, and who observes, there is a real and independent "objective world" on the outside, which is not subject to anyone's will.

However, Buddhism believes that the dharmas arise from dependent conditions, and the karma of the observer is also one of the conditions (dependent arising), that is, the world in the eyes of each sentient being can be different, and there is no such thing as an "objective world."

For example, color blindness may see red as gray, a friend in the eyes of a madman has a watermelon in his head, and a dog thinks poop smells better than anything else.

What people "see" is just an image that is formed in the mind by integrating external fluctuations, eyes, nerves, karma, delusions, and other "dependent causes".

The sight in his eyes will only be determined when the observer and how he sees it is determined.

Buddhism believes that sentient beings will inevitably suffer all kinds of suffering in samsara, especially those in the lower realms, whose suffering is unimaginably great. Buddhism believes that through practice, there are three levels of liberation.

The first is ultimate liberation.

Because those sufferings and problems do not really exist, but are a dream that manifests itself when certain conditions (dependent arising) are satisfied, and its essence is "emptiness", and even the so-called "me" is not real. Then, as long as the dependent causes of the manifestation of dreams are cut off through deep meditation and other means, the "suffering" will disappear completely, and liberation will be achieved.

In other words, the liberation of Buddhism is not to solve any problems, but to finally find that there is no problem at all, just like waking up from a dream and discovering that the tiger in the original dream does not exist at all, and I do not exist in the dream. The so-called "enlightenment" is nothing more than that.

Unlike many religions, which have to wait until after death to "ascend to heaven", the highest state of Buddhism can theoretically be attained through practice in this life.

This is followed by intermediate liberation.

Buddhist practitioners all hope to attain ultimate emptiness in this lifetime, but after all, everyone's root apparatus is different, and most people fail to achieve it in their lifetime, so they have to retreat to the next best thing – the Pure Land of Survival.

The so-called Pure Land refers to a higher world inhabited by some higher beings outside of the six realms of reincarnation.

Through the practice methods of vows, prayers, recitations, meditations, etc., and by attaining the sense of these advanced worlds and advanced beings, it is possible to go to these pure lands when they are dying, temporarily leave the "great dunghill of samsara", and further practice in these advanced worlds with good environments and long lifespans, and move towards the goal of ultimate liberation. When the repair reaches a certain level, return to the "manure pit" to save people.

There are many Pure Lands in the universe, but the most famous is the Western Elysium, which is said to be the "Happy Camp" presided over by Amitabha Buddha and Avalokiteshvara.

The third is liberation at a lower level.

If you don't even want to go to the Pure Land or can't go, then Buddhism has one last resort: accumulate good deeds and live a good life in reincarnation, which is the so-called human heaven and good fruits.

In fact, it is not a real achievement. A dream is not waking up (enlightenment), but a good dream is better than a nightmare, isn't it?

So, can these spiritual achievements be verified?

Unfortunately, although the theory of Buddhism itself is not as flawed as some religions, it can be said that it is more harmonious, but the theory is only a theory after all, and in the end, if the practitioner is not different from ordinary people, although Buddhism cannot be falsified, it is also difficult to prove the truth.

The Venerable Master studied the characteristics of the various levels of Buddhism and the answer was: it is difficult to verify it comprehensively.

The reason is very simple, because the focus is on cultivating the mind, the emptiness realm of the enlightened monks who "see the mountains are not mountains" basically cannot be directly verified, and the people who have been reborn in the Pure Land or the Heavenly Dao will not come back to report after death.

Basically, only some of the collateral of the practice can be directly verified, such as the supernatural powers displayed by the practitioner, the Ruixiang, and so on. That's a lot.

In fact, the mage personally has no special attachment to these supernatural phenomena, but likes the words of the Zen patriarch: "Carrying water and chopping wood are all supernatural powers."

After seeing a lot, I found that some of these phenomena are not only found in Buddhism, but also in other religions, and at least partially verify the existence of Buddhist spiritual attainments at the level of facts.

The theories and systems of practice in Buddhism are very vast and complex, and there are some differences in views between different sects. The Dharma Master believes that some of the ideas of Buddhism can be verified by facts, while others are difficult to falsify, and the theory itself has no obvious logical loopholes, and even provides many unique perspectives on things.

Just as he was talking about Xing, the temple protection circle of Qixia Temple suddenly let out a piercing siren sound.

This is, enemy attack!