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Commemoration by
Heng Sure Gold Mountain Monastery December 10, 1975 |
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Eastern people have always
known and revered Sages as rare, evolved beings whose wisdom and powers are
the stuff of legend. Confucius praised the Sages of old; the sagely tradition
has been transmitted through history to the present by enlightened Buddhist
patriarchs, uncommon men of surpassing spiritual achievement. Until now, America has never known a Sage,
in fact we have no word to describe such a one: wizard, holy man, saint, none
capture his essence. These are the qualities of a sage: his presence is rare
his state of awareness and consciousness is elevated to the point of being
inconceivable to the common man, and he has much to teach us about
compassion, right living, and the way things really are in the world. At the
same time there is the unmistakable quotient of the occult, the mysterious,
the magical, the esoteric, the wonderful in the nature of a Sage. Skeptical
Westerners are slowly acquiring the capacity of belief in the
logic-transcending attributes of Sagehood. Yet if the stories in this second
volume of the record of a modern Sage initially sound uncritical, impossible,
worshipful, the reader should consider them a challenge to his expanding
awareness of cross-cultural reality, a genuinely new dimension, a new set of
truths operating amid the tacit assumptions of the Western scientific
Universe. How else does one explain a man
who can bring forth a steady stream of sweet water from a dry rock face, who
can stop eating for weeks on end at will and then eat thirteen people's
portions of three day-old, over-ripe banquet food with no apparent distress,
who can manifest from miles away to cure people's illnesses , who can hold
off seasonal typhoons and earthquakes by sheer personal power, all of these
miracles performed without reward, without any search for recognition,
without the slightest desire for personal gain? Such a man has come to America and young
Americans are responding to and striving to emulate the self-less conduct of
this modern Sage. To talk of a Sage is to talk of a pure,
unwavering flame. At times it burns merrily, a steady, intense light shining
evenly and warming all who contact it. At times it blazes up, consuming the
stars with an awesome majestic fire, revealing its primordial source of
unfathomable power and purity. And yet our Master is a man who
walks and laughs, open to all life at its most mundane and its most sublime. Wishing to bow to the Master on his
birthday, a young disciple approached and said, "Happy birthday,
Master," The
Master's eyes twinkled and he said, "Everyday is my birthday, and I am
always happy." |
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