All of you have just taken refuge with the infinite Triple Jewel--the Buddhas, Dharma, and Sangha--that pervades the space throughout the Dharma Realm. People who believe in the Buddha should constantly be mindful of the kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and giving of the Triple Jewel. We should feel grateful and fortunate to have encountered the Triple Jewel. It is not easy to encounter the Buddhadharma even in a hundred million eons. Now that we have encountered it, if we don't apply ourselves diligently, we are just like a student who, instead of studying, always cuts class and goes out to play, letting the time pass in vain.

At all times we should act as if we were facing the Buddha or our teacher. We cannot be the least bit sloppy, lax, or lazy. Then we are practicing the paramita of vigor. We should be vigorous in body and mind. Being vigorous in body means diligently cultivating precepts, samadhi, and wisdom. Mental vigor means putting to rest greed, hatred, and stupidity.

No matter which Dharma-door of Buddhism we choose to practice, we should stick to it and cultivate accordingly. Whoever can do that can attain Buddhahood. Every Dharma-door is second to none and a way to realize the ultimate truth. It shouldn't be that you study the Manifest Teaching for a while, then decide that you're not getting anywhere and so you switch over to the Secret Teaching; then after studying that for a while, you don't obtain any response and so you decide to study the Doctrines. After studying Doctrines, you're still dissatisfied so you switch to Chan. Chan, Doctrines, Moral Precepts, Secret, and Pure Land--you've studied each of them for only two-and-a-half, not even three, days. You don't stick to any one practice for long. You quickly grow weary of old things and always want something new. As a result, you spend all your time running back and forth, and you waste your whole life. When it comes time to die, you still haven't cultivated a single Dharma to success, just because you spent all your time running around. What a pity!

Take listening to the Dharma, for example. Although you've heard a lot of Dharma, you understand very little of it. Or maybe you understand a lot, but you've practiced very little of it. That's why I always say, "Being able to speak is not as good as being able to listen; being able to listen is not as good as being able to practice. Being able to practice is not as good as being able to attain realization." A person may be able to speak so well that flowers fall from the heavens and golden lotuses well forth from the earth, but if he doesn't actually practice what he talks about, it's like talking about food or counting others' treasures. It's also like a stone man. He may be able to talk, but he can't walk, because he is made of stone. So there's a saying,

You may speak well, you may speak wonderfully,
But if you don't practice, it's not the Way.

If you know how to listen to the Dharma, then for you,

General principles and fine details
All convey the ultimate truth.

No matter how the person speaks Dharma, whether he speaks vertically or horizontally, whether he speaks of dust motes or of entire world-systems, when you listen to it you feel it is wonderful beyond words. And so knowing how to speak is not as good as knowing how to listen.

You may be able to understand what you hear, but if you can really put it into practice, then it's even more useful. Take the analogy of food. No matter how nutritious and tasty the food may be, if you only read the recipe but don't actually make it and eat it, you won't get what you need.

If you can listen and also practice, you are like a student in school. You may have studied all the lessons, but until you graduate and receive your diploma, you haven't completed your schooling. And so I said that being able to practice is not as good as achieving realization. Once you have realized the fruition of sagehood, you are much better off than someone who merely talks about food and counts others' treasures. And so there's a verse,

All day long you count others' treasures,
Without half a cent to call your own.
Not cultivating the Dharma
Is making the same kind of mistake.

Yesterday I talked about the Chinese character for "meat" being an ideograph of one person eating another, hoping that you wouldn't eat too many people. But there are still a lot of people who cannot accept this idea. When they heard me saying it last night, some people looked up to the heavens, as if to ask God if such a principle really existed. Some people looked downwards, as if to ask the earth deity if it was really that way. Some people looked to the north, south, east, and west, looking at their neighbors to see what they thought. "What proof does the Dharma Master have for this strange principle?" they wondered. They really wanted to get up and leave, but they were embarrassed to do so. Yet even if they stayed, they felt that what they were hearing made no sense.

What makes sense, then? They think, "If I eat more meat, then I'll get more nutrition and my body will be healthier. That's the truth." Actually it's not true that meat is nutritious and good for health. In the modern world many meat-eaters are developing cancer. This is because the flesh of living beings contains certain toxins, which may or may not be perceptible. These toxins come from accumulated enmity of living beings mutually killing and devouring one another. Because living beings have no place to release their hatred, it is transmitted back and forth.

When the toxins pass from the animals' bodies into human bodies, people have no resistance against them, so they develop strange ailments. That's why so many meat-eaters have all sorts of bizarre diseases now. Such diseases were not so common before, because science was not as advanced. Modern chemical toxins, scientifically produced toxins, and the poisonous enmity in people's minds, have combined to create a poisonous energy that has polluted the air and contaminated animal flesh. The combination of chemical toxins and by-products, along with pollution of the air, land, and water, have resulted in all kinds of strange diseases.

"Dharma Master," someone is thinking, "what you're saying is more and more outrageous. I simply don't believe it."

If you don't believe it, that's okay. After all, I'm not asking for your money and you haven't paid me, right? If you don't believe and you feel uncomfortable sitting there, please bear with me a little longer. I'll soon be finished.

At this point, I have thought of a true story. During the reign of Emperor Wu (502 - 550 A.D.) of the Liang Dynasty, Buddhism flourished in China. People would ask Buddhist monks to recite Sutras at weddings and funerals, whenever anybody got sick, and also when people had recovered from illness. Everyone believed in Buddhism at that time, and it became a new enterprise for monks to recite Sutras on these occasions.

At that time there was a rich man whose grandson was getting married. He invited an eminent and virtuous monk to recite Sutras at the wedding. Guess whom he invited? Dhyana Master Bao Zhi. Dhyana Master Bao Zhi had been born in an eagle's nest, and his hands resembled the claws of an eagle. When his (foster) parents heard a baby crying up in the eagle's nest, they thought the eagle had snatched the baby from somewhere and was going to eat it. When they climbed up to the nest, they found a white, plump baby there, totally human-looking except for his hands, which looked like eagle's claws. The couple took the baby home and raised him. As soon as he grew older, he liked to bow to the Buddhas and study the Buddhadharma, so his foster parents sent him to the temple, where he renounced the householder's life and became a monk.

After he became a monk the good roots he had cultivated in previous lives matured, and so he attained the Five Eyes and the penetrations of the Heavenly Eye, the Heavenly Ear, and so forth. Possessing the Five Eyes and the Six Spiritual Penetrations, he was able to know what people had been in their past lives and what they would become in their future lives.

When Dhyana Master Bao Zhi went to the rich man's home to recite Sutras, he saw the bride and groom who were to be married and said, "Strange indeed, indeed strange! The grandson is marrying the grandmother." I'm sure a lot of people will not believe this story, but I'm still going to tell it. Even if there's not a single person who believes it, there's no way I can refrain from telling it. This is a big fault of mine: If I have something to say, I'll say it whether you believe it or not. Anyway, the Dhyana Master was saying that the grandson was taking his grandmother for a wife. How could this be? We have to understand how we become people. It happens because of our emotions. If your emotions are appropriate, then everything is normal. But if they are inappropriate, then some strange things can happen. Why would the grandmother be willing to be her grandson's wife? It was because right before the old grandmother died, her grandson had just been born, and she was emotionally attached to him. She thought, "I don't have any misgivings about dying, except that I'm worried about my newborn grandson--who will take care of him after I'm gone?" Although she couldn't bear to die and leave him, the ghost of impermanence came and took her before King Yama. She said, "King Yama, you really don't know how to be a good lord of death. My grandson was just born when you called me away. What will become of him? Who will take care of him?"

King Yama said, "Fine, if your emotional attachments are so strong, I will follow your wishes and help you out. You can go back and be his wife."

When the grandmother heard that she would become her grandson's wife, she wanted to say that she didn't want to, but there was no way she could oppose King Yama's orders. So she reluctantly went off to rebirth. She was reborn as a little girl, and when her grandson grew up, she married him. That's why the verse said that "the grandson is marrying the grandmother."

Dhyana Master Bao Zhi looked out the window and saw a little girl munching on a pig's hoof. He said, "The daughter is eating the mother's flesh." The little girl's mother had been reborn as a pig. The hoof she was chewing on was from the pig that had been her mother, but she didn't know it.

Then the Dhyana Master looked over at the bandstand and said, "The son is beating on his father's skin." The boy's father had been reborn as a mule. The boy was beating on a drum stretched with hide which came from that mule. Maybe when the father was alive he had beaten the boy all the time with sticks, clubs, and rods, and so now the boy was whacking his father with drumsticks all day long.

Dhyana Master Bao Zhi glanced at the couch and said, "Pigs and sheep are sitting on the couch." The pigs and sheep the family had eaten before had been reborn as people and were joining the wedding festivities. They were really there to get their revenge.

Dhyana Master Bao Zhi looked into the pot of meat stew and remarked, "Oh, the six kinds of relatives are cooking in the pot." The six kinds of relatives--father, mother, elder siblings, younger siblings, spouse, and children--are bound together by their emotional ties. What are relatives all about? They are about emotion. Emotion is like Crazy Glue, which glues all the relatives together so they cannot separate. Now the past relatives of the family have been reborn as pigs and sheep for people to slaughter and make into meat stew to eat.

There is a verse describing the Chinese character for "meat":

In the character for "meat" there are two people;
The one inside is holding onto the one outside.
Living beings eating the flesh of living beings:
If you really think about it, it's just people eating people.

Taking in the whole situation, Dhyana Master Bao Zhi summed it up in two lines:

Everyone has come to offer their congratulations,
But I see that this is really suffering!

After saying those words of "blessing," he left, not caring whether the people wanted to hear them or not. He didn't take the offerings of money they had given him, either. If the people inside the character for "meat" could be our relatives who have been reborn as horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, and so forth, we should give it some thought. Could it be that my ancestors have come back as horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, and so on? Or that my parents have been reborn as animals? Or that my beloved pet cat or dog has been reborn in those forms? Or that the horses, cows, and sheep that we raised have been reborn? If my pets have turned into pigs and sheep, how painful it would be if I ate their flesh!

If you think what I am saying could be right, you might want to give it some thought. Look into it and see if it has any principle. If you think my words are wrong, simply forget them and act as if I never said them. Just let them blow by your ears like the wind.