Do you
know what I want to tell you all today? I want to tell you about the
"Six-Syllable Great Bright Mantra" Recitation Session held at Gold Mountain
Monastery in 1972. That session lasted for seven days and seven nights.
There were over sixty participants, Americans as well as Chinese. They
were all very vigorous, reciting day and night without ever stopping
to rest. From morning to night, twenty-four hours a day, every day,
they rotated shifts to recite this "Six-Syllable Great Bright Mantra"
without resting, stopping, or cutting corners. Why did they do it? They
were praying for world peace; they wanted to invisibly eradicate the
calamities of the world. That was why this Dharma session was held.
In 1974, it was predicted that there would be an earthquake in San Francisco.
We recited the "Six-Syllable Great Bright Mantra" to prevent the quake
from occurring. That's how we fought with the celestial demons. The
celestial demons and externalists wanted San Francisco to quake, and
we wanted to turn it around. Therefore everyone was reciting very vigorously,
and no one was lazy.
You all know the Six-Syllable Great Bright Mantra. Some people recite
"An Ma Ni Ba Mi Hung" while others recite "Om Mani Padme Hum."
Long ago there was an elderly woman who recited "Om Mani Padme Cow."
Whether it's "cow" or "Hum," it counts as long as you recite it with
sincerity. If you are sincere then it will be efficacious; if you are
not sincere then it will not be efficacious. What is sincerity? Concentration.
Being concentrated is efficacious. Being scattered is useless.
I didn't take part in that session for reciting the Great Bright Mantra.
Why not? Because I wanted to let the participants follow their own free
will. If I had pressured them into reciting, they would have been embarrassed
not to recite. Then it would not really be them reciting, nor would
it be me reciting. The recitation would have been done under pressure.
That's why I chose not to take part in the session. But I watched them
from behind the scenes. I had a "radar" and I could see very clearly
who was sleeping and who was not. I was very pleased to find that during
the seven days, both during the day and at night, not a single person
fell asleep while reciting the mantra. It makes me happiest to see people
cultivating. What I dislike most is to see people cheating
each other and not cultivating.
During those seven days, every person was very vigorous and diligent.
Some of them had attained an ineffably sublime level of skill, while
others were feeling terribly tired. Some people were hoping to obtain
spiritual penetrations, while others were reciting in the hope of obtaining
ghost penetrations or human penetrations. But in the end, they didn't
penetrate a single penetration; they were without spiritual penetrations
and ghost penetrations and didn't even have the penetrations of people!
After the seven-day session was over, their sincerity in reciting the
mantra inspired me to compose the poem "White Universe" as a commemoration.
This poem is modeled after the poem "Crimson River" by Yue Wumu [the
famous General Yue Fei of the Southern Song dynasty in China]. These
two poems are slightly correlated. I believe that Yue Wumu was full
of righteous energy and gave all his strength to try to save his country.
His bearing was very heroic. The title "White Universe" is derived from
the title of his poem. He used the color red, and I changed to the color
white. Not only did the river turn white, but the whole universe turned
white.
Why is the poem called "White Universe"? Because the Six-Syllable Great
Bright Mantra is so bright that its light illumines the entire universe
and turns it white. That's one explanation. Furthermore, Gold Mountain
Monastery has a very apt nickname: the icebox. Why is it called the
icebox? Because there is no heater. Why wasn't a heater installed? Because
there was no money. Why wasn't there any money? Because we didn't solicit
donations. Why didn't we solicit donations? Because we wanted to starve
to death. Even if we starved to death, we wouldn't ask for money. So
even though we were hungry as could be, everyone still worked hard at
their cultivation inside the icebox. Since the ice is white, the poem
is entitled "White Universe." That's to speak on a small scale. What
about on a larger scale? The characters for "universe" in Chinese are
yu zhou. Yu
refers to the zenith and nadir, while zhou
refers to the east, west, south, and north. Together the six directions
comprise the universe. The universe of the six directions had turned
completely white and there was no more darkness.
This poem is also describing how everyone worked so hard during those
seven days, reciting the Six-Syllable Great Bright Mantra without stop,
cleaning up all the darkness in our own natures and turning it white.
Hence the name "White Universe." There are many meanings to this name.
"White Universe" also describes being able to endure hardship and apply
effort in cultivation. Being patient and having not a trace of greed,
hatred, and stupidity in our minds is also called "White Universe."
The poem "White Universe" which I wrote goes like this:
