Passing Through The Gate Of Illusion

Many people expect that the enlightened persons or to be enlightened, that being must be something extraordinary, must be perhaps seven feet tall or have feet like this or hand like that. Because we read the sutras, the Buddhist Bible, it described that the Buddha had such and such marks, like his feet link together like the duck (Laughter) or his leg look like the deer's leg and his eyes look like a cow's eyes, things like that. (Laughter) And they try to make the Buddha beautiful. But if you put all these together, it makes a funny Buddha, you know? (Master laughs.)

They don't realize that perhaps in the old time, these kings of animals are the best symbols of beauty and a noble character. That's why the one who love the Buddha try to convey to others that he's so beautiful, like the way he walks like the king of goose and his chest like the lion and such and such things. But when you put all these animal parts together you don't know what kind of Buddha that is.

Now this is the outside only, and the inside of us, each one is the same. I think all of you know that. But how same, and how can we know that? This is a difficult question. Even though it's very easy but it is difficult, because we have forgotten it. That's all. We have forgotten completely what we really are. And we are busy with chasing our dream everyday and trying to fulfill our immediate desires and we forget, we forget what we really are and where we come from. Just to tell... you know forgetful we can be, I'll tell you a true story of myself.

I went to Australia, I think two or three years ago, also due to invitation first time and we supposed to have three lectures in different cities. The first lecture went on all right, no problem. The second lecture also all right. I was on time. The third lecture I was late! The only reason is not traffic. It's not that I slept. It's not that I have no car or nothing. The only reason is that I forgot. I forgot that I have the lecture that evening.

I keep doing my things, like the room is a little bit untidy so I keep tidying it up and then I try to move things here and there like it's my house. Perhaps it balances my busy schedule, give me something to do. Perhaps so or perhaps I'm a perfectionist. Whenever I see something it's not in order, I try to put in order. But that was to the extent that I forget that I had the lecture that evening.

I forget until half an hour after the beginning time. And then some nervous disciples run in, broke in, kind of crashing in and said, "Master, where are you?" And then I said why, I'm here. Really cool. They said, "Master You suppose to be in the lecture hall." I said, "What! What lecture hall?" I've really completely forgotten. I guess no one as terrible as me, but perhaps we do forget sometimes. You do, or not?

Sometimes you are engrossed in some other business and you forget the main purpose of your goal that day. Did that happen to you sometimes? It does, huh, okay. And of course I have to rush and apologize to the people. I feel really terrible and I promise to God that if He made me lecture again, He must put alarm clock for me. So from then on I always put alarm clock everywhere, and whenever the lecture I set it on everywhere so that I will remember in case I forget. How can you forget a lecture? Oh! I even don't understand that. But that's what I did.

So now if we are here too long, one life, two lives, hundred lives, then of course we forget even more what the purpose of our coming here. Some of the people sometimes they die temporarily, for like a few minutes or twenty minutes even. Clinically dead, declared dead by the doctor, stop breathing, no pulse, etc.. But then after they came back, they told many stories of the other life beyond and then they also remember why they came here for, what for they came to the earth. But many of them, most of them forget immediately what they have seen in heaven or what they suppose to do in this life. They know that they have seen, the purpose of their life, but when they came back here, they came back to this life again, they forgot. They just know that they know, but they don't know what.

The Chinese have a saying that before we are born into this world again, the king of nether world would give us some soup, kind of hot drink, maybe chocolate or something. (Laughter) That is supposed to make us forget completely our past life and start anew. Many of us promise that we come here, if we are given the chance again to be human being, we would do this, do that, and others. And we will go and practice the meditation and so on, and then we get enlightenment and we dedicate all our life and energy to serve mankind, etc., etc..

And we really meant it well. But because of this soup, this "forget me soup", everyone forgets. So the only thing for us to remember again is that we must open the gate of secret knowledge. Without that gate open, we can never, ever peep beyond this world and the only thing we know is this material existence and all is suffering, joy and temporarily other things, and we would forever identify ourselves with this physical appearance and suffering with it.

The Suffering Of This World Comes From Ignorance

But why? Why must we remember the purpose of our coming here? Not because we have promised to do so, but because if we don't remember, we must come back again and again and again until we remember... until we fulfilled our mission in this planet and then we can go to higher existence or remember our original great position in heaven or in nirvana. The suffering of this world is not due to only the war. The war is not the catastrophe. It's not the lack of food and all these, but the suffering of this world comes from ignorance. Because we don't know our mission, our purpose, we mistaken the playground for home and overstay our due and sometimes suffer the cold, danger outside the house.

But even then the Buddhas, God Almighty always try to look for us, for the lost children, for the ones who love to play and forget to go home. Therefore the Buddha sometimes come down and endure the suffering of the human existence, endure the humiliation of the petty physical life in order to find the lost children, to bring them back to safety before it's too late. Because any house, doesn't matter how solid it built, one day it must be demolished by itself or by some other elements or some causes or have to rebuild a new one because it's too old. This world is a big house, very beautiful, very solid house, but it's not a permanent house.

That's why the Buddhas, the Saints, like Jesus, Mohammed, etc., they came down to us, extend their blessing to us. We walk one step, they walk hundred thousand steps to receive us and forgive our mistakes, cleanse our past unwholesome actions, and teach us the new kind of life, new beginning, or better speaking, and lead us back to the original way of life, the way we must live, the way we should carry out our life.

The Destructive Power Of Negative Information

Because up to now, all the cells in our body, all the nerves in our system listened only to almost negative orders from our information center. That's why we have war. That's why we have assassination. That's why we have competition at the cost of other people's jobs or business, or wife or husband, because we do not have a positive information in our brain center to order our body to do good things. And the people who are good in this world are also sometimes, or often overwhelmed also by the negative, by the negative influence in the society, also become shaky in their faith, became weaker in their goodness, and sometimes eventually also give in to the negative power.

So when we have only negative information in our brain, then of course we can only give out negative information or negative orders, and the cells in the body, the nerves in the system also can follow only the negative orders and then do negative things. That's why we have no peace in the world. That's why even up to now brothers are still killing each other. Even parents are killing their children for pleasure, for privacy, for individual freedom, "pro-choice", etc.. Not because they are bad, not because all these war makers, all these parents bad. Or the husband who killed the wife or the wife killed the husband or the brother killing each other, not because they are bad, just because their brain are fed only with negative information, only with negative ideas and that's what they carry out. Whatever the brain order, the cells complied, the cells have to do it, the body must function. And that's why we sink deeper and deeper into depression and that's why our world is almost any time in danger of disappearing, from our own making.

So the only thing to help us now is very logical, is that to feed us with positive information to change our information stream. Everyday we must receive good information, positive information, constructive information, enlightened, wise informations, and then from the brain they will direct the cells, the nervous system and everything will do only good, only peaceful, only wise, only constructive positive things, and that's how we save the world. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how much peace talks, how much money we spend on the arms, on the army, still we don't have secure feeling. Look, one day this country just finish the war, shake hands with each other. Okay. We start anew. And the next morning, we heard that the other country broke out in war. And then the United Nations run over there and that's not yet finished, the other one, the other country makes war with the other country over there and then over here, over everywhere.

Enlightenment Brings Wonders To The World

And it's already nearly twenty-first century and we suppose to be civilized, peaceful, loving, helping each other. And for all the technical inventions, for all the wealth that we have discovered from the mother earth and from the universe, we could live a kingly life, all of us. Instead, we still have poverty, war, suffering, just because we don't have enough positive information to feed our brain and our whole system with. That's all there is about enlightenment. Enlightenment is a way of positive life. It's a way of tapping into positive power, which is already existing within us. Because in the universe there are two kinds of power, we call yin and yang. Everyone knows. Now we are living almost in yin, no positive, no yang, because we did not open that resource.

This world is a negative world. So it is obvious that we have plenty of yin everywhere. And the negative or the yin is easily accessed. It is more accessible to everyone, except when we are wise enough to turn also into the positive department and draw there from, something for us for everyday supply. Then we are balanced. Then we can do wonders to the world. And of course there will be no more war, no more suffering. That's why we said earlier that the suffering in this world is not due to any individual or nations. It's due to the ignorance of us, the earth people.

Enlightenment is nothing new and nothing that we have to beg for, nothing mysterious. It's just a positive power that we have within ourselves, laying, sleeping, unused up to now. So if someone to remind you where to look into or how to use it, and that is called enlightenment, and that's why it can be immediate. Because if you have something in your pocket or here, you can take it out right away. It's no need to go to supermarket to buy it. That's why it's immediate. As long as you want to accept it, it will be right there and I will show it to you, that it is immediate and you can use it right away and you can see your life improved right away in the first days.

Some people feel like they are born again, right at the time of initiation. They are so joyful. They could just go on the street and kiss everyone. Of course I advise them not to do that, especially in Singapore. It's just a way of expressing their joy. And from then on, their lives become as light as feather. They work without burden. They take care the family with love and not with so much struggling. Most of family members are often struggling with each other, also due to ignorance. So many people after enlightenment they find their family become heaven. And if everyone's like that, every family like that, then we don't need to go to heaven. Our planet will be preserved and then because due to our positive power, we can also elevate the vibration of the earth and make it become heaven-like.

The Difference Between Heaven And Earth

The only difference between heaven and this earth is the vibration, the frequency. The frequency of heaven is fast but smooth. The frequency of the physical world such as our earth is gross, is rough, uneven. That's why sometimes we have disasters earthquake and all kind of eventful weather. Of course, we can say it from weather forecast: "Oh, the wind in northeast, it winds", something like that, and causes all these and that. But it is all together also due to the vibration of the whole planet, and atmosphere around it. In heaven, they don't have it, they don't have typhoon, they don't have earthquake, they don't even have earth, they don't even have wind. Everything is different. And the heavenly beings, their vibration is also different, because they are different. They have their vibration different, therefore heaven is different. So if our vibration is different, our life become different, even if we stay here. Of course we cannot change the whole planet into heaven, if the people of the earth are practicing only in a small number. But if the whole planet or maybe even half of us practice in such a way, then the vibration of the earth will also change, then other half also will be benefitted without having to do anything. Just like in one family, the father and mother goes to work, and the whole family can also benefit from his or their parents' salary. No need for the children also go to work. They can, later, when they want to, when they grow up, as a duty to society, not because of necessities. And of course, the more money they earn, the better for the family.

Similarly, the more people practice into heavenly kind of life, and the more elevated our earth will become. At that time then, our house here is safe. Otherwise, it's not safe. As long as the frequency is so gross, rough, then it's bound to happen that one day it will break apart or explode. We learn that the finer the thing, the more invisible the thing, the more enduring. Similarly, our earth is too gross, too heavy, so it's bound to happen sometimes that it will destroy itself, if we do not destroy it before that with our atom bombs, with our environmental abuse, with our ignorance of the protection of the atmosphere around the earth.

We sometime poison ourselves with too much chemical, poison our earth, poison the water, and so it's bound to happen that it cannot last. Has no need to be a clairvoyant person or predicting well like Nostradamus or something to say that, the world is not everlasting. We can predict it ourselves. If we look around our neighborhood and see how we treated our planet and how wars have damaged each and every corner of the world, now and again.

The Story Of The Red Goblin And The Green Goblin

There is a story about two devils who live in a mountain. Actually they are not devils, they are kind of demighost, demigod or ghost perhaps, perhaps half angel and half goblin-like. And they live together, two. One is green and the other is red. Just like the green light and red light outside. Green is for peaceful, smooth going. Red is for war, stop, obstruction. But both of them live together happily ever after, (Master laughs) before, ever before, together in the mountain and with no problem, no anxiety, no desire, nothing.

They live for long... many many hundred of years already. And often when they have nothing to do, they sat on top of the mountain and look down into the world below them, the world of humankind. And they saw all the business and the people, walking up and down and all that. And then they saw the world is always changing. So the green said to the red, "You see, we live here many hundreds of years already and our life never changes, everyday the same thing. But the world below, the world of human being, everyday change. How come?" And the red said, "Oh, yes, you're right, very interesting, their life is more interesting." But the green said, "How come, how come their life is so changing all the time?" And then the red thought for a while and say, "Oh, it must be because they always fight with each other. Because they build a building, beautiful and big and next day they fight and demolished it. And then they build another one and then have war and destroy again and that's why the world always have something to do. That's why the world is always changing. So now if our world here, the two of us, too peaceful, too boring, I think we have to start fighting with each other." That's what the red thinks.

And the green said, "No! No fighting. We are good friends, we've been friends for many hundred of years. How can we fight each other?" But the red said, "If we don't fight, then we can't have any change. Our life will always going on like this and it's boring and we don't make any progress, so let's fight!" So the green said, "No, no, no, no! I can not do it. No, we are friends." But the red insist and said, "From today you are my enemy. That's it.", Declared war right there and then. So then he left. He didn't live with the green anymore. He moved to the other side of the mountain and sat there alone, prepare for war. And the green also stay there in that corner of the mountain, felt so lonely and miserable. He missed the other goblin. So he was feeling very miserable.

And you know the goblin, the kind of demiangel, they have magical power. Apart from being able to fly, making things appear by themselves, seeing very far, hearing very far, they also have long nose which can stretch to no limit. So the green goblin sat there one day and feeling very bored and suddenly he notice in the world of humans below that something shining, flashing, shining all the time. So he was curious and he used his nose. (Laughter) He makes his nose long. He said, "Grow longer, grow longer, grow longer and then the nose kept growing long, long, long and then pierce into the world below where the shining and flashing is happening.

The shining and flashing came from the clothes of the princess of that city and it happened that the servants were hanging her clothes outside to air them and her clothes have gold flakes and also some jewelry studded with diamond, rubies, and etc., etc.. So it's glittering in the sun. That's why it were shining and flashing. So now the servants say to each other, "Oh, her clothes is so beautiful, but so many. Now we don't have enough bamboo pole to hang. What to do?"

At that moment the nose of the goblin just arrived on time. (Laughter) Did you hear this story before? (Audience: No) No! Oh! I'm glad. (Everyone laughs.) So, and then the servants thought, "Oh, we have a long bamboo enough to hang the rest of the clothes on it." So they put the rest of the clothes of the princess on this green pole and then happily went inside. Ah, to eat some chapati.

So now, the green goblin suddenly felt so heavy on his nose. So he was scared. He immediately pull his nose back to the normal size and there come all a bundle of glittering clothes at his feet. And he was thinking, "Ah, oh, it must be a lucky day." So he try it on and beautifully it looks. So he was proud marching around himself alone.

And it happened that the red came over. He wanted to start a fight, to progress. But then the green said, "Look here! I have some new clothes, beautiful, and I save some for you, half of them for you." And the red was looking with contempt and said, "Look, I don't wear these kind of ridiculous things, only crazy people do, like you." He want to start a fight, so he talk every nonsense. But the green is always green, so he's very cool; so he don't pick on it. So he say, "Okay, okay, fine. If you don't wear them, it does no harm. Leave them there. It's all right." So the red don't know what else to do, so he went home.

But actually he was very very jealous of the green and so he tried to get some clothes for himself. So now he also put his nose very long down into the palace and waiting for some clothes to be hung on. But it happen that the samurai, at that time there practicing sword together and when they saw such a long thing coming, they said to each other, "What's that? And the other said, "Ah, it must be the new invention of the enemy trying to attack us. Let's kill it first." "Oh, okay." Then "Pa" (Master imitates the sound of cutting) with the sword. And so suddenly the red feel such sharp pain and immediately he pull back his nose to the normal size. And then here it bleed and then he cry and cry so much.

And then the green heard his crying and came over and say, "What happen, what happen?" And the red was so embarrassed and angry and can not say what the true was and so he said, "Leave me alone" "And you don't bother me." And so the green said, "No, I don't bother you, I try to help you. It's bleeding. Look here. I know the medicine. I put it on. It will stop right away and your nose will become beautiful like before. Otherwise, you will have a big scar, a big hole there and then it will be very ugly. I just want to take care of you."

And so the red after all feel touched and said, "All right, all right." And then he cried his heart out, "Ah, it's really hurt. Please quickly, quickly help me. Make it better, quickly." And then from then on of course they make peace together because he had enough with fighting. He thought, fighting is no good. He learned the lesson of peace. From then on they wear nice clothes and drink tea together everyday, and no more war.

Only Enlightenment Can Awaken The True Self

But our world has not learned this lesson of love and it is a sad affair. So now, instead of always writing on the newspaper, criticizing the government of this and that country, scolding this and that dictator, or telling the army what to do, because it has not been any use up to now... so instead of doing all these, or apart from doing all these, still, we have to find the way out for ourselves before it's too late. And the only way out is the so-called enlightenment. And an enlightenment is only getting back the positive information that we badly lack. And it's right there. Because it's already there, it's just that we didn't use it. When we are born into this world, everyone must take care of the immediate needs, such as cold, hunger, environmental infection, etc., etc.. Therefore the immediate reaction from birth or since childhood is all these material comfort, all these physical need. That is why we don't have the chance to remember the positive information that we must have in order to survive, in order to be wise and to fulfill our duty better in this world.

You see why we forget? You see why we don't have it? You see why we have it but we don't use it? Just because immediately this world overwhelms us with physical threat. So the immediate reaction from us is that to protect ourself, the body, feeding, drinking, clothing it, building house, buying more blankets, and getting a big car so that we can move around, building a big road so that we can drive the car on, etc., etc.. All these physical necessities immediately from birth overwhelmed us and take all our time up and that's why it became a habit to us to preoccupy ourselves with physical needs alone, and that's why we forget further and further, more and more about our other positive side of nature. And that's the only secret. Does it make sense to you? (Audience: Yes)

So now I have in brief and in logic explained to you or reminded you what is truly enlightenment. And there's no mystery about it, just the positive side of our nature. And we have both inside. Up to now we only use the negative, because the necessities of this negative world force us to always have to lean on the negative side to survive. And then, the more we do it, the more we forget the other side. That's all. But that is the thing that we should not do. Because without the positive we can't even take care of the negative well. Without the driver, you know what I mean, the car doesn't matter how good you take care, it will not move and it will move all wrong way around, killing people if it does. So now the driver must wake up. Wake him up and tell him to drive the car, drive properly. And that is all there is for enlightenment.

(The lecture's questions and answers will be in the next issue.)