(continued from issue #742 P.2)

Temples, however, need to take an entrepreneurial approach to spreading the Buddhadharma. I have in the past emphasized personal cultivation. As for public events, I advised you merely to go on Saturdays to the Lei Zang Temples or local chapters for group cultivations. And I have found that it is quite difficult this way to further expand your temple congregation and disseminate the Buddhadharma to others. We must catch up with the trend.

Let us take a look at some of these large Taiwan organizations and how they built themselves from the ground up. One started with tourism, one with a medical clinic, one by providing education, another through the media, and another through charity. When your followers increase in numbers and strengthen their faith, you can then teach them the next step of personal sacred pursuit of the Buddhadharma. I think such an approach will be helpful for our school. So start with education and build a school. Start with medicine and form a free clinic in rural communities. Start with charity, and you must first serve the villages and towns surrounding you. You cannot become totally disengaged and isolated from your communities. You cannot do that.

《Get Involved in Your Community》

Therefore, you must get the Lei Zang Temples involved with your communities and cities and offer services to them. This way, people will come to your temple and you can help them. It is not right to hold the attitude that "I am a sacred practitioner and won't interact with worldly people." All the successful religious organizations started with worldly endeavors that then progressed to offering personal sacred pursuits. This is what Buddhadharma should be, the integration of mundane business enterprise with the sacred Buddhist pursuits. Here I would like to appeal to everyone --- all of the temples and local chapters must strike roots into their communities, understand the needs and sufferings of the locals and offer help with expedient means. After individuals take refuge in Buddhism, teach them the sacred practices. Everyone, Ritual Master, and all fellow students, does what I have just said makes sense? (audience applause.)

Of course, we are not limiting ourselves to just hospitals, universities, TV stations, or temple tourism. We have to be mindful at the same time of the ultimate goal of attaining the sacred. If you are only proselytizing through television or other media, running a school, a clinic, or a charity organization with expedient means and fail to teach people the sacred Buddhadharma, this is wrong. There must be the union of "expedient means" and "wisdom." Compassion and wisdom, the mundane and transcendental, must be integrated. The Buddhadharma is both mundane and transcendental and we have to get people to develop their faith and succeed in their spiritual accomplishment. This is the union of the "generation stages" and "completion stages." There is no separation between Cyclic Existence and Nirvana. This is the "Essence of Union." While my Personal Deity is in the Western Realm of Ultimate Bliss, I am sitting here today at the teaching dais to preach, and this is a demonstration of "expedient means." My travels around the world lecturing are merely displays of "expedient means." The achievement of True Perfection abides in the state of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Do you understand this explanation? (audience applause.)

Actually, we have not done enough in the realm of mundane endeavors. From now on, we should strike a balance in the development of both mundane and transcendental accomplishments. Remember, they are both important. Om Mani Padme Hum.

(the end)