Dharma Talk on 13/10/1993
(page 79-80 Achievement of Rainbow Light Body Volume Seven)
I talked about "greed" and "hatred" the last two days. Today, I am going to touch on the antidotes against "ignorance". Some of us are born with poor memory, others are very weak in comprehension, therefore our ignorance can be considered in-born. What are the antidotes ? Two words can explain it all - "extra effort". A smart person may use only five minutes to memorize it, while a not so intelligent person may have to spend as long as fifty minutes to do the same. To understand a complicated issue, a clever person may use one hour, while a stupid person may spend up to ten hours. As the Chinese saying goes : "Hardworking can compensate for our clumsiness, " Only diligence can help us overcome our stupidity.
"Extra effort" is also prescribed by both the Hinayana and Mahayana School of Buddhism, to compensate our in-born shortcomings. Unless and until we put in diligent effort, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to become intelligent overnight. Some of us just do not have the knack to reason, let alone draw inferences about other cases from one instance. "Akasagarbha Bodhisattva's wisdom " is a dharma used by Tantric cultivators to improve their memory and intelligence. This dharma originated from Kong-Hai, the eminent Japanese monk who taught it immediately after his spiritual response. I have included it in my book entitled "The dharmas from Tantrayana."
As far as I know , our intelligence quotient is determined by the eight characters of our birth.(bazi - in four pairs - indicating the year, month, day and hour of a person's birth, each pair consisting of one Heavenly stem and one earthly branch) which determined the strength of light we should receive from the sun , moon, star and planet earth. The strength of these different kinds of light in turn decides our intelligence.
A cultivator bent on improving his wisdom in terms of memory and comprehension powers must put in extra effort in his spiritual cultivation. Otherwise, his understanding will never be improved.
In fact, unless and until we are very hardworking, we can never change our level of intelligence. With a mediocre intelligence, we may not be enlightened at all. That is why one of the six perfections (paramita) proclaims that we cultivators must work diligently in order to remedy our shortcomings.
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Antidotes Against Ignorance
