Magical Power

The world of magical power is one of illusion. If you have magical power you can create an illusion that lasts for a while. If you have great magical power you can make that illusion last for a long time, play the drama for a very, very long time. It could be sixty, one hundred or even over several hundred years; sometimes over dozens of thousands of years, millions or billions of years. This is the illusion of our world.

This world is created by a person who has great magical power, and we have been lured into it. Thus now we use this Quan Yin Method as a tool to dig a door out of it. There is only one door, very small, very difficult to walk through. Following a guide, you can get out without danger. Otherwise, this maze is full of traps, and dangerous, tempting tricks and paraphernalia; so we cannot get out of it. It is like a maze, the more you walk, the more confusing it gets. It's like shifting sand - the more you move, the deeper you sink. This is the situation of our world.

This person who possesses the greatest magical power, just a little bit less than Buddha, is Maya. He has no compassion, that's why he has made this world for himself with which to play. We foolish people got pulled into it, or just passed by and were enticed by him. Now we cannot just walk out.

Originally we did not do anything wrong. Later we did worse and worse. Doing bad things would of course make things worse; doing good things would also make things bad, because we are in the maze ourselves. Whatever merit we get is just in the theater, it totally has no connection with the outer world.

What good things can you do in a maze? You build a big palace, you save certain people or animals - these are all illusions also. You can't just walk out of a maze, no matter what you do it's useless. No matter what you do, you can't derive merit.

Previously, Emperor Wu of Liang State built many temples, and then went to ask Bodhidharma how much merit he had earned. Bodhidharma said: "None!" The Emperor was a stupid person, and even got mad at him. Bodhidharma was telling the truth but truthful words offended the emperor's ears. Being an unenlightened Emperor, he sent him away.

Later, the Emperor heard from someone who had more wisdom that Bodhidharma was great, was a real enlightened master. Then he regretted what he had done and invited Bodhidharma to come back, but he refused!

Most masters can ignore us. If you want, you follow him; if not, he is not bothered either. He won't lose anything. He knows that sentient beings are difficult to teach. Why should he trouble himself?

He will not chase after us, we should chase after him! Sometimes we can't catch up with him. He just lets it be, he doesn't care. He leaves the opportunity for the later people, or lets us get fed up ourselves -- life after life, after one thousand, two thousand or twenty thousand years, then we ourselves begin to seek, to climb up.

So he does not worry, does not care. Neither will he bother to interfere with us, as we won't gain merit doing this, because we are in the maze. What does it have to do with him whether we have merit or not in a maze?

It is not that the masters are arrogant, but simply that their thinking is different from ours. He is a very free person. He is at ease. How can we bind him? How can we make him beg us all the time. We are the prisoners ourselves! We should beg the person outside to save us. How can he beg us to ask him to save us? Life and death are our business, he is liberated already!

That's why I tell you not to learn magical power. It can change our life, but just changing our own life, the plan for the whole world will not change.

Like when we get tired, get sick, we take some drugs, and lay down and become anesthetized, so we won't feel the pain. Then we imagine our bodies become very beautiful! We become queens, Miss Universe or whatever. It turns out that by the time we wake up, everything has remained the same.

The whole world will not change because of our imagination, it is only that our illusions cheat us. How much can we cheat ourselves? This depends on how much imagination we have, how great our magical power is. In fact nothing has changed. You imagine that for five years you are a king and do many successful things. Five years later, you wake up and find yourself still a beggar sitting there.

Everything remains the same when your illusions break. The whole world doesn't change, we just entered a world of imagination, which we have created for ourselves, just like having a dream. Practicing magical power is self deceiving, it is totally useless.

When the time is up, after the illusions break, it is worse than before; because we have lost our valuable time in pursuing that illusion, instead of using that period of valuable time to seek the Truth. We lose several days, weeks, months or years, just living in the world of imagination, and did not use that time to meditate on the Truth, to know our real nature; so we lose even more. What if we die in that period of time? We have nothing left! Magical power cannot change heaven and hell, that is the trouble.

Magical power cannot change our karma. It can only cheat us and let us live in the world of illusion for a while, so it is useless. In a world created by magical power, you seem to have become a very wealthy person who owns everything. Your neighbors also seem to change with you! They respect you, have dealings with you, do business with you, and so on; but those are also part of the illusion. The neighbors did not change in reality.

We ourselves build a theater, then we play inside. The real people are not there. Those who play are not real people either, they are illusionary. It's like when we have a dream, we can do everything, but when waking up we have nothing. Magical power is like having dreams, its time is longer perhaps.

Magical power cannot change any of our karma, merit or life; so learning magical power is useless. The more you cheat yourself the more trouble you have. Then we lose even more -- we go astray and have wrong concepts. It takes a very long time before we can go back to our starting point, let alone to the place of Truth.