Master Says

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Pingtung, Formosa April 11, 1989 (Originally in Chinese)

Many people have great faith in me. They adore me. In their hearts, they understand my teachings; they know and believe what I am talking about. They think it is good enough to take my photo home and worship it, or take three of my books home and read through them in two nights. Then they become very arrogant and regard themselves as my disciples. Can it be that simple? When people ask them to receive initiation, they say, "What for? I am more sincere than you are! I have greater faith in Master than you do!" They think that it is enough.

That is not the same. They are like children who have never been married. They know the theories but have no real experience. Even young adults, who know more than children, do not understand what marriage is about, its joys and difficulties, since they are still single.

Similarly, we read in the scriptures about how the disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha and Jesus Christ beheld the light; heard music; saw the Buddha or God; and experienced the Third Heaven, the Fourth Dhyana Heaven, and many other extraordinary heavens. We have heard about the Eighth-grade Bodhisattvas, the Arhats, or Srota-apannas, but we have no idea what a Srota-apanna is or how a person changes after he attains the Srota-apanna level or Arhatship. What does he achieve within? How does he think and what does he see? Does he possess powers or wisdom that are different than ours, which is why he is venerated as an Arhat?

Suppose in this world, there are two persons who look alike, but one has learned science and the other has learned carpentry. Of course, they are different. The carpenter knows that a doctor has a very good profession, and is highly intelligent and capable of saving people, etc. But he doesn't know how to perform a doctor's job. He doesn't know how the doctor has changed internally, how he saves people, how he diagnoses his patients just by looking at them, or how he knows that a patient is seriously ill just by feeling his pulse. The carpenter cannot do that. Otherwise, why do we call the doctor by this title? He has mastered skills and accumulated knowledge that are entirely different than that of the carpenter. We cannot say cutting down a tree is the same as performing abdominal surgery just because they are both done with sharp-edged tools. They are not the same! One involves a tree and the other involves a human. Trees are not complicated, but there are many organs inside a human body that need careful handling. A surgical operation is not just a simple cut made with a knife!

Likewise, many people can read, recite, and explain the scriptures. They can tell when the scriptures were written, by whom they were written, and the meanings therein. However, they do not genuinely understand because they have not had the divine experience. They have not had the experience of being an Arhat, an Eighth-grade Bodhisattva, a Tenth-grade Bodhisattva, a Buddha, or even the most elementary Srota-apanna, Sravaka, or Pratyeka Buddha. That is why we have to practice the Quan Yin Method. Otherwise, why should we bother to pursue spiritual practice?

People are delighted to hear that everyone has the Buddha Nature. They think that that is enough. It is not! We do not know what the Buddha Nature is. We have to practice the Quan Yin Method in order to realize the Buddha Nature and Arhatship; to know how we feel, what authority or powers we will gain, or to what extent we can save people, when we have attained the level of an Eighth-grade Bodhisattva. The same goes for a doctor. The more he learns, the more capable he is of saving people; and the more he practices, the more experience he gains. Some doctors don't even need to feel your pulse; they can tell your illness just by looking at you.

It is the same in spiritual practice. Many spiritual practitioners don't need to check our destiny in order to save us. We don't need to show them our ancestral history, tell them what we have practiced before, or recount the good or bad deeds we have committed. We don't have to say a word and they will know everything simply by giving us a glance. They will know everything about us, right from the time we first descended to this Earth, all our actions in our previous lives, and whether we have been beasts, kings, humans, officials, men, or women. Only then can they handle that intricate karmic net for us. People who can tell fortunes are quite good already, but they can only tell us events that occurred in the last few hundred years, or at the most, the past few thousand years. That is nothing; they simply cannot read the karma that has accumulated in all our previous lifetimes.

At the time of initiation, I advise you that we should refrain from using magical powers because they are too insignificant and limited. People who can read previous existences can at the most trace the karma that people have collected in the past few hundred or thousand years. They cannot see right back to the primordial times when an atom was transformed into a sentient being, and how he or she went through many lifetimes of reincarnation for billions of years. Only a Buddha or an Enlightened Master can read such personal records. Only such a Master has the authority. [Applause] Karmic records are stored in certain exclusive places that are out of bounds to the ordinary human being, the average fortune-teller, and people with the ability to read previous existences. These people don't have the identity card! Entry is permitted only to superior Enlightened Masters, who are related to these places. Fortune-tellers cannot tell what is in these records. Even if they know, they cannot do anything with it.

For example, some fortune-tellers may be able to help us change our present karma a little bit. They may tell us, "Oh! Mrs. Wang, you are being overshadowed by the negative energy! There is something wrong with the geomancy in your house. Quickly move your house around and everything will be fine! You should also spend some money on making offerings so as to earn blessed rewards or benefits for the future." That can be done sometimes, because that person can read the karma we have incurred in our last life, which is making us suffer in a dark corner now. He can see it; and he can help us untie the karmic knot left over from a previous life. However, sometimes our karma might have been created very long ago, several thousand years ago, and the karmic fruit has not yet matured. Then even if the fortune-tellers are aware of it, there is nothing they can do to save us from undesirable karmic retribution. They can do nothing.

Only Enlightened Masters can enter these places where the complete records are neatly maintained. It is Their work to completely erase age-old karma. Otherwise, it will be futile for us to pursue spiritual practice to attain liberation. It will take billions of eons to erase all the karma! Even then, it will not be completely erased. Why? Because each time we come back, we will create new karma and be bound once again. Before we have completely cleansed the karma we have collected, we will have taken on more new dirt. No fortune-teller or person with supernatural powers or the ability to read previous existences can enter these places because he does not have the power. He cannot do anything to help his clients take care of their age-old karma.

Since Enlightened Masters are omnipotent, They can cleanse all the karma of our previous lives in an instant. Their power is incredible! If we do not have a chance to meet these Masters, however many blessed rewards we earn, they will not be enough because our karma is too heavy and our bad retributions too numerous! No matter how diligently we worship the Buddha, it will never be enough. We can study all the scriptures but still be unable to open up our wisdom, because we are engulfed by the dark clouds of karmic hindrances from our previous lives. We can read the scriptures over and over again