I have spoken before about my health and who came to help me. I did that for the following two reasons…
The first was to explain about karma. In the past, I helped people sincerely, so they cared about me and were happy to help me in return. Whatever you have done in your past creates a force in your life. When you help people with a natural, sincere heart, they will also care about you sincerely. Good karma returns to its creator.
The second was to show you why you are developing your spiritual power: stretching, Tai Chi, massage, healing, philosophy, and compassion. You might need it one day to overcome the challenges you face. In every life, it is not your spirit that breaks you. Every life is consciousness and so it cannot be broken: it is never born and it never dies.
Karma
Your Hidden Consciousness stores and remembers everything from all of your lifetimes. This means that every life has the potential to understand that it is never truly born; it has No Beginning, No End.
When you connect to your new body, you don’t remember your past life or your past abilities, but they influence the connections that your consciousness develops. Whatever you do is never without meaning: it is cause and effect. All your old memories become a force that shapes your life.
So there is good causation, good force, bad causation, and bad force. Karma creates new forces.
Everything that exists is power. Power is force. What has the most power? Empty space; empty space has more power than the whole universe because the whole universe is held within the mysterious, formless, empty space.
Learning the Amitabha Buddha system is not a power to be used only for philosophy classes. Since I made a Will to bow every day that I’m in the dojo, I have never missed once. I’m happy to do it. No matter how tired I am, I always find time. So bowing has become a new force for me.
Why is this important? Because when this lifetime ends and you are out-of-body, everything you have ever done, which is stored in your Hidden Consciousness, will appear. Do any spiritual memories appear? If so, then right away spiritual karma takes you to a new spiritual lifetime. Are there greedy, blind memories? Then surely bad karma will take you to a new lifetime filled with more suffering and blindness.
Developing Spiritual Power
When I had tooth pain, I didn’t have all my good power to support me. It would be easy to be lost in the pain, become controlled by it, and get addicted to pain killing drugs. From a position where could I help everybody, suddenly I was so low and couldn’t even help myself.
I finally understood why people are addicted to opiate drugs. Even for me, the seductive power was incredibly strong; every time I took a pill, I felt light and joyful. Then I used my observation ability: I observed that the drugs were for my tooth infection and the infection had gone. If I continued to use them, I would get weak and have no power any more. My Will, my development, would all be gone. So I stopped.
The purpose of the Amitabha System is also to understand life itself, not just to prepare for the next lifetime. Try to understand why the system works by understanding the truth of life: what is the relationship between them? You can even call Amitabha’s name in meditation, think about how to remove all the bad karma from your life, and make yourself more pure.
It is such an amazing karma to generate. Make sure you develop a sincere heart so you are no longer caught in blind reincarnation.
Don’t Follow Feeling: it has Blindness and Ego
(Addressing Giant Dog) You are not supposed to follow your feelings right away – not even the strongest feelings – you are supposed to pass through all the philosophy before you act, so it can guide you to better choices.
If you don’t do that, you become moody, and that is where ego comes from. That’s why negative things get bigger and bigger. Develop the power to not follow the negative; use wisdom to become more relaxed, to take things light and easy.
You have to see through see the tricks of life rather than focusing on the illusion – this will make you heavy – and turn the illusion into a good direction with wise intention. Passing through the philosophy first will do all this.
You create tension and stress for yourself. It is a bad habit to follow blind feeling instead of cleaning and purifying it. With that habit it’s like being blind and adding blind ego to support it. Use philosophy as a habit before you act.
I have had strong feelings, too, but I hold them in and pass them through philosophy, examine them from many angles, bring them into harmony, turn them in a better direction, see through the illusion, take things lightly, but don’t let the emotional power make a stupid decision and then follow it just because it’s strong at that moment.
There is always a way to use wisdom, take life lightly, to see through the emotions, and not get weighed down. Then, step by step, life returns to a joyful state.
The Pure Land system is a strong force when you are out-of-body. Every week that you come to class is a strong discipline, but every day you should practice discipline to memorize the philosophy, have a sincere heart to purify yourself, and feel joyful and light that life is perfect. If you do this, you can be confident that you will go to the Pure Land next lifetime. Even if you aren’t sure, the memory will be so strong that it will always exist.
You will no longer have brain consciousness, only Hidden Consciousness. Hidden Consciousness awakens all the memories from the six consciousness (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and brain), which together create the Hidden Number Seven Ego I every second. When it receives no more new information, suddenly it has no need to hide, so it releases all of your memories. You have no choice but to experience everything again; the strongest memory will guide you to your next life. That’s how reincarnation works.
Question
Who does the judging? Is it from “I”?
Answer
No, it’s from No I Hidden Consciousness, the most pure, honest heart. It has no ego and no judgement, so can see your ego very clearly. Your Hidden Consciousness is aware of all causation from all situations, all angles, and all connections in every way.
Hidden Consciousness pureness is like empty space: it has no limitations so it can immediately see every angle. While your ego is like looking through a keyhole, your Hidden Consciousness sees your deeper intention, from all angles without limitation. It makes you aware of all the “I” and everything you have done.
Question
Does it replay memories from this lifetime or every lifetime?
Answer
From every lifetime, but this lifetime is strongest. What you do each day has a strong effect tomorrow, but today you have so many yesterdays and effects from those yesterdays, so a strong power builds up over time.
Question
Is the Hidden Consciousness a force?
Answer
It is the strongest force. It causes your seven “I” consciousnesses to connect to a body. If you connect to a butterfly body, you become a caterpillar. You have caterpillar “I”. Your “I” is an illusion: you did not have that “I” before. Your Hidden Consciousness – the power to connect – is the true essence of life. It has no form but can be truly, brightly aware of every life from every angle.
When you connect you are not truly aware from wisdom, so all these memories remain hidden. You don’t know what’s going on: this is blindness.
The Hidden Consciousness force is pure and empty, but it’s still blind. You have to train your Hidden Consciousness to become wise. Don’t just change the way your six consciousness think, change all seven egos to No Ego, and eventually go back and influence your Number 8 consciousness (Hidden Consciousness) to become awakened: powerful, bright, shining like the sun, clearing out your blind causes.
Everything is through Will. You can clean out your blind Hidden Consciousness only when you start from Will. Then it will become Eternal Lights and drive out all the darkness.
If you have no Will, then every lifetime you will have a new “I”. Your 1 to 6 consciousness will be blind, always creating new blindness. Finally, if you study philosophy, you will see through your blindness, create Will from heart.
If you see that life is illusion, then you don’t want to get caught in the illusion anymore: you want to develop in a wise way to help every life out of suffering. Then you start to learn wisdom to help yourself, then others, to release suffering. That wisdom is eternal, that Will is eternal. Every lifetime you do this, that power is your new heart. Once strong enough, it becomes a new power that cleans out the blind karma in your Hidden Consciousness.
All the Hidden now has bright, shining lights so you can see what’s against your Will. If something is against your Will, then clean it out. When I first came to this apartment, I saw that it was against my Will for teaching philosophy and learning Spirits. I changed almost everything: I put plants on the balcony, laid tatami, bought statues, and made the garden upstairs. The eternal power of my Will dominated; it’s a very different situation when compared with a regular person who has no eternal Will. I had no choice but to change the apartment! Bright power makes darkness disappear.
Will comes from eternal wisdom. Will is not a wish you make for yourself; a Will is for every life. This is the first Bodhisattva Character: Generosity.
Because Will concerns all truth and all life, it becomes eternal in time and space.
Once your Hidden Consciousness is cleaned out, it can become true awareness Four Eternal Hearts, and is no longer called blind Hidden Consciousness.
The Bodhisattva System takes a billion lifetimes to clean out your Hidden Consciousness, but Amitabha offers his power to you so you can clean it out in one lifetime. Then you can go to a temple in his Pure Land to continue to purify yourself.
If you follow the three conditions, at the end of this lifetime, you will be guided to his Pure Land.
- Hold nothing.
- Create no bad karma.
- Bow sincerely ten times.
Nothing is stronger than when you join your strength with Amitabha’s strength.
They are prepared for you in the Pure Land. They have temples for you to continue to purify yourself. No memory is more powerful than the memory of your discipline to maintain Amitabha’s three conditions over your lifetime.
Hidden Consciousness is blind because it has no “I” to choose. If I put smelly clothes in my closet, then my closet gets smelly. Your Hidden Consciousness stores whatever you have experienced. If your life is not spiritual, then you will be reincarnated as a human again. Smelly things are not spiritual things.
A good intention without the ability to act on it is not reality. That’s why every life has a choice: One Heart, Two Gates. One gate leads towards wisdom and enlightenment to become Buddha; one gate leads towards blindness, creating more smelly bad karma and blind consciousness memory.
A Buddha’s closet (consciousness) doesn’t have smelly clothes anymore because he has passed through wisdom and Will. Inside, it’s beautiful and clean, full of compassion. When he wants to show his consciousness, he opens the closet and shows the lights. Each light is a memory of how he became Buddha, helped people with egoless kindness, bringing them out of suffering. If you have learned about pure heart he will contact you.
At the beginning, your consciousness has two powers: one to be aware, one to be blind. If you never experience ego or blindness, how can you have wisdom to be aware of them? So life starts with blindness. When you are pure, then you will see.
Space/Time
It starts with “I am what I am”. Then you start searching. Searching creates speed. Memory of speed creates space and motion. Where is it moving? This creates empty space, so space starts to appear. Once space appears, time appears.
Time doesn’t exist of itself, but we can think of it in two ways.
When space moves, your brain calculates time – this is called Sixth Consciousness Time. Time is created through brain calculation.
Animals also feel time, but they don’t have the sixth consciousness (thinking), so we call this Five Consciousness Biology Time.
- Time exists.
- Time does not exist.
- Time exists, and does not exist.
- Time does not exist, and does not not-exist.
This post is taken from a talk by Forever Wisdom Forest on 5 October 2012 at the Sydney dojo.
