After I married, I left home, I became a nun, and then I renounced the nun’s outfit in order to work in the world, be more close to the people, and also make business in order to feed our work so I don’t have to rely on my so-called disciples. Also, when I was wearing a Buddhist monk’s robe, many criticized me a lot, saying I wanted to take their disciples or whatever. I can’t wear a Catholic or other missionary kinds of clothes because maybe I will have the same problem. So, I thought I will just wear normal clothes or wear my own designed clothes so I can also be a model and sell at the same time.
And God raised me to earn enough money to take care of whatever I want to do and help some others – take care of my team, some of my team members, some of the monks and nuns that follow me, poor or needy people, or good causes everywhere. And I’m happy with that. But I don’t have a big house or anything in case you think I use the money for having a good house. The other time I told you that my room is very small, I have one room only, like a studio. If you rent a studio, it’s cheaper than a house or an apartment. The studio would have also a washroom and things. So easy. And if you cook simple, you can cook inside the studio as well. I think I even have a photograph to give to you so you can see how I live.
OK. Here I am living in one room, as I told you. The first photograph is the total room, from the meditation, resting quarter all the way to the kitchen end. The second photo is from the kitchen corner end; there’s the front door. The kitchen is right at the front door and opposite the shower room because the shower room has a ventilator and a window. The third photo is to show you, when I close the divider, the kitchen and the bathroom are separated from the living quarter, where I sit and work and where I meditate and rest. And the fourth one is the shower room – small but enough for me. Now you know my secret hiding. Hopefully you don’t tell more than a hundred people.
And I’m telling you, if you live like that, you will feel very happy. For me, I’m happy because I have everything at my fingertips as I’m so busy. My time is so precious. Even if I’m not busy, I have to meditate a lot and I would rather not have to go from one room to another, if I even have a house, to look for and find the things that I need. The way I live right now, or recently, these few years when I have been in retreat, it’s almost like that all the time. Even if I change to another place, it will be simple like that. Just one room is enough, because you will not need a lot when you live alone – just some pairs of clothes, some food, and some little corner so you can work. Because I work a lot with the Supreme Master Television team, and if I keep going from one room to another enjoying and relaxing, then I could never, truly, never have time to do more inside work, meditation work for the world.
If I’m alone by myself and not being the so-called Master, then I don’t have to work so hard. I will enjoy my time, just like some days that I had “vacation.” A few days; I think it was four or five days, something like that. Oh, it was Heaven. It was Heaven; if I sat to meditate, that’s it, I was gone right away into samadhi. So peaceful and soo... I don’t know how to tell you. It was just completely blissful, happy and peaceful. And when I started to work again a couple of days later, it was not the same anymore. It was not so peaceful and so carefree like that anymore. I still miss those days when I’m very low and down and need to take a break. I miss those days very much. But you can’t be selfish and just think of yourself. I wish I could be selfish and think just for myself.
The way I live my life, I sometimes don’t have enough time to take medicine. Or if I’m sick, I just say, “OK, just get well.” I tell myself, “Get well, get well, get well.” And then somehow, it works. Well, not all the time – not when I am around disciples or people, or lecturing, or talking, or on retreat with disciples; the more people, the more I can’t get well. But if I take a rest afterward, then I can recover. Sometimes I cannot, and then it would physically need a doctor or pharmacy stuff, which I don’t like because medicine is good for you when it cures your sickness, but it also leaves some unfavorable footprints inside your being. So I don’t really like medicine. When I was a kid already, my father always had to really force me to take any medicine that he thought I needed. Sometimes he had to put me on the floor and my mother had to hold me on the floor, and they had to hold my mouth with a spoon in order to put the medicine in. I was really, really reluctant to take any medicine from my father at all.
And nowadays, I volunteer, if I know I can’t heal myself quickly enough because I have other work to do. You can heal yourself of everything if you have enough time to relax and not worry about anything, not take any responsibility – and especially when you meditate enough – then the body will heal itself. The body will! And this is what happens many times to me when I have enough time to rest. When I had fewer disciples, I didn’t even need that. It would heal very fast, whatever happened. Or I’d just take some little natural cold remedy, or do some exercise, breathing or some extra meditation, or go walking in the forest or woods in the open air. Then I got well very fast, in a couple of days, or three, four days. Nowadays, it’s not like that. It depends – depends a lot.
The Buddha said that when the Buddha dies, after 500 years of good Dharma (True Teaching), of prosperous Dharma, then the next 500 years is still good Dharma, and then the next 500 becomes just a symbolic Dharma, and then the next 500 is still symbolic Dharma, and the last 500 years after Buddha’s Nirvana, it is the Dharma-Ending Age, which is now. If we calculate it, then it is now. It’s already 2,500-something years after Buddha’s Nirvana. So, it is the Dharma-Ending Age now. And the Buddha said that in this age, all the negative powers – the King of Mara, anyway – His relatives and children will go into the Buddhist system and become monks and nuns also.
You’d be surprised that they say there’s a nun even in (Âu Lạc) Vietnam who went gambling a lot, etc., and some monks who even eat dog-people meat. Oh, Āmítuófó. (Amitābha)! I hope it’s just a rumor, but they have photographs and everything of the story.
“(Eating dog meat in seven dishes) Today, we eat dog meat. Dog meat is extremely delicious. There are seven different dishes. Dog meat is extremely delicious and nutritious! Since ancient time, there is a saying: what monk would eat dog meat? Today, we will show a clip, titled: ‘The monk eat the dog meat!’”
It’s not just gossip outside my window with my neighbor or anything, which I don’t ever do, of course. And my window can’t open; you can only open the top part. Not with electricity or anything – you have to… I’m very small, so I have to climb on top of a chair, a little stool, in order to open the upper part of the window. And the only way you can get out of the house, the room, is through the main door. You can’t get out from the window and cannot open it. I guess people built it this way to have safety. But I’d love to live more in a shed or something like that. If I can, I always do.
If I have a garden and a shed, I will go and live in the shed. It’s cooler in summer. And in winter, you need just a very little heater. You don’t have to waste a lot of money for heating up or cooling off the whole house. But I have to accept whatever’s offered to me on the road, wherever I go. I’m happy anywhere as long as I have peace and safety enough to work, that I can connect with you through the web, through our Supreme Master Television. Then you know at least that I’m still here and caring about you in a quiet way and not having to sit with you and tell you stories and stuff like that.
You can always read many stories nowadays. You can buy books, or you can look on the website and you’ll find anything you want. It’s very convenient nowadays. I have to thank God and all the Masters of all times for all these conveniences and merits that we have. But there is also a downside to it, because the more comfortable we are, the more we want this and that like the neighbors, and we forget the spiritual way of life that we should live by. We should live a spiritual life, not a material life. The material way of life is just to help us to sustain the physical being, physical body, so that we can continue to practice, so that we can go into a higher level of spiritual dimension in order to help others around us as well, not just us alone.
Photo Caption: Isn’t God the Best Artist!
