Buddha’s Land is just one of the levels of the inner consciousness, and Heavens are just one small part of the Universe. And if we do not practice the right way, if we do not know how, we will never know them, or at least, we cannot know them until we die. And then, it’s not necessarily that after we die, we know the pleasant ones. Maybe we fall into a lower level of existence, and that causes us even more suffering than while we’re living in this world.
So, it is better that while we still have physical life and have a choice, we can first go to different planets, different levels of existence, and choose our home for the life after when we make a departure from this world. Then we know where we’re going. Because we are the sons and daughters of God; we are the disciples of the Buddhas; we are great beings. We should not be dragged away and dragged along like an animal without having any control over our destiny, without having anything to say about where we’re going and what we do after we leave this world.
It is bad enough that we are born into this world without having any knowledge of our origin and our future. But while we are here, we have the choice, we have the chance to make our future. Because if we do not break through the boundary of life and death, even though we are virtuous and we make offerings to the Three Jewels, we make pilgrimages to holy places, or we recite the scriptures of the Holy past Masters, still we cannot attain the eternal life of the Buddhas, of the Saints.
In the Buddhist Sutras, there are many stories of the people who made offerings even to the living Buddhas, but without wanting liberation. So, they will only reap the material benefit of such offerings for many, many, many lifetimes. That means many thousands of years until they truly get a liberating method. Because whatever we do, there will be the retribution for that. If we make material offerings, then we will get material reward. So, if we want spiritual rewards, then we must practice a spiritual way, which is non-physical, non-material.
So, even the magical power can only bring us to a magical land and not the Buddha’s Land, if we even ever reach there. And in the Universe, in order to reach the First Level of existence, we already must work very hard if we do not know the quick way. For example, if we have some magical power in this world while we are alive, when we die it’s gone. And according to high-level practitioners, magical powers and other psychic abilities belong to the First Level of consciousness – that is, the Astral World. And even in the Astral Worlds, we have many, many different levels, over hundreds of them.
There is Heaven; there is hell; there is suffering; there is joy in different levels in the astral existence. All of the people, after they die without practicing the liberation method, they will go to the Astral World accordingly, but in different levels. That is the world of magic. When we reach there, everything is done by magic. When Shakyamuni Buddha was alive, His disciple used magical powers to run around the Universe to have a look. But all He could reach (to look) was some not very high level in the Astral World. Because this also belongs to the magical realm, which is called the kind of astral projection with which we can leave behind this physical body and take every other body with us and go to the Astral World.
We have different bodies. That’s why the people who die, even though they reach Heaven of some kind, they are not liberated, and then sooner or later according to their karma or the judgement of Heaven, they have to return to a physical world in a different form. The astral projection is similar to people who die temporarily and go to Heaven, or who die permanently and go to the Astral Heavens.
But even then, even if it’s only the Astral World, it is so beautiful that no one who reached there ever wanted to come back to this world. You have read perhaps many stories from the clinical research from doctors in America, and they are telling the stories of those people who die temporarily and come back to this world. And they cry for weeks and months because they don’t want to stay in this world after seeing such a beautiful world. Because the inner world, the spiritual level, is so blissful that even a low level such as Astral Level offers us so extraordinary feelings of happiness and freedom that we never taste in this world – doesn’t matter how much money we want to pay for it or how hard we work in penance or how many hundred times we bow to the Buddha.
That’s why since ancient times, many people forsake everything, including comforts, position, wealth, in order to practice in the forest or in the Himalayas, etc., in order to continue to enjoy this kind of blissful feeling afforded them through spiritual meditation. Once we know the (inner Heavenly) Light of Heaven and the teaching of God or Buddha, we do not want anything mundane in this world anymore, even though we still continue to work and help ourselves and our families, our nation. But there’s nothing in this world that can compare to the happiness that we find during our sojourn in Heaven temporarily while we are meditating, or maybe during sleep.
Sometimes people can have this bliss themselves during very, very sincere and deep prayers or during the time of crisis when they have nowhere else to turn to, no one else to trust; then they completely forget themselves and put themselves in the hands of God or Buddha, and that is the time when they enjoy this kind of short-lived bliss. But if we want to enjoy this often or permanently, we must know how to ascend into this higher level of consciousness, and then every day could be Nirvana and Heaven for us. And then the suffering of this world cannot touch us anymore.
Of course, we will feel the pain and suffering of people in this world, and then we will try our best to help. But this doesn’t mean we ourselves suffer. That’s why the Buddha, even though He was a prince and had so much comfort and luxury, after enlightenment, He led a life of a begging monk without feeling the slightest discomfort and without feeling regret.
Photo Caption: We Are Always Watched Over and Loved.
