There are different kinds of wars as well: psychological war and political war… What are humans doing? I have no idea why they have to do all this. Just because of different ideologies, different religions, then it becomes war-like. And then people feel scared, frightened, and worried, even though they do nothing. They’re just innocent citizens. They’re not politically motivated. They don’t want to seize the power from the government. They don’t want to revolt, nothing! They just want to travel, maybe to see other countries or to see somebody that they would like to study with. That’s all!
(Hallo.) Hallo. (Hallo.) How are you? Wow! So many girls. There are still so many girls. A lot of females. Even we put some over there, it’s still a lot. What’s wrong with you, men? How come you don’t come to practice? Just stay home and make money? Wow! You see, even monks – only one, and nuns – there’re four. (Yes.) The proportion is amazing, amazing. How are you, in any case? (Good!) We don’t have men and women anyway. We have only souls and spiritual enlightenment. You guys, no good? Sick? Have medicine? Ah, I understand. OK, OK. OK, I got it, got it now. Sorry, came from a sensitive country, similar to yesterday.
But the North and South Korea are good now. It’s getting better all the time. It’s just they are still not… It’s just they are still not able to travel across the old border, but they probably will very soon. You see, like now, Âu Lạc (Vietnam), they can go in and out of the country, of Âu Lạc (Vietnam). They can go to the North and the South. Nobody bothers anymore. I’m so glad and I wish that one day, Korea will be like that, soon, soon, soon, so that the families don’t feel so sorrowful, missing each other; children don’t feel so bad because their parents are not with them; and parents will not feel so much pain worrying about the children being alone somewhere else.
War is horrible. It’s not just killing people, but it’s tearing families apart and making people feel also dead inside or wounded inside, not just outside. Maybe they’re not wounded outside, but they’re wounded inside. This is terrible. And there are different kinds of wars as well: psychological war and political war… What are humans doing? I have no idea why they have to do all this. Just because of different ideologies, different religions, then it becomes war-like. And then people feel scared, frightened, and worried, even though they do nothing. They’re just innocent citizens. They’re not politically motivated. They don’t want to seize the power from the government. They don’t want to revolt, nothing! They just want to travel, maybe to see other countries or to see somebody that they would like to study with. That’s all! And then, have to cover their face and have to fear persecution, and all kind… This is ridiculous! It’s really barbarous! It’s like killing people in a different way. Torturing people in a different way. I don’t know if physical torture is worse than psychological, or mental, or emotional torture. I don’t know which one is worse, but all are bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad!
Human’s life is very short. People should be able to live in freedom as long as they don’t do any harm to anybody. Anything else is barbarous, uncivilized, backward, unethical, unpolitical. Politics should be about making people feel happy and free, protected, safe. That’s the job of the politicians. If not, I think they should step out, resign, go repent somewhere in a mountain, temple, or do anything else that’s better than just sitting there and controlling the life of the people. What a shame! If you don’t do your job well, you should just retire, step down, step out. Go, leave people alone, leave the country to someone else who is more liberal, who is more intelligent, who is more humane to take care of that country. The country is not yours anyway. If you can’t do a good job, I invite you to go out, get lost, and may God bless you, if you even know what God is. Especially those who always profess that they know God and they worship God, and all this all the time, but don’t do anything according to God’s Benevolence, or even just according to a logical, just a normal humane system. No need to say even God, enlightenment, nothing. How you don’t like to be treated, don’t measure it on others, that’s all there is. Politics is that simple. As long as people are good citizens, doing nothing wrong, you should let them be. Right? (Yes.) Tell me. Yes or no? (Yes!) Right. That’s it.
The (meditation) Centers that found and accepted the homeless, please come up. Taoyuan to begin with. Pingtung. I think Hualien. What else? Taitung or Taichung. Come up here, contact persons. Move, move. All the people with the homeless, come up here. Move. Quick. I don’t have all day. You have; I don’t have. Come here. That’s it? Only four. (Pingtung.) Where? (Pingtung.) Pingtung? (Yes. Laiyi.) One? (Two.) Two. (Two in Taoyuan.) Three. (Two.) I thought there were three? (One was taken home by his daughter.) Oh! Why? Why didn’t she take care of him before? Now we are taking care of… (He was ill. Sick and hospitalized. And his daughter came and took him home.) Ah, so strange! After seeing us taking care of him, she came and snatched him. OK, that’s also good. It’s good. It’s good. This way, we let his daughter know that if she doesn’t want him, we’ll take him. Silly. How could a daughter not want to look after her own father? And now she shows up after it seems OK. Never mind.
(One in Taichung.) One. (One in Kaohsiung.) One in Kaohsiung. (Yes, he’s preparing for initiation.) Preparing to get initiation? (Yes.) Has he been vegan long enough? (No, not long enough yet. Might have to wait for the next initiation.) Oh, I see. OK. Never mind. Guards, come help. This is for Taoyuan. Taoyuan was the first. Come. Come get it. Bring it back and share with everyone. Next. Who was the next to have sheltered the homeless? OK. Now it doesn’t matter. Just come up. Pingtung? (Pingtung.) Come. Share with everyone. (One of them asked for initiation.) Huh? (One of them may be thinking of getting initiation.) One of them wants to get initiation. OK. Never mind. That’s not... That’s for another day. I’m rewarding you for your loving kindness. Come up, the second one. Hualien? (Taichung.) Taichung, Taichung! OK. Come up all together. Kaohsiung. OK.
Sit there. Sit, sit. No need to kneel. Later when you make a mistake, you’ll still have plenty of time to kneel. Not now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your loving kindness. Do you feel good? Or do you feel unhappy doing good deeds? How do you feel now? One each. Yes. How do you feel when you do something good? (Very grateful to Master.) Grateful to me? It’s not me but you who are taking care of them. I’m asking about you. After taking in the homeless and looking after them, what’s it like? How do you feel? (Happier and brighter.) You feel good? (Yes.) You feel good when you do good deeds. (Yes.) And you? (Their faces have changed and look good now.) Who? (The two homeless people we took in.) They look good now? (Both look different.) Oh! Different. (Yes.) Of course. They were miserable before. Now they’re happy. (One of them wants to get initiation.) Ah, that’s great. I’m asking about you. How do you feel? (I mean, I feel honored to get to look after them.) OK. OK.
The second one. (I learned a lot from looking after the homeless. He is very simple at heart.) I’m asking about you, not him. I’m asking about you. (Right. I’ve been spending time with the homeless recently. I feel they’re very simple at heart, and I learned a lot.) OK. (Thank You, Master, for letting the fellow initiates in Kaohsiung and me learn numerous lessons of loving kindness.) OK. OK. Not gratitude. Do you feel good or not? Do you feel that being good to others makes ourselves feel good? If you do, then it’s right. Understand? Most of your answers were not right. Forget it. Never mind. You should keep doing it. Other Centers should also do it. OK? I’m going to give this outfit to Taoyuan later. As a token of remembrance. (Thank You, Master.) We happen to be talking about these things today, and Taoyuan was the first to do it. So I symbolically give it to them.
I don’t really like this outfit anyway. Its buttons are hard to do up. I could have come out earlier, but I ended up busy doing up these buttons. Wow! They are all so stiff, so stiff. I don’t know how they did it. How come they could do up the buttons, and I couldn’t undo them? Nor could I push the buttons into the holes. Oh, that took a lot of time. It looks good, but takes a lot of time. Look. One is not buttoned up properly or what. Yes, it’s so hard. Now it’s so hard for me to do up the button again. Look. It won’t go in. She made the buttonholes too narrow. They all have robust bodies. Their hands are brawny like iron teeth. But I’m different. On top of that, I’m so busy and in such a hurry. My time is counted by the second. Like this. See that? It won’t go in anymore. It needs lubrication to go in. See? It won’t go in anymore. I’m not lying to you. Wow! God! Ah! Done.
Be more thoughtful in whatever you do. Be considerate to others. Your preference is not good enough. The sheltering… Of course, you have a lot of time, and you have fellow initiates to help you. But I can’t just ask fellow initiates to come in and help me anytime: “Ah, do you have time now? Can you help me with a button?” Understand? I can’t just ask anytime like that. It looked very easy. I thought it was OK. So I didn’t ask for anybody. And I didn’t want to.
I handle whatever I can alone myself. Because when people come into your house, they bring other friends with them, such as cockroaches, ants, earthworms. I don’t know what. Bees and lots of the sort. It takes at least one week before they follow their friend somewhere else. I mean one week after that person leaves… Those cockroaches – let’s say the person has an affinity with cockroaches – won’t leave till one week later. As for ants, I don’t know, sometimes they don’t leave for a very long time. Once they come in, they don’t leave. That’s why it’s not that easy to just have someone to help you. There is a price that comes along with it. You don’t know about paying the price. It doesn’t say how much NT dollars. It doesn’t say. It is taken out silently from your spiritual bank account so that you feel abused, spiritually abused. It tortures your state of mind. It’s not that simple. Therefore, whoever wants to help Master, there’s no need to be proud, OK? I have a rough time cleaning up (karma) in the back.
