I stole divine power in Daxia

Chapter 614 Mahayana Buddhism
One thought becomes a Buddha, one thought becomes a devil.

In the process of evolution of Buddhism, its core principle evolved from the initial enlightenment to compassion.

So the reason why ordinary people practice Buddhism and worship Buddha is often that the first thing they say is that Buddha and Bodhisattva are compassionate and save all living beings in the world, and then it is because Buddha and Bodhisattva have infinite wisdom and self-awareness to achieve nirvana.

This is the evolution of Buddhism from Hinayana to Mahayana, which also makes Buddhism the most popular doctrine among the common people, and it is the only one. After all, the other schools of thought, even the Mohist school, cannot achieve the distinction between self and others.

And it is precisely because Buddhism gradually deviates from "emptiness" and evolves towards "goodness" that it is most likely for Buddhists to become heretics and become possessed by demons.

Just like Monk Zhi, he simply believed that everyone has the wisdom to distinguish between good and evil. As long as the evil side is cut off and allowed to be suppressed by the Pure Land of Buddha, the good side will remain.

However, the vast majority of people have not cut off the roots of evil, just like the monk Yuanjue at this moment. Once an evil thought arises, the good results of decades of practice will undergo a qualitative change.

In the Western Pure Land of Salvation, the Buddha Kingdom of Maitreya, with layers of merit and virtue piling up, the golden body of Maitreya Bodhisattva is approaching perfection. Just over a month ago, he achieved the realm of a first-level Pratyekabuddha. Suddenly, he felt a sense of inspiration, and used his supernatural powers to touch the source of the inspiration with his own Taoist tradition.

Monk Yuanjue looked indifferently at the Tianjing guards sealing the Buddhist temple, then turned and entered the meditation room. He had been practicing for decades without any interference from others, so he naturally realized that his evil thoughts had arisen. So when he wanted to enter into a state of meditation, he first had to cut off or suppress his evil thoughts. However, the cause and effect of these evil thoughts were so huge that suddenly a huge golden lotus petal floated above Monk Yuanjue's spiritual platform, and on the petal sat a pot-bellied Buddha with ears drooping to his shoulders and a perfect appearance of blessings.

Monk Yuanjue looked up at the Buddha on the lotus petals, his expression changing several times, and finally he put his hands together and said, "I don't know whether I should call you Uncle Master or Lord Maitreya Buddha now?"

In the past, the twenty-four Buddhas in Buddhism kept their identities secret and formed secret societies, so even within the Buddhist community, few people knew their names.

However, when the Twenty-Four Heavenly Gods completely separated from Buddhism and established themselves as the Nine Western Provinces, the names of the Twenty-Four Heavenly Buddhas became extremely popular.

Just like the Buddha of Killing came from the Fahua Temple and the Buddha of Equality in the Underworld came from the Mohist School, the other Buddhas did not appear out of thin air. They were all at least second-grade practitioners.

Maitreya was originally a Bodhisattva within the lineage of Yuanjue monk, and was also Yuanjue monk’s great-uncle, which is why Yuanjue monk asked this question.

Maitreya always smiles, "Huang Mei'er, the name is empty, the nature is empty, what's the difference between you calling me Master Uncle and Maitreya Buddha?"

Huang Mei'er was the nickname of Monk Yuanjue in the past. He had two very long yellow eyebrows since he was a child, which was considered a symbol of longevity. In the past, when Monk Yuanjue sat down to listen to Maitreya's lectures, Maitreya would often call him "Huang Mei'er". However, as Monk Yuanjue grew older, no one called him that anymore.

Now, hearing this familiar name again from the mouth of the people of that time, Monk Yuanjue was stunned and then sighed.

As he sighed, the Daxia official seal lingering above his spiritual altar dimmed and fell from above, landing between Maitreya and Monk Yuanjue.

"Master uncle, you are not here to reminisce about the past with me, right?"

Monk Yuanjue smiled self-deprecatingly.

Maitreya said wittily, "I'm not the one looking for you, but you're the one looking for me?"

"How do I find my uncle-master?"

"Dependent origination is empty in nature. You just had a thought, so I came here. So instead of asking me why I came here, I'd rather ask you why you had a thought."

Maitreya said patiently that as a Buddhist Bodhisattva, He was no less capable than others in preaching and discussing the Dharma.

“Why do I have such thoughts?”

The self-mockery on Monk Yuanjue's lips turned into bitterness, and this bitterness turned into anger in a breath or two. He pointed at Maitreya and cursed, "The temple has worshipped you for half your life, why did you go to the west to be the Buddha? Now the Great Xia court uses this as an excuse. Zhou Tieyi's servant has raided our temple, seized our land, burned half of our scriptures, and sent your disciples to the front line to fight, but you are still being the Buddha in the west!"

Monk Yuanjue was burning with anger, so he spoke one sentence after another, as if he wanted to pour out all the grievances he had suffered in the past few days.

When people are extremely angry and aggrieved, they become irrational, so many things that were not originally blamed on Maitreya were thrown onto Maitreya by the monk Yuanjue.

Yes, if Maitreya and the others hadn't come up with this stupid Western Buddhism, there would be no need for Daxia to send so many soldiers to garrison the West, and maybe there wouldn't have been this incident of monks returning to secular life.

After all, one of the biggest excuses for the Queen Mother to change from a monk to a secular woman was that she was unclear about Buddhism, so she had to revise the previous scriptures to prevent the emergence of traitors like Maitreya again.

Maitreya listened quietly, and when the monk Yuanjue had finished scolding him, he said leisurely, "Your Dharma name is 'Yuanjue'. These two words were given to you by me back then, right?"

Monk Yuanjue took a deep breath and stared at Maitreya, wondering why He suddenly brought up this matter.

When he was listening to lectures under Maitreya, Maitreya praised him for his wisdom and gave him this Dharma name.

This was a remarkable thing at the time. A Dharma name bestowed by the Bodhisattva himself generally proved that the person had at least the potential to become an Arhat.

However, Monk Yuanjue had practiced for decades, and when many up-and-coming people had already entered the third rank, he was still stuck below the third rank. Even in the Buddhist ministry, he was only qualified to be a vice minister. He was kicked out by the Queen Mother for no more than a few words in the court.

Thinking of this, Monk Yuanjue looked a little embarrassed and annoyed again.

"So what?"

Maitreya's eyes fell on the monk Yuanjue, and he naturally knew what he was thinking. Maitreya continued, "But now it seems that you have neither understood 'dependent origination' nor 'emptiness of nature', so you have neither cause nor enlightenment. No wonder you have been cut off before the third level for so many years."

When Maitreya said this, his tone was also full of sighs. Although Bodhisattvas and Buddhas have certain foresight abilities, many of the things they see are one-sided, and they are sudden points in time. For example, although Maitreya gave the monk Yuanjue a Buddhist name, thinking that Yuanjue had the opportunity to achieve the golden body arhat, Maitreya did not expect the situation today. The two words Yuanjue are actually two shackles.

Just now Maitreya had explained the origin of things clearly by saying "a thought arises, so He comes". Now he continued to talk about emptiness of nature, which immediately made the monk Yuanjue's face suddenly change. He murmured and asked, "What is 'emptiness of nature'?"

Maitreya smiled and said, "You were born with a thought, so I came. This is 'causality', it is the meeting of cause and condition. All things are impermanent, but you, me, and our previous encounters are all linked by a bond under all these impermanences. This bond is 'emptiness of nature', you can also call it the Dharma, so the Dharma is empty. If there is no cause and condition for you, me, and our meeting, then it would not appear in the world. But since there is the cause and condition for you, me, and our meeting, the Dharma therefore appears in the world."

"You think that the Dharma died when I left the temple, but in my opinion, the Dharma was born when we met again today. So the birth and death of the Dharma is just a manifestation of cause and condition, but the Dharma itself is unchanging."

After hearing this, Monk Yuanjue was already full of praise in his heart. His great-grandmaster was indeed his great-grandmaster, but he still refused to accept it. He sneered, "Since our great-grandmaster said that Buddhism is unchanging, then why do we need to become monks and practice? It really fulfilled the words of the Queen Mother. It will be the same even at home in the future!"

Maitreya looked at the monk Yuanjue, just like he looked at the little monk, so he was not annoyed at all, "Dharma is indeed unchanging. Even when the Buddha was alive and preaching, he was only using 'dependent origination' to 'show the Dharma'. But what is important is not 'Dharma', but 'how you and I view this Dharma'."

When saying this, Maitreya Buddha looked solemn and his smile faded. This was also an important reason why he rebelled against the temple in the first place.

Monk Yuanjue stared at the Buddha Maitreya, and he also understood why his uncle-master had betrayed the temple, because what his uncle-master had just said had actually deviated from the mainstream of Buddhism and fallen into "self-attachment".

How could a person like Maitreya Buddha not be aware of his own status? He continued to talk about an incident in the past, "Back then, I was discussing the Dharma with the abbot of Nananda Temple. It was because of this incident that he once accused me of being a heretic and having gone astray."

This was the first time that Monk Yuanjue heard of this secret. He didn't know that his uncle, who was always known for his wisdom in the temple, would one day be accused of being a heretic, and the person who was scolding him was the abbot of one of the four holy places of Buddhism.

But looking back today, it seems that the chief lecturer was not wrong in his scolding.

Monk Yuanjue temporarily put aside his obsession and asked Maitreya Buddha, "What does the chief lecturer think of Buddhism?"

"He!"

Maitreya Buddha laughed loudly, stretched out his hand, picked up a lotus petal from the void, and threw it to the monk Yuanjue. The lotus fell from the sky, reflecting the scene of Heniu City at that time.

All I saw were temples engulfed in flames. A'da and Zhou Tieyi's personal guards killed anyone who stood in their way. Buddha statues were toppled amid the people's cries. Gold lacquer fell on the ground, turning the ground golden. A large number of scriptures were thrown into the fire after A'da glanced at them. Monks were shackled one by one and transported to the northern battlefield like cattle and sheep.

But the highest point among the countless temples, between the eight mountains, was already empty. This was originally the location of the Nanda Temple, a famous Buddhist temple.

“That’s how he sees Buddhism!”

Lord Maitreya Buddha suddenly closed his eyes and chanted the Buddha's name softly, but the sound of this chant was like thunder, and the anger contained in it was ten or even a hundred times that of Monk Yuanjue just now!
"The Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination and emptiness has been understood by me for hundreds of years. If we do not pay attention to obsession, Buddhism is originally empty. There is prosperity and there is decline. We only need to let go of obsession and realize Nirvana. Then, no matter how the outside world changes, we will not change. This is the realm of the first-grade Pratyekabuddha in Buddhism!"

Maitreya Buddha opened his eyes, and his pupils looked like dew, light, and lightning.

During the battle of Shantong Mansion, the chief lecturer of Nananda Temple went to stop the Bone Priest. The two sects collided and evolved into the future.

The bone priest once used words to threaten the chief lecturer of Nananda Temple.

At that time, the bone priest said, since Zhou Tieyi will become a key figure in destroying Buddhism in the future, why did you come to help him today? Aren’t you afraid that Buddhism will be destroyed? !
The chief monk who gave the lecture that day replied that the Buddha would one day pass away, and the Dharma would naturally also pass away, so he would not be distressed because of the passing away of the Dharma.

Because the Dharma will perish when its causes and conditions are exhausted, it will naturally be reborn due to the arising of causes and conditions. This is all a cycle.

If it is true that Buddhism will no longer have causes and conditions after its extinction, it would mean that all things in the world have completely transcended and entered a wonderful realm of neither birth nor death. He would only be filled with joy and would not have any worries at all!
This is the most orthodox theory of dependent origination and emptiness!

But with such orthodox dependent origination and emptiness, Maitreya Buddha loudly questioned, "But I don't understand, if the Dharma is such an impermanent thing, how can we save others!"

As Maitreya Buddha questioned, the wails of the people of Heniu City became more and more shrill on the lotus petal he threw down.

Maitreya Buddha lowered his head. At this moment, the smiling Maitreya disappeared. His face was covered with golden light. Only his eyes, which were constantly changing with light and electricity, became more and more profound and unpredictable. "In the final analysis, when he scolded me for my crooked ways, his talk about 'dependent origination and emptiness' was just his way of looking at Buddhism."

“Since he can view Buddhism in this way, why do you say that I have fallen into the trap of “ego attachment”?”

When Maitreya Buddha spoke to this point, his anger accumulated to the extreme, so much so that his thunder-like voice became smaller and turned invisible.

He chanted the Buddha's name again, "So whether the Dharma is impermanent or not is not important. What is important is how 'you', 'I', and 'people in the world' view the Dharma."

The Buddha Maitreya suddenly asked the monk Yuanjue, "How do you think people in the world view Buddhism?"

Monk Yuanjue hesitated for a moment and said something pertinent, "People in the world naturally believe that Buddhism is the way to liberation."

After hearing the answer from Yuanjue, the anger of Maitreya Buddha disappeared and he laughed again. For a moment, Yuanjue's spiritual platform was filled with laughter. "Yes, people in the world think that Buddhism is a way to liberation. This is good Buddhism. Therefore, if I become a Buddha, I will create the Western Pure Land of Bliss so that everyone in the world can be liberated. This is my Buddhism!"

As Maitreya Buddha said this, the falling ceiling containing infinite vows arrived from the future at this moment and landed on the monk Yuanjue. It was like a key that opened the shackles on the monk Yuanjue.

Monk Yuanjue absorbed the power of the celestial flowers that fell from the sky and understood why his great-grandmaster wanted to establish the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss. Buddhism is impermanent, but the Pure Land is eternal.

Therefore, even if Buddhism will one day perish, monks all over the world do not have to be like lost dogs like they are today, because they can all find their own home in the Pure Land!

(End of this chapter)