1. Setting Up an Altar To practise the True Buddha Dharma
You must set up an altar. Living Buddha Lian Shen knows that this may pose problems to some of the disciples. As some of them are financially incapable, and some situations do not allow this. If that is the case, you need only a statue, or just a photograph of the guru; this is the most simplified way. After the practice, just keep the statue or photograph in a clean place. If you can’t even burn the incense, you can set up an altar in your mind.
First chant this Mantra to purify the dharma realm. `Om, namo sua ha.` seven times, to cleanse the surrounding areas. Then visualise that the surrounding becoming empty and bright, the bed or your seat changing into a lotus flower. Your personal deity or guru appears in the air, then you begin your practice. You can do this any time and at any place.
2. The First View on your Personal Deity
Your personal deity is real; the altar is unreal. The altar is a reincarnation of the guru. Without the guru, everything will be just like a mirage, nothing will be accomplished.
3. Armour Protection Yoga
Living Buddha Lian Shen says that after doing the Armour Protection yoga, a Vajra protector will come from the universe to protect the practitioner of the Esoteric Buddhism, or whatever things he is doing. The Vajra protector will appear if you ask him to do so. If you do not ask him to appear often enough, he will just leave for good. The practitioner must perform the yoga whenever he does his practice, he sleeps, he attends weddings or funerals, social functions, he enters a temple, visits a sick friend, meets a friend, or visits a hospital. Better still if he can do the same before he leaves his house.
The protector will leave for three reasons:
i. You do not practise vigourously; and are slackening in your effort.
ii. You lose the right thought, have deviated, and full of crooked ideas and behaving abnormally.
iii. You lose the lineage`s energised power.
If you practise the True Buddha, vindicate True Buddha School, you will not lose the lineage’s energised power. In fact, with the right thought, and right effort, you will have great achievement.
4. Offering the Alms
i. Generally there are three ways to offer alms to the guru:
a. Offer monetary instruments or wealth as alms to the guru so that he can further his religious affairs.
b. Offer body, speech, and mind to serve the guru.
c. Practise what the guru has preached.
ii. In principle, respecting your guru is the first step to correct practice. This is because the guru is not different from the body, speech and mind of all the Buddhas of the Ten Directions.
If you have a strong faith in your guru, you will accumulate all the merits, and your practice will be fulfilled and perfected.
iii. Offering the alms is an antedote to greed. You will receive blessing from the guru. It is one of the ways to accumulate merit.
iv. You must constantly think of Living Buddha Lian Shen, practise the Mahapadmakumara, chant the Maha Padmakumara Mantra, at the same time visualise light radiating from Living Buddha Lian Shen, offering alms to him (use rice, fruits or vegetarian food to visualise), whenever you are free, visualise the head of Living Buddha Lian Shen radiating light onto you. If and until all these activities become a habit, you would have set up a communication channel, and you will have the Buddha in your heart,and very soon you will receive the lineage`s energised power from Living Buddha Lian Shen. Your true delight in nature will grow and evidenced in your spiritual practice. You will get spiritual response with Living Buddha Lian Shen`s spiritual body and make progress.
5. Heart Mantra
i. `Om, Guru, Lian Shen Siddhi Hum` is the common Mantra for all 18 Lotus Youths (Padmakumaras).
ii. `Om, Ah Hom, Guru Beh, Ah Ho Sa Sah Ma Ha Lian Shen Siddhi Hum` is the heart Mantra of Living Buddha Lian Shen. This Mantra is the extension of the short version, and it includes that of the Six Realms of Existence. The meaning is the same. The merits of both Mantras are similar, you may chant either one as you please.
iii. Those taken refuge must chant the heart Mantra for 200,000 times or even more - say one million times, so as to build a good foundation for the spiritual practice.
6. The grand master also teaches the disciples to incorporate practice into their daily lives. To restrain yourself and not be self-indulgent, to maintain the brightness of self-nature, and not to be polluted. This is the so-called `cultivation`.
7. The practice is not necessarily only when you are seated in your sacred altar. Whenever you are free, just close your eyes, with a few seconds of concentration. Visualise the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas radiating lights onto you and your self-nature becoming bright and clean. Then you can open your eyes and chant the heart Mantra of the Buddha or Bodhisattva. This is also cultivation.
8. (missing para in original Chinese text)
9. Your body is Buddha`s body; and your heart is Buddha`s heart. If you can view them as such in your daily life, then your true nature and that of the Buddha will be one and the same. This is one of the top secrets of becoming a Buddha.
i. Externally you must not ask for merit; just transfer the merit to all sentient beings.
ii. Internally, you must eradicate all the distracting thoughts. There is a white spot in your true-nature that slowly turns into a moon. All the brightness of the dharma streams from all the ten Buddha lands reverse their flows, harmonising and merging into one and turning the dharma realm into brightness.
10. The Stage of Illumination
The essence of Esoteric dharma lies in the purity of the true nature. Your true nature can be only a dot, and can change into a light that brightens everywhere. You know that there is an invisible real power in between. All the troubles and evil craft can never disturb it. This is the stage of illumination. To attain the thoughtless thought is what the karma method seeks to achieve. If you can use the three mystics when you do things, you are achieving the most profound yoga.
11. If you do not practise to eradicate your desire for materialism, so that you can purify your internal self, then no matter how hard you practise the way, how hard you seek the way, how hard you learn the dharma, you will never be able to find the truth.
12. Personal Practice
The most profound dharma in the whole universe is both formless and shapeless. So do not indulge yourself in seeking the contrary. Personal practice in Buddhist doctrines is an internal way, a condition beyond disturbance in the universe with form or without form.
Source:
http://www.tbsn.org/english2/talk.php?id=37&classid=1&page=0&keyword=
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