Rectifying Body and Mind

Amitabha Buddha's discourse:

When Shakyamuni Buddha was in India extensively expounding the Infinite Life Sutra,

He already knew that this sutra would be widely disseminated in the future,

He therefore repeatedly taught and exhorted the attendees, hoping that future listeners of the Infinite Life Sutra

could receive magnificent benefits of the Dharma.

Amidst these repeated exhortations, it is stated in The Infinite Sutra (The Buddha Speaks the Mahayana, Infinite Life, Adornment, Purity, Impartiality, and Enlightenment Sutra):

“If you perform Goodness, what is the foremost? You must rectify your heart and rectify your body. Your ears, eyes, mouth, and nose must all be rectified.

When body and mind are pure and clean, they are in sync with Goodness.”

Ears, eyes, mouth, and nose refer to the Six Roots.

The body and the Six Roots must all be rectified; to be rectified without bias, evil, or defilement is the foremost of Goodness.

Rectifying body and mind is a matter of importance.

The body is the manifestation of the heart; if the heart is biased, the body will manifest as biased and not upright;

If one can guide it correctly, the heart will return to the righteous path, and the body will also enter the righteous path and cease to be biased.

Why does this change occur?

It is because the fluctuations of mental notes are the primary cause for attracting karma, karmic creditors, attached spirits, and demon crowds to manifest,

which will interfere with practice, speech, conduct, and thoughts.

If the heart is biased and not upright,

it will naturally attract biased and not upright beings, karmic creditors, or those whom one has harmed in past lives due to one's own bias and lack of uprightness

to manifest and inflict suffering upon this body.

This is the manifestation of karma, the fairness of karma,

and it is also the Universal Principle, the Truth, and the Right Way; it is not something that others can cause.

If these karmic creditors wish to inflict suffering upon the karmic debtor, they may not do so.

For without the cause from the past, there is no resulting retribution.

The retribution that karmic creditors inflict upon the karmic debtor can be minor or light, but it cannot be heavy;

heavy retribution will naturally be resolved and eliminated, rendering it ineffective, or the karmic creditors will receive their own retribution.

故於回心轉意入正時，則眼耳鼻舌身意，身亦是六根之一，

自然顯得端正，無偏斜不正。

此亦是因與果之關係。

世人未知此事，或未加以重視，而常常受苦於其中。

故世尊於演說此經時，在教誨中加強提醒大眾。

My Buddha is compassionate; to this day, these exhortations remain just as important.

The Universal Principle, the Truth, and the Right Way do not change due to the shifting of time and space,

and because the True Teachings are rare and difficult to encounter, they appear even more magnificent and precious.

Namo Amituofo