Reflections on This Human Journey

Recorded and transcribed by Namo Amituofo’s disciple, Venerable HaiZe.

On this day, the fourth of July, 2025, during the midday offering, Teacher Practitioner Xia Lianju provided these essential teachings regarding our journey through the human world.

The Fleeting Nature of Our Past

Reflecting upon this current journey through the human world, one must realise that regardless of your age, the experiences you have gathered are merely a chapter in the long history of your spirit. The actions you took in the world were once a significant part of your life, yet they have now become the past. At the time, those events felt so incredibly real, yet today they no longer exist. Even if some remnants remain, they are no longer as they once were. All these changes are simply a manifestation of impermanence.

If you were to say that the past is like a dream—a fleeting illusion that has already passed—you would be speaking the absolute truth. The life of the spirit is a continuous thread, woven together by countless cycles of birth and death. The past of this current life has shaped who you are today, and it is precisely this history that has brought you to the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre.

Finding Purpose in the Present

Therefore, no matter what your past may have been, you should fill your heart with gratitude and joy. If it were not for that past, you would not be here at the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre today, engaging in this precious practice. Here, you are able to use this True Cultivation to nurture your compassion and Wisdom (Prajna). You are learning to distinguish between what is illusory and what is real. Through the process of thoroughly changing your personality traits, you learn to "see through" and "let go", ultimately finding your way back to your true, original nature.

The Mission of the Practitioner

The most vital task in this lifetime is to save yourself and to save all beings. This begins with the karmic creditors residing within your own body. It is of the utmost importance that you help them to chant Buddha's name and achieve rebirth in the Western Pure Land, so that they may never again enter the cycle of rebirth. In the days before you arrived here, your life may have been spent in a cycle of seeking balance with those you owe, repaying kindness or settling grievances, and enduring the suffering of ageing and illness.

The Path to Eternal Peace

Now, however, the time you spend at the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre is dedicated to purification, dissolving your karma, transforming your karmic path, and achieving Awakening. You are reclaiming your original self. You are moving toward a state where there is no more ageing or illness, for the spirit never dies. Your goal is to save yourself and to save all beings, guiding them all into the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss.

Because you have entered the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre, and under the patient guidance and care of Amitabha Buddha, your Teacher, and Practitioner Su, you have been able to hear of many inconceivable truths. You have begun to see the helplessness of spirits and the profound suffering they endure when they cannot take charge of their own destiny. Having seen this, you should understand even more deeply how precious this human body and this opportunity for practice truly are.

Namo Amituofo