The Path of Repentance and the Rarity of True Spiritual Guidance

The Sacred Call to Repentance and Renewal

You must feel deep shame, repent, and change your ways. A true spiritual friend is difficult to encounter in this world. You must seize this opportunity with all your heart, for it is fleeting and can easily slip through your fingers like sand.

Who among us is without fault? There is no greater goodness than to recognise one's mistakes and correct them. Even when the ancestral masters return to this world to save beings, they must undergo many trials and tests before they can fully realise their true nature. Some manifest these challenges to demonstrate the reality of the laws of the world, teaching us how to face our obstacles, subdue our wandering minds, and finally perceive our original nature.

Others must face the negative karma they created in past lives. As this karma surfaces from the vast ocean of our past actions, we must face it with courage, feel deep shame, repent, and change our ways. Only then is it possible to succeed in our practice, wash away the dust of our defilements, and perceive our true nature. Only then can we truly wish to be reborn in the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss and have that wish fulfilled.

The Alchemy of the Heart: Changing One's Nature

True repenting is not merely a verbal acknowledgement. It is a profound realisation of the harm and suffering we have caused to other beings through our past negative karma. It requires a heart that is truly humble, modest, and respectful. True repenting means that you will never commit the same mistake again. You must make a firm, painful resolution to change; you cannot afford to be lenient with yourself.

What must you change? You must change your personality traits and your deep-seated habits. Because these negative habits have been accumulated over countless lifetimes, they have hardened into heavy karma. If you do not use great determination and perseverance, it is very difficult to change and avoid repeating the same errors. This is why people in the world often fall into the same traps, suffering in the prisons of worldly law, only to be released and commit the same crimes again. The cycle of rebirth is fair and impartial. Every cause you have planted will manifest as an effect; there is no escaping it. No one can bear the consequences of your actions for you.

Awakening from the Dream of Worldly Illusions

Although the laws of the world are all illusory, once they manifest before you, you must recognise them as illusions so that you can face them, stop them in time, and ensure you do not repeat them. Those who do not understand that these things are illusory can only suffer within the illusion, creating more negative actions. They remain trapped in the cycle of rebirth, suffering and repeating their mistakes. When will there ever be an end to this?

Once you encounter a true spiritual friend, you must cherish the causal conditions. Only a true spiritual friend can resolve your various doubts, break through your delusions, help you understand the laws of karma and cause and effect, and clarify the Truth. On the path of practice, as the Great Master Shandao said, the nine grades of rebirth in the four lands are all determined by the different conditions one encounters.

If you truly understand the suffering of the cycle of rebirth, truly understand that a true spiritual friend is hard to find, and truly wish to escape this cycle and be reborn in the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, then once you meet such a teacher, you should hold on tightly and follow them to learn. There is no reason to leave easily. If someone leaves, it is because:

• They have not yet suffered enough to realise the urgency of their situation.
• They have not yet been nurtured or taught by the Buddha’s teachings.
• They do not yet understand that all phenomena are illusory and that awakened being is the only truth.

The Radiant Presence of Namo Amituofo

Everything follows its own causal conditions. Each person must resolve their own karma. You have your own karmic creditors and obstacles to overcome. Did the disciples not overcome countless difficulties to establish the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre? That Namo Amituofo is truly residing here in this world is an event difficult to encounter in millions of years. Just like the matter of rebirth in the Western Pure Land, if one does not possess sufficient good roots, blessings, and causal conditions, it is difficult to live here together and accomplish the great task of rebirth.

This recent invitation to spirits was also a test. In this life, on the path of practice, are we not all formed by the gathering and scattering of various causal conditions? What kind of connection can last forever? None! When we meet, what do we leave behind for each other? Or do we simply pass by? This, too, is a matter of causal conditions—whether the connection is deep or shallow, and when we might meet again. When we meet again, what will it be like? That, too, is a matter of causal conditions. Let us follow these conditions!

Whether we meet again or part ways now, perhaps not to see each other until the next life, it is all determined by our connections. Do your best. Everything you do is for the sake of all beings, and all beings know this. If the ray of hope—the Buddha-light—appears, those who know should seize it to leave suffering behind, escape the six realms of existence, and no longer suffer, but instead enjoy ultimate bliss. Those who do not know and choose to leave have, at the very least, been touched by the Buddha-light. Every being they encounter is connected by karmic affinity; one day, when they meet any of these disciples, they will have the chance to be saved. It is just that they will have to endure more suffering in the meantime. Why choose such a path? It is their destiny, and it is the result of turning within the cycle of rebirth. Yet, Namo Amituofo stands waiting for the moment of their return.

Lessons from the Path of Compassionate Deliverance

Through this recent invitation to spirits, what have the disciples learned from the physical pain they endured?

• You have deeply experienced the physical suffering you felt, yet this was not even one-ten-thousandth of the suffering the spirits were enduring at that time.
• You have realised that you have created such heavy negative karma without even knowing it, and it was precisely because of your ignorance that you created such profound harm.
• You have realised that not knowing how to repent, and offering only superficial, verbal repenting, is hypocritical and false. Only by truly changing your ways and transforming your personality can you be said to have truly repented.
• You have realised that in previous invitations to spirits, you were protected by the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Practitioner Su. Otherwise, how could the spirits have been so easily persuaded to leave?
• You have realised that it was because of your repeated failure to truly repent that you had to endure such pain this time.
• You have realised that you must understand and empathise with the karmic suffering of all beings, and you should make a deep vow to follow the Buddha-vow in all your actions.

Human life is difficult to obtain, and you have obtained it. The Buddha’s teachings are difficult to hear, and you have heard them. The Pure Land is difficult to encounter, and you have encountered it. This is a truth that remains unchanged throughout the ages. Today, at the Hsiang Kuang Pure Land Buddhist Centre, Namo Amituofo is truly residing here. What was once unheard of, you have now heard! Those who have the karmic affinity, please enter. Namo Amituofo!

Recorded by the Buddha's disciple, Venerable HaiZe.