DHARMA DEATH REVELATIONS
WELCOME TO DYING DHARMA
IN SLOW CONSTRUCTION
This page is in slow construction because it brings no delight to talk about Dharma that is dying.
Dharma is natural, Dharma is Boundless and Eternal Dao, so how can it die?
Dharma can't die. It's like that question about the lily pond which asks:
"If a lily pond is halved each day, how long will it be before it disappears?"
The answer is that it disappears when it is no longer perceived, when it is no longer available to the human mind. Yet it cannot ever be destroyed.
So really the title should be welcome to disappearing Dharma and the critical question is how long will it be before it disappears from the human mind as a potential gate to freedom?
Indeed, Dharma cannot die, but the devolution of the Buddha Nature nakes certain that it will disappear from human consciousness. You, of course, are the problem.
THE DEVOLUTION OF THE BUDDHA NATURE
ARE WE AT THE POINT OF NO RETURN?
Guishan, who lived between 771 and 854, declared:
"Our regret is that we were all born in an era of imitation.
The age of the saints is distant, and Buddhism is decadent. Most people are lazy."
MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND YEARS AGO BUDDHISM WAS DECADENT
Do you really believe that modern Buddhism has improved that condition?
Do you believe that all the Buddhist rhetoric, the presentation of Buddhism in chitchats, blogs and webs, make the Dharma more present and acceptable in our lives?
Does the appearance of wonderful empty words within the religious Dharma world regarding Compassion bring a rebirth?
Do you believe that the fact that intelligent adepts can pronounce the words "empty", "the void", "no-self", "impermanence" and more means that there is more understanding?
Most of the people who come to this web page dart in and out like a viper's tongue. What have they captured? Is it Buddha Dharma?
If you have managed to read this far then you are probaby already considering reading no more.
"Most people are lazy", and others don't want to hear what is disagreeable. Others simply do not believe what I am now relating. I feel most of the time like "Chicken Little". Nobody will believe that the sky is falling.
But the ancient Chinese knew, even then, that there was a great decline.
Fayan, who lived between 885-958, declared :
"People of recent times take a lot lightly. They may enter communes, but they are lazy about pursuing intense inquiry. Even if they develop concentration, they do not select a true master; through the mistakes of false teachers, like them they lose direction to the ultimate.
They have not understood thet faculties and fields of sense, so they have false understandings that leads them into deluded states, where they lose the true basis completely."
THE PROFOUND AND THE SHALLOW
He also declared :
"The outflow of the original streams (and he does not use the idea of lineage) cannot be recorded in full.
"When it got to Deshan, Caoshan and Dongshan, Xuefeng, Yunmen, and so on, each model had established devices, with higher and lower graduation.
"But when it came to continuation, their descendants maintained sects and factionalized their ancestry. Not basing themselves on reality, eventually they produced many sidetracks, contradicting and clashing with one another, so that the profound and the shallow became indistinguishable."
Can you see that if the profound and shallow were so indistinguishable in that century, when great masters were available, how distorted the profound must be more than a thousand years later?
Surely you can see that you must really dedicate yourself to unravelling this knot with great diligence and not fiddle while the Dharma burns?
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
NOD AND GO ON AS YOU WERE?
"In recent generations, Chan teachers have lost the base and students have no guidance. They match wits and take what is ephemeral for an attainment."
"Concerned only with hurriedly striving for leadership, they are falsely called teachers; while they value an empty reputation in the world, how can they consider the fact that they are bringing ill upon themselves? Not only do they deafen and blind people of recent times, but they also cause the curent teaching to degenerate.
"Having climbed to the high and wide seat of a spiritual master, instead they lie on iron beadsteads."
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS BEING SAID HERE BY FAYAN?
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
NOD AND GO ON AS YOU WERE?
If you are not convinced read what Yunmen, who died in 949, declared:
"If there are some of you who have mislearned a lot, memorizing all manners of speech, seeking similar sayings wherever you go for the approval of the elder residents, slighting the high-minded, acting in ways that spiritually impoverish you, then do not say, when death comes knocking on your door, that no one told you."
and Linji, who died in 866, declared of students in his day:
"Students today do not know the truth at all. They are like goats nosing around taking all they can find into their mouth. They cannot distinguish the servant from the master, the guest from the host. People like this enter the path with the wrong attitude, they cannot enter into clamourous situations, yet they call themselves renunciants. Yet they are really worldlings."
Most who delve into Buddha Dharma today, more than a thousand years later, are goats with their forelegs tied together with the rope of cognition, so that they cannot eat the fruit of the Dharma tree.
Be honest, are you such a goat? Are you happy living with this self-deception? Well, changes are possible, but only you can take the necessary first true steps to liberation.
If you still haven't captured the idea except with your intelligent mind then perhaps you require a more direct set of teachings. If so, then read: