Ultimate Trial

Yutang Lin

To examine whether Dharma practices are solid, consider the ultimate trial.
Time, circumstances and manner of death are all beyond one’s ability to set.
Considerations and contrivances become completely useless and ineffectual.
Only the balance of life-long merits and karmic debts shapes one’s next life.

Comments:

To consolidate one’s Dharma practices, one should examine them in the light of the moment of death. Time, circumstances and manner of death are all beyond one’s control. Thoughts and intentions all become ineffectual. Only merits and karmic debts accumulated in life lead one to the next life. Seeing thus, to practice in a solid manner one should not care about appearances. Genuinely set one’s mind on Bodhi, and wholeheartedly devote one’s life to Dharma. Whatever extend you gave yourself to Dharma will yield the same extend of Dharma fruit for you. Forget about considerations of personal relations, sustain only compassion.

Written in Chinese and translated on January 17, 2007
El Cerrito, California

---

[Home][Back to list][Back to Chinese versions]