PureInsight | August 13, 2001
One day I went to the Banzo Temple by myself. The gatekeeper said, “Come back tomorrow. The 18th day of the 6th Lunar month is the Consummation Day of the Goddess of Mercy. There will be cerebration gatherings for three days. Don’t forget to come early!”
The next morning it was raining at first. Then the sky became clear and the sun was shining all over the region. What a nice day! I arrived at the Temple’s gate by 7:30 a.m. Many nuns and lay Buddhists were already let in. As I was entering the Temple, the gatekeeper stopped me for a Conversion Certificate. I had no idea what he meant by “Conversion”, not to mention a Certificate of it. He would not let me pass through. More and more anxiety built up inside me as my persuasion and arguments were in vain again and again. I had to step aside but I was unwilling to go away yet. At that moment, some nice lady entering the Temple noticed my embarrassing situation and asked “Are you having any problem getting in?” After my explanation, she said to the gatekeeper “Yesterday you told her to come back today. She must have some predestined relationship with the Temple. Treat her as my associate and let her in.” With this help, I was allowed into the Temple.
Because I felt a desire to do so, I kneeled down and kowtowed to all the Buddha statues. After burning bundles of incense and donating some money, I started to leave, only to encounter the same nice lady. She said to me: “You seem to be a good person and to have a predestined relationship with Buddhism. Why don’t you convert here and now from a non-believer to a lay Buddhist. This is the Dharma-ending time. Don’t put it off and miss the Fa Boat for salvation. It’s no use to go to embrace Buddha’s foot at the very last minute of the eleventh hour.” So as urged and led by her, I walked with her in my semi-knowing mind state. She kept on saying, “There is a good master. He is very stern about cultivating righteously. You wait here and let me check if he’ll take you in as his student or not.” Ten minutes later she called me in and with her introduction I got accepted by a monk master. In fact, during this entire process I was totally confused and indecisive but could not utter a word to refuse. This was the way of my “conversion”.
Afterwards I sort of regretted it and got somewhat worried. I kept asking myself: “What’s going on? In a confused way I just became a lay Buddhist!” Thus, with this kind of doubt, my very first question to my monk master was “Is it superstition to believe in Buddha?”
The monk master appeared to be serious and had a determined face. Lost in thought for a while, he sighed and replied “One should be more concerned about atheism than superstition. It’s a pity that people don’t know why they were born into this earthy world.” Then he told me a story that sounds like a myth as follows.
Before World War II, when Japan was already invading the northeastern part of China, many Japanese personnel in China were lay Buddhists. They would come to the Temple once in a while for social as well as business gatherings. So the Communist Eighth Army sent two young men aged 17 or 18 to the temple to be monks in name but spies in reality. Due to the daily routines of studying the scriptures, meditating, and worshiping the Buddhas through many years, those two fake monks gradually became true sincere believers in Buddhism. At the end of WWII, on the eve of the Japanese surrender, somehow the secret of those two young monks was exposed and they were arrested by the Japanese Army present there. The two monks were detained in the Temple Library in the basement, waiting to be executed the next morning. The temple was under the tight control of Japanese soldiers. There was absolutely no way for those two poor monks to get out of their tragic situation. In this desperate emergency, with their strong wish to survive, those two monks prayed wholeheartedly to Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (the Goddess of Mercy) for help. They murmured, “We are terribly sorry to have come into the temple with bad intentions. But now you see we are real monks. PLEASE, Your Mercy Highness, please HELP us!”
In the pitch-black night at the Temple, wild fierce winds suddenly came. Doors got knocked open one by one automatically so that the two prisoner monks had a chance to escape. Then they ran into the high outer wall of the temple. As the two runaway monks were at loss about what to do, something like a tornado touched down near them and the powerful wind carried them upward to the sky and threw them over the temple wall but safe and sound.
This is not a fabricated story. Those two monks finally got back to their original Communist organization. One of them later became a Deputy Governor of a certain province in China after the communists took power in 1949. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), this man could not stand temples being destroyed and monks being persecuted; so he went to appeal in Beijing with his own story, trying to persuade the top-level leaders not to mess with religions. At that period of time, no one would listen to him. He was even labeled a Betrayer of the Cultural Revolution. Being furious and feeling sad, he suffered heart attacks and was carried back to his hometown from the national capital. Soon afterward he passed away with sorrow at the injustice. When the Cultural Revolution was over, the Banzo Temple held memorial service and rituals for him so as to free his soul from misery.
I vividly remember this story till today. It made me understand that believing in Buddha is not a superstition. Believing in atheism or some other warped concept is terrible and should be a serious concern. The existence of Buddhas, Daos, and Gods is there no matter whether you believe it or not. As an atheist, he or she will struggle and fight for fame or gain with all means to serve the end and without any fear of being punished by any deity. This is the worst “superstition”. Just to fulfill one’s selfish and greedy purpose, one dares to do anything bad or wrong as if out of control. Actually in such a case, he or she is destroying himself or herself without knowing it.
(To be continued)
Translated from an edited version of:
http://www.zhengjian.org/sci/sci/home1/10252_p.html
