ON CHI

Just finished reading the Falun Dafa and found the BUDDHA LAW very similar to the HT stuff but more advance.

Here’s the section and more will follow the next cupla days as we study together.

Comments and opinions on the DAFA are welcome.

Peace out!!

AARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Law in Buddhism is only a small part of the Buddha Law. There are a lot of other profound Great Law practices, and every level has a different Law. Shakyamuni said that there are 84,000 cultivation disciplines. And how many disciplines are there in Buddhism? It has just a few, like the Tendai sect, Huayan sect, Zen sect, Pure Land, and the Esoteric sect. They don’t even add up to a fraction of it! So it can’t cover the entire Buddha Law, it’s just a small part of Buddha Law. Our Falun Dafa is also one of the 84,000 disciplines, but it’s never been related to Buddhism, from the original Buddhism right on up to the one in the Age of the Law’s End. And it doesn’t have anything to do with today’s religions.

Buddhism was founded 2,500 years ago by Shakyamuni in ancient India. At that time, after Shakyamuni had Unlocked and Enlightened, he recalled what he had cultivated before, and he spread it to save people. In his discipline, no matter how many tens of thousands of sutras have been written, there are actually just three words, “Precept, Concentration, Wisdom,” and these are the features of his discipline. “Precept” was about making a person get rid of all the desires ordinary people have, forcefully making him do away with his desire to get things, cutting himself off from everything in the secular world, and so on. So he would free himself of all attachments, there was even nothing in his mind, and naturally he could enter into concentration. They complement each other. After he’d entered into concentration, he would need to sit in meditation and really do cultivation, and cultivate upwards relying on his power of concentration. So this is the true cultivation part of that discipline. They don’t teach anything related to techniques, and they don’t transform their innate bodies—they only cultivate the gong that determines levels. So he would single-mindedly cultivate his character, since a person who doesn’t cultivate longevity doesn’t care much about evolving gong. At the same time, while he was in concentration he would strengthen his power of concentration, endure hardships in meditation, and shed his karma. “Wisdom” refers to Enlightenment, and coming to have great wisdom. He would see the Truth of the universe, see the reality of every dimension in the universe, his great divine powers would be majestically displayed, and his Wisdom and Enlightenment would be unlocked, which is also called being “Unlocked.”

There were eight religions spreading in India back when Shakyamuni founded his discipline. One of them was deep-rooted, and called Brahmanism. When Shakyamuni was alive he constantly battled on philosophical points with other religions. What Shakyamuni taught was a true teaching, so in the course of teaching his Law, the Buddha Law he taught flourished more and more, while other religions became weaker and weaker. Even that deep-rooted Brahmanism was on the brink of extinction. But after Shakyamuni’s Nirvana other religions started to thrive again, especially Brahmanism. Then what happened with Buddhism? Some monks became Unlocked, or Enlightened, at different levels, but the levels they reached were pretty low. Shakyamuni reached the Tathagata level but a lot of monks didn’t.

Buddha Law has different manifestations at different levels, but the higher it is, the closer it is to the Truth, and the lower it is, the further it is from the Truth. So after those monks became Unlocked and Enlightened at low levels, they interpreted what Shakyamuni had said with the manifestations of the universe that they saw at their levels, with the situations that they had learned about, and with the truths that they had comprehended. In other words, the monks interpreted the Law that Shakyamuni taught just about every which way, and there were also some monks who spoke about what they comprehended as if that was Shakyamuni’s words, instead of telling people Shakyamuni’s original words. As a result, the Buddha Law was altered beyond recognition, and it was no longer the Law Shakyamuni had preached. Eventually this caused the Buddha Law that’s in Buddhism to disappear in India. This is a major lesson from history, and that’s why later on you don’t see Buddhism in India, of all places. Before it vanished, Buddhism went through a number of reforms, and in the end it incorporated things from Brahmanism and formed a religion that’s found in India today, called Hinduism. It no longer worships any Buddhas, it worships some other things instead, and it no longer believes in Shakyamuni. That’s how it is now.

As Buddhism developed it went through several fairly big reforms. One took place soon after Shakyamuni passed away, at which point some people founded Mahayana, or “Greater Vehicle,” Buddhism based on the high-level truths Shakyamuni had taught. They believed that the Law Shakyamuni taught in public was for ordinary people, that it was for people to attain self-salvation and achieve Arhat Fruition, and that it didn’t talk about saving all sentient beings, so they called that Hinayana, or “Lesser Vehicle,” Buddhism. And monks in Southeast Asia have kept the original way of cultivation from Shakyamuni’s time, and in our Han region we call it Hinayana. Of course, they don’t see it that way—they believe they’ve inherited Shakyamuni’s original things. And it turns out they’re right, they have inherited the cultivation methods from Shakyamuni’s time, for the most part.

After this reformed Mahayana was introduced to China, it established itself in our country and became the Buddhism that’s now spread in our country. But it’s in fact totally different from the Buddhism of Shakyamuni’s time, from their dress all the way to the whole state of Enlightenment and the cultivation process, it’s all changed. The original Buddhism only worshipped Shakyamuni as its venerable forefather, but in today’s Buddhism there are lots of Buddhas, Great Bodhisattvas, and so on. What’s more, it’s become a faith that worships multiple Buddhas—people believe in many Tathagatas. So it’s become a Buddhism that worships multiple Buddhas, like Buddha Amitabha, Bhaishajyaguru, Buddha Vairochana, and so on, and then there are a lot of Great Bodhisattvas, too. So all of Buddhism is totally different now from what Shakyamuni originally founded back in his day.

During that time period a series of reforms took place. Bodhisattva Nagarjuna imparted a secret cultivation method, which went from India to Afghanistan, and then entered our Xinjiang region and spread to the Han region. It happened to be during the Tang Dynasty, so people called it Tang Tantrism. Confucianism has had a huge influence on China, so our moral values are different from those of other nationalities. The Tantric cultivation method includes male-female dual cultivation, which is something society couldn’t accept at that time. So it was wiped out during the Hui Chang period of the Tang Dynasty when Buddhism was suppressed, and Tang Tantrism disappeared from our Han region. In Japan there’s Eastern Tantrism now, which they learned from China back then, but they didn’t go through anointment, and according to Tantrism, anyone who learns Tantrism’s things without going through anointment is said to be stealing their Law, and they won’t recognize him as somebody who’s been taught by the master himself. Another branch went from India through Nepal to Tibet, it’s called Tibetan Tantrism, and it’s been passed down up until today. That’s pretty much how things have gone with Buddhism. So I’ve given you a really brief and general sense of how it has developed and evolved. At different points during Buddhism’s development some other disciplines have come along, such as the Zen sect, which Bodhidharma founded, the Pure Land sect, the Huayan sect, and so on, and they were all based on an interpretation and understanding of what Shakyamuni taught back in his time. So these are all part of reformed Buddhism, too. Buddhism has a dozen or so disciplines, and all of them have taken on the form of religions, so they’re part of Buddhism.

Now the religions that were created in this century, or not just this century, a lot of new religions around the world were created in the past few centuries, most of them are fake. When Great Enlightened Beings save people they have their own heavenly kingdoms. When Tathagatas like Shakyamuni, Buddha Amitabha, and Buddha Vairochana save people they each have a world that they preside over. There are over 100 of these worlds in this Milky Way system of ours, and our Falun Dafa has a Falun World.
So tell me, where do those fake disciplines take people to when they “save” them? They can’t save people. What they teach isn’t Law. Of course, when some people first founded their own religions they didn’t want to be demons that damage the original religions. They became Unlocked and Enlightened at different levels, and saw some of the truth, but they were far from being Enlightened Beings who can save people. Their levels were very low. They discovered some of the truth, and they realized that some of the things ordinary people believe in are wrong, and they told people how to do good things. They didn’t oppose other religions at first. But over time people came to believe in them and became devoted to them, and people thought that what they said made sense, and later they put more and more faith in them. So people became devoted to them and stopped being devoted to religions. Once their attachments to fame and profit sprung up, they would ask the public to give them a title, and from then on they’d operate under the name of that new religion. I’m telling you, those are all evil religions. Even if they don’t harm people, they’re still evil religions, since they’ve interfered with people’s faith in the original religions. The original religions can save people, but those ones can’t. And as time goes by they do bad things on the sly. A lot of things like that have spread over here to our China recently, like the so-called Guanyin sect, which is one of them. So make sure you watch out. They say that in one country in East Asia there are over 2,000 of them. In Southeast Asia and in some Western countries there are all kinds of things that people believe in. One country even goes so far as to openly have witchcraft. Those things are all demons that have showed up in the Age of the Law’s End. “Age of the Law’s End” doesn’t only refer to Buddhism—a lot of dimensions from a very high level on down have gone bad. And “Law’s End” doesn’t just have to do with the end of Law in Buddhism—it’s about how the world goes when it doesn’t have the restraint of the Law in people’s hearts to sustain morality.
Quoted from Falun Dafa book.