Teachings of the Mentor
Author: Fafu
Translator : Lotus
Not Contemplating Other’s Fault
All sentient beings have faults. Will they still be called sentient beings if they have no fault? If you want to contemplate their faults, you’ll never finish it because there are so many sentient beings and each of them has so many faults, then you’ll be tired to death during your whole life. On the other hand, you will absorb their faults easily if you contemplate their faults, in the same way that you will easily obtain the buddhas’ merits and virtues if you contemplate them. Now if you contemplate the sentient beings’ faults, you’ll obtain their faults easily. Do you want to receive the good consequence or the bad one in the end? Why will a person replicate others’ faults and receive those evil results if he wants to have good results? Why shall we reproduce others’ faults? Why shall we lick others’ excrement?
Why do I make it sound so serious? Because this is a mistake we often make and I regard it as stool. Why we call it stool? Because the trash, produced from a person’s bowel and bound to be thrown away, is excrement. A person’s fault is just like excrement. Why are you sure to put it in your mouth, lick it, chew it, even swallow and digest it and then receive its evil results in yourself? What’s the reason for this? People should receive his own bad consequence no matter who he is. He will never reduce his bad consequence even if you receive the bad result because you replicate it. After you replicate it, you will receive the same amount of bad result as him. He will still receive his own. It doesn’t mean that when you replicate his fault, he will not receive its bad result. Why shall you replicate it and make it produce one more? Therefore, all of these behaviors are called practice with ignorance and without wisdom, namely we spend the power of our merits and virtues in our true self buying the suffering result.
We should be really endowed with the prudence in our minds, speech and bodies, or we will be bound to be finished. Although we always consider how to attain merits and virtues in ourselves, what we do now is really beneficial to us, or we still contemplate and add sufferings to ourselves all the time? In fact, we should know that each of us has many unique sufferings in ourselves and they are enough for us to endure. Why shall we often add our sufferings? Now each of us should figure out whether we have put others’ fault in our minds and then add our sufferings? If we have done this, do you think it worthy?
I repent deeply all my sins in all times and places and I do it on behalf of all sentient beings because of our ignorant and false practices. We are often endowed with self-aspiration and showing off our merits and virtues intently or not so that we sold them out. We have also replicated and put others’ faults in our minds so that we have increased our sufferings and made us almost finished.
I vow that all sentient beings will regard our mentor as the Buddha and never have self-praise and contemplate others’ faults, on the contrary, they will pant the good root of recognizing others and only contemplate others’ merits and virtues. I am making this vow become one part of myself through undisturbed and dedicated thought in my mind with great joyful faith and the persistent and courageous power and then will make it become wisdom within myself and fit the roots of all beings. I will rescue all sentient beings with this wisdom and countless kindness, compassion, joy and giving.
