Trần Đình Quang, A Moment of Reflection on the Birthday of the Founder Grand Master Dasira Narada, Mississauga

October 24th is a sacred and most important day for the discipline of UHBE for it is the birthday of the Founder Grand Master Dasira Narada. He brought to life the teaching of ‘Divine Dharma Meditation’. This is a profound dharma of spiritual science that guides practitioners towards practicing meditation and spiritual cultivation to purify their body and mind, and leading a life of altruistic service. As we endeavour to follow the teachings of Divine Dharma Meditation, we recognize that the more we dedicate ourselves to help others, the better chance we can learn many precious lessons of life, the better chance we gain true awakening from our own practical experiences. Eventually, we come to the discernment that the ultimate goal of spiritual cultivation is to liberate ourselves from all sufferings while we are still living in this physical world of karma and afflictions.

In honour of this special day, may we all express our deepest respect and gratitude to our beloved teachers, Thay Thuan and Co Hai, who have the mission to convey the teachings of the Founder Grand Master to the world. Thay and Co guide disciples to develop a virtuous foundation, build virtue and merits, and neutralize negative karmas. Thay and Co explain to us clearly the true meaning of a spiritual life and how to lead our life in the best possible meaningful way. When we practice meditation and contemplate on their teachings we become more conscious about the evolution of our soul. Gradually, we aim to detach ourselves from selfish desire and personal ways of thinking. Instead, we try our very best to lead our life through the path of spiritual cultivation and altruistic service, because we have realized that this is the one and only primordial avenue to ascend on the journey of evolution.

Today is such a happy occasion because we have a chance to see almost all other UHBE members in our area. Especially, we can see those who haven’t been able to come to the center on a regular basis because of family responsibility or work situation. However, every year on October 24th these members always come to the center to celebrate the birthday of the Grand Master Dasira Narada. The glowing in their eyes and the beautiful smile on their faces suggest that their hearts are always with the Grand Master. The seeds of Love in their hearts are still latent, and awaiting for a chance to manifest. May the Grand Master bless us all so that with time, all of our good seeds will blossom into flowers of compassion and wisdom.

On this special day, we have an opportunity to listen to the biography of the Founder Grand Master, His poem “The Truth”, and the teachings of Thay Thuan and Co Hai. These are the invaluable spiritual presents. They are so precious to UHBE members because they reflect many aspects of the Truth, and they contain many moral principles and spiritual philosophies which are essential for our cultivation. Therefore, we should study and apply these teachings to our daily activities of life as well as our spiritual practice so that we can all ascend successfully on the path of cultivation. Otherwise, the underlying meaning of the Founder Grand Master’s dharma which Thay Thuan and Co Hai have meditated on, contemplated on and conveyed to us in their teachings will eventually vanish with time.

I myself have read the biography of the Founder Grand Master many times. It is such a wonderful feeling when listening to it again in His birth day, the phase “after eighteen years of self cultivation the Founder Grand Master attained illumination” has made me think deeply. I ask myself this question: The lifetime of a human being is not that long; can a person attain illumination after just eighteen years of cultivation? This suggests that the Founder Grand Master had cultivated himself for many, many lifetimes, seeking for a path that can help humankind be free from the endless transmigrations in suffering. It is His wisdom and merit that we always honour and forever remember in our hearts. His extraordinary Divine Dharma Meditation reflects His own cultivation experience and practical realization of many lifetimes. His teachings of Truth are what UHBE disciples are learning through the dedicated guidance of Thay and Co.

The poem “The Truth” is an invaluable spiritual gift that the Founder Grand Master has given to all of humankind. This poem is a spiritual map that clearly shows us the path towards awakening and achieving liberation. Listening with heart we can see that every sentence reflects a real life circumstance or a true life experience. These are true words of wisdom that shows us many aspects of the Truth. He began the poem with these two sentences, “Only in water can a vessel move forward. A true religion can only flourish in life”. Here, He teaches us about the significance and meaning of leading a ‘dual paths of life’, as UHBE disciples, we try to fulfill the responsibilities for our ordinary life. At the same time, we try to accomplish the goals of our spiritual cultivation. In other words, spiritual life is as important as normal life; and we must cultivate both. Therefore, cultivation does not mean that we have to isolate ourselves from the rest of the society or the surrounding. In fact, every real life circumstance provides necessary lessons for us to achieve true awakening, and to build a solid foundation for our spiritual ascending. Then, the Founder Grand Master teaches us the tests of challenge that a cultivator must encounter along the path. He said “When you make it a point to cultivate yourself, be courageous. And weave yourself along to ride the rough tide.... A self-cultivator realizes that life is full of contradictions... You keep delving into the matter to approach the golden rule...”. As we can see, on the path of cultivation, we have to face many difficulties and obstacles. The road is rough and thorny but with strong will and compassionate heart we will receive many blessed rewards beyond imagination. And finally, our ultimate mission is to “Love humanity as we would love ourself, Try to lead humanity in the right direction”. The Founder Grand Master teaches us that all living beings, including ourselves, originated from the same Source; and only the vessel of Love can take us back to our Original Home of Oneness.

The Founder Grand Master has given us the poem The Truth, which is a map showing us the path towards liberation. However, without a guiding light, shining on the path, it would be difficult and almost impossible to reach the final destination; we will continually meander in darkness, and be lost in a sea of illusion. Every spiritual practitioner needs a spiritual light to guide them through the many patterns of rough tides in the sea of darkness so that they can finally reach the peaceful land of liberation. For UHBE members, this guiding light is the Founder Grand Master’s Dharma that has been explored in the teachings of Thay Thuan and Co Hai. These teachings contain deep and extraordinary meanings about morality and the Will of The Heaven. Thay and Co have dedicated their lives to the transmission of the extraordinary philosophies of the Founder Grand Master from the spiritual realm into practical human language so that everyone from all levels of evolution can understand and appreciate. Every year on the birthday of the Grand Master, Thay Thuan and Co Hai always send to us spiritual speeches that are di¬¬rectly applicable to the current moral and social circumstances so that disciples can study and apply these teachings to their daily life activities as well as their cultivation. Ultimately, we will be able to “recognize the truth and untruth of life and plan a meaningful path for our own life.” We should realize that the aim of the Founder Grand Master’s teachings is to awaken the divine essence within us. Co Hai often teaches us that “The Founder Grand Master has ignited the divine flame within us... We must protect and keep the light shining on all the way. Do not let it die out wasting a lifetime of evolution.”

This year, the lecture of Co Hai is about “The Love of the Supreme Being”. This Love is infinite without boundary. However, it all depends on each individual to feel and embrace this Love. For UHBE discipline, learning to love and care for others is the basic practice that helps us to develop the virtue of benevolence and to accumulate merits. When we open our hearts to help others, the Higher Beings will bless us with the ability to treat illness for others, and will we be able to transfer Cosmic Energy to heal others. When we treat others with caring and loving kindness, they will return to us with love and trust. This reflects the meaning of the ‘Law of Action and Reaction’ that Thay and Co have been teaching us. Once the recipients have trust on us, they will be ready to receive the energy of love with opened hearts and minds. They will not be hesitating to tell us about their pain as well as their struggles and feelings. As a result, we will understand the root causes of their physical sickness in term of their mental and emotional condition. Until then, we can help them more effectively using the method of “mind to mind transfence”. There is a regrettable situation whereby some of us often say, “Nothing is really wrong with Mr. A or Mrs. B, physically. However, he or she is having problems with their mind. If they want their illness be healed, they must change their minds and attitude”. As we have learned that most physical illnesses are rooted from an unhealthy state of mind. However, we should understand that if a person’s mind is not clear then how can he or she be wise enough to realize that they must transform their mind and attitude so that their illnesses can be healed effectively? Have we ever thought about the possibility that the invisible force of goodwill have guided them to the center so that we can have an opportunity to practice the teachings of the Grand Master to help our fellow beings by utilizing the method of “mind to mind transference”? Here, we must understand that “mind to mind transference” implies that we, ourselves, must first pray for the blessing of the Higher Beings then we transfer good advices to others in silence. There is no need for verbal expression. It is important for us to remember that we must first transform our mind to become better before we can help transform others. Thay Thuan is used to say: “In the past, when I said the right thing, nobody listened, when I said the wrong thing, others would oppose. Nowadays, when I say the right thing, everyone would listen. When I say in silence, others would listen even more”. True word is indeed voiceless.

As we are blessed by the Higher Beings to be the channels of love, we should realize that love can bring miraculous power. Let us observe a mother hen and her chicks playing in the back yard. When a dog comes nearby, the mother hen would immediately confront the dog bravely by expanding her wings to protect her chicks, and protruding her head forwards to challenge the viscous dog. In so doing, she has emitted some kind of energy which is so powerful that the dog has to retreat. As we can see, because of the sacred love for her chicks a chickened chicken utilizes the energy of love to protect her chicks from danger. By the same token, anyone of us should be able to explore this same sacred love which is so wonderfully power. The nature of this love is clearly stated in Co Hai‘s teaching “The Love of the Supreme Being permeates the universe, and exists everywhere in every breath of all beings”. True love is indeed boundless.

This year Thay Thuan’s lecture emphasizes on the invariable “Law of Karma or Cause and Effect”, which is planned by the Creator to maintain the ‘Balance and Fairness in the Universe’. Most people are familiar with this Law. At the very basis level, “Cause” is the root or the seed, “Effect” is the outcome or the fruit. Good seed will bring about happy outcomes or good harvest. Bad seed will result in unhappy outcomes or disappointing harvest. At the deeper level, whatever thoughts we create are planted deep in our sub-conscious part of the mind, the so call store-consciousness, as karmic seeds. One of the important functions of the subconscious mind is to register everything we have said or created. The subconscious mind is like the roll of film in a camera, the memory card of a computer, or the black box of an airplane. It records every single detail of our deeds. It exhibits a completed report of our histories throughout many, many lifetimes. Is it not true that these historical reports are the deciding factors for our fates? And we are all judged by the Law of Karma or Cause and Effect based on our own historical reports. Ultimately, “What we sow we shall reap”. Understanding the working principle of this Law, we no longer blame Heaven and Earth for our illnesses, misfortunes, or afflictions. On the other hand, we should become more conscious about our thoughts, words, and deeds. We should cultivate virtues to prevent ourselves from creating more negative karmas. We dedicate ourselves to serve humanity by striving to do good deeds in order to neutralize our own karmic debts due to past wrongdoings. At the same time, we learn to remain calm and unattached when seeing others in pain and troubles. Here, being unattached does not mean that we are insensitive towards the suffering of others. In fact, being unattached means that we detach our thinking from external chaos so that our minds are clear and collective to see the true nature of thing; and most importantly, to respect and endure the manifestation of the Law of Cause and Effect. Only when, will we be able to help others more effectively without being biased by our own personal ways of behavior and feeling. Let us meditate on, contemplate on, and dwell on the following teachings of Thay Thuan and Co Hai to discern the meaning in depth: “In Life, everything happens for a reason and has an underlying truth”. “All unfortunate events such as natural disasters, wars, sickness, poverty, and miseries… are lessons of conscience to awaken the minute souls”.

We are spiritual cultivators who follow the Founder Grand Master’s teachings of Divine Dharma Meditation. We are trying to develop our three attributes of “Conscience, Intellect and ability” into “Benevolence, Wisdom and Fortitude”. Fortitude implies courageous. Virtuous beings are used to say: One of the most courageous virtues that a cultivator must cultivate is to admit their own faults honestly, and correct them one by one accordingly. So, is it fair to say that each self-correction is a stepping-stone that leads us to a self-awakening, and each awakening is a mile stone on the path toward the wholeness of liberation? As human beings, we all make mistakes. Nonetheless, we often hide our own wrongdoings instead of displaying them out bravely, and strive to correct them earnestly. Let us consider wrongdoings are like dirty dishes. If we do not wash dirty dishes thoroughly but put them somewhere in the cupboard then in a few days molds and bacteria will grow disgustingly and smelly. Likewise, if we hide dirty thoughts or evil deeds in our minds, and let them register deep in our sub-consciousness as bad seeds, lifetimes after lifetimes, then what will happen to us? When the time is right these negative seeds will sprout out into terrible consequences; truly, these are chronic diseases! As we can see, the root causes of sufferings, afflictions, and even chronic illness are all created by our own past wrongdoings, and they are residing deep in the store-house of our own soul. Therefore, in order to eliminate our life problems we must turn inward to fix them from the root. We utilize the first aspect of ‘our spiritual I’, the true-self to control the second aspect of ‘our spiritual I’, the false-self. For the true-self is the protagonist or our positive aspect that encourages us to do good deeds, while the false-self is the antagonist or our negative aspect that always opposes our goodwill and leads us to the path of wrongdoings. Being ordinary human, we often have the tendency to look outwards, praising our own goodness, hiding our wicked thoughts and chasing after things that provide satisfaction for our personal gain and ambition. Unfortunately, all of these behaviors have driven us further away from our latent essence of divinity. The Founder Master teaches us that the path leading to liberation is the path of turning inward to rediscover our true-self. Only when we are looking inwardly, we can find out our own misconducts to self-correct them one by one. We employ the true-self to control the false-self. Until when the false-self is harmonizing into one with the true-self then there is no distinction or separation between true and false. Is it not true that this is the moment when we reach the state of oneness, the so call No-self or the ’Real I’, the One transcendental Divine-self, which is neither good nor bad. “Imagine…” all human beings can cultivate to this state of oneness then “nothing to kill or die for” and “the world will be as one”. The path towards the real is indeed internal, hence it is roadless.

So, is it fair to say that when we enter the path of cultivation, we must encounter the battles between the true-self and the false-self? And these battles are the action and reaction between the selves within us, as well as the action and reaction between the selves of us and the selves of others?

First, it is the action and reaction between our false-self and other’s false-self. Before we practice spiritual cultivation, we are ordinary human beings; hence, it is likely that we let our false-self to interact with others’ false-self at will. Now, we are spiritual cultivators, we must understand that if we let our false-self, which all of its egoism to interact with others’ egoism then negative outcome is unavoidable. Nonetheless, this usually happens naturally. In daily activities, we have seen small misunderstanding or disagreement between members and friends can cause so much pain and sorrow. It is even worst, when we do not control our false-self and let our minds be disturbed by others then for sure we cannot meditate well. Without having good mediation and deep contemplation, how can we develop wisdom to recognize the real and unreal aspects of life in order to cultivate ourselves properly? As a result, we have hindered our own evolution and the evolution of others as well.

Secondly, it is the action and reaction between the true-self and the false-self within us. However, some of us may consider that this is the reaction of our true-self in respond to others’ false-self. For example, when someone acts unethically towards us, which may cause us grief or angry, but the voice of our true-self tells us that we must practice the virtue of silence and endurance; hence, we must try to forgive and forget. This is the ethical thing to do; however, how many of us can actually do so, unless we have evolved to a level that we no longer are influenced by the Law of Action and Reaction. The ego in us, our false-self, which is a part of us, would never sit in silence without a fight. It will make us react unethically in respond to whatever unethical means that have acted on it. And it has its right to behave like so, for it just follows the Law of Action and Reaction. This is quite a dilemma isn’t it? Our true-self tells us to behave nicely, yet our false-self has its right to react egoistically. As a result, we are, actually, encountering the conflict between our own true and false selves due to the false-self of others. If we let the negative guy in us win the battle, then forever we remain to be ordinary persons trapped in endless cycles of suffering. If we can control and suppress our false-self with all of its egoism and negative behaviors then our positive guy wins the battle. Would this victory be one of the most meaningful milestones on the path towards liberation?

Thirdly, we let our true-self to interact with the true-self of others. This would only happen to those who have the same noble wishes for cultivation and liberation. It would be true happiness for those who can live in harmony with all other beings so that together everyone can all learn, cultivate, and ascend on the path towards wholeness.

True Word is voiceless

True Love is boundlessT

rue Path is roadless

And True Life is endless

On this special day, the birthday of our Founder Grand Master, I would like to share these thoughts and reflections with our dear UHBE members. I hope that we continually share our experiences and understanding of the teachings of the Founder Grand Master. May we all dedicate ourselves to follow the guidance of our teachers Thay and Co, and may we all cultivate virtue in harmony under the blessing and loving embrace of the Founder Grand Master Dasira Narada.