Talk given by Dharma Master Heng Yin in Gold Sage Monastery

We just heard the Ven. Master talk about demons in the world that are spreading poison through the chemicals in all the products we use that end up causing cancer and other diseases. Climate change is becoming increasingly severe, and people are becoming increasily addicted to computers, which are also demonic. The Master spoke of this decades ago, and now we see the phenomena he described more and more clearly. Climate change is pretty much indisputable in California; we have wild fires every summer. There are five times as many fires on our public lands as in 1970. Recently people are also addicted to the Pokemon Go game, in which they catch virtual monsters in real space. The monsters might be in the middle of the street, in a river, in a monastery, or in a hospital. This can not only be dangerous, but also disrespectful and distracting. We have people come into CTTB hunting for monsters.  A few days ago, I saw two boys looking at their cell phones right outside the Buddha Hall. I suspected they were playing Pokemon Go, but decided not to say anything because I thought, at least they could hear the Great Compassion Repentance and plant a good seed.

Now I want to talk about liberating life. As you know we have not been liberating life for the last few sessions in CTTB. There are concerns about how we’re not liberating native species, and that the animals that we liberate may not survive well in the environment. We are considering other ways to liberate life that will make people happy. However, at the same time, we realize there may be a conflict between the scientific view and the Buddhist view. Environmentalists want to protect the environment; usually they care more about preserving species rather than individual animals.  In Buddhism, we see every individual creature as possessing the Buddha-nature and worthy of being saved. Even if they die soon afterward because the environment is unsuitable, what’s important is that they have gone through the ceremony of liberating life. During the ceremony they get to hear the Great Compassion Mantra and the names of Amitabha Buddha and the seven Buddhas; repent of their offenses; hear Dharma teachings such as the twelve links of dependent arising; take refuge with the Three Jewels; make the four vast vows; and start on the Bodhisattva path or plant the seed to do so. A lot happens in the ceremony even if they may not consciously understand the language. We think that unconsciously they are planting a lot of good seeds; however, this will not be apparent to those who are not Buddhists.

The beings that have the opportunity to be liberated all have affinities with us, otherwise they would have not been chosen. The first time the Ven. Master liberated life in the US, he released 37 pigeons on the roof top in San Francisco. All of them flew away except for two. The Master said those two were very friendly and stayed with him; they would always be on his lap when he spoke Dharma. He would use them to illustrate the dharma of greed and the dharma of being an animal. He said that these were his disciples from the Tang dynasty. In a similar case, the former Dharma Master Tso remembers that when the Master brought American disciples back to Hong Kong, they had a liberating life ceremony and he was the wei nuo (cantor). When he glanced back at the Ven. Master who was standing next to the cage of little birds used in Chinese cooking, the Master was shedding tears. Despite shedding tears, the Master was not at all emotional. He was very calm. DM Tso was very surprised and asked the Master what had happened later. The Master told him that his tears were from recognizing that these birds had been his disciples in the past and had now become birds.

In another case, during the drought in the 70’s, the Master asked a disciple to bring him to a park. So the  disciple took the Master along with his own daughter to a lake in the Golden Gate Park. The Master had brought some bread. As soon as the Master started reciting the Great Compassion Mantra and feeding the bread, a ton of birds came and landed all over the three of them. There were gulls, loons, and ducks, all kinds of birds, and they ate up all the bread in 20 minutes. Then the next day they came and did the same thing. So the disciple thought this was normal. Later on he went by himself to see the birds. Only a few birds showed up, and they stayed very far away from him. Only then did he realize that it was because of the Master’s virtue and perhaps his upholding the precept of not killing that the birds flew so close to him.

There is another story also about liberating pigeons at CTTB. Ernie Waugh, an old disciple, remembers that he was in charge of opening the cages. When he did so, the birds all flew towards the west, but all of sudden some 25 birds turned back. They all flew back and tried to land on the Master’s shoulders, head, and body. Of course there wasn’t enough room, so they kept falling off and getting back on and trying to squeeze in. This happened for what must have been several minutes but seemed like forever, then they all left again. The Master just stood there without any expression on his face. Ernie thought to himself, but I’m the one who opened the cages, and So-and-so is the one that bought the birds from Chinatown, how come they didn’t come to us? He concluded that Venerable Master’s cultivation and his vows have something to do with it.

Another time, after the Master had passed on, we released chuckers on the lawn outside the Patriarch Hall. All the rest of the chuckers skittered away, but one of them flew into the Patriarch Hall, into the upturned palms of the Venerable Master’s statue, and stayed there for quite a while as if talking to him. In light of all these examples, I think the ceremony and the Master’s vows have their power. People have proposed that we support other sanctuaries and animal rescue organizations financially. That’s all fine but, it’s also important for the animals to go through the ceremony in the Buddha Hall or else have some Dharma Masters go to where they are to hold the ceremony.

Recently we reached out to local sanctuaries to see if we could go there to do our ceremony, and they welcomed us. They were also willing to bring some animals to CTTB. The local animal shelter euthanizes around 200 animals per year because they are either medically untreatable or untrainable. But we found out that if we can support their training funds, some aggressive dogs can be trained to be docile enough to be adopted rather than killed. At the same time we will try to improve our traditional liberation of birds that were doomed to be killed and cooked. We will try to let them gradually acclimate to the new environment, because they probably lived in small cages all their life so they don’t know how to fly very far and find food.

This time I went to Taiwan for two months and participated in six liberating life ceremonies while I was there. Whenever they want to convert a fish farm into some other use, they poison all the fish, so we rescue and release those fish. We also released many wild animals trapped and sold by the aborigines. It’s wonderful to see the attitude that the nuns and the lay people have towards protecting animals, even those as fragile as a cicada, worm, or tadpole. Whenever any rescued or injured animals come to the monastery, the nuns hold a liberating life ceremony for them.