During the 80’s and 90’s, the teachings of the True Buddha
School (真佛宗)
swept the religious world like wild fire. Many centres were set up in US, Asia
and Europe. The predecessor of True Buddha School was the True Taoist Immortal
School (灵仙宗)
from Taiwan. There were many rumours about the swapping of the names of this
school and its founder has no less controversies. Basically the True Buddha
School advocates truncated and very crude forms of Tibetan Buddhism coupled
with Taoist practices yet surprisingly speaking; such theories and practices
were able to attract a large sum of followers. Of course the only winner may be
the grandmaster himself as he had bagged a fortune and lives comfortably in US
as I last heard.
My guru Rinpoche came to Malaysia in the late 80’s and
amongst some of his disciples were the followers of True Buddha School. The
Rinpoche is a Tibetan who follows the authentic Tibetan Buddhist education and
he did complaint a lot about these folks. During one of the Dharma talk, one of
the disciple; Bro Chan suddenly started to fall into trance which has caused
some commotion amongst the participants.
Bro Chan was (perhaps still is) ordinated as a guru by the True
Buddha School and he was (maybe still is) quite famous within the circle. He
could invite the Chinese form of Maitreya Buddha (弥勒佛) to
possess him and do miracles. I am sure you have seen one of such statue of a laughing
monk with a big tummy. And Bro Chan would hold his tummy and starts to laugh
out loudly: “Ho! Ho! Ho!” to announce the arrival of this Buddha.
When possessed by Maitreya, Bro Chan would have auto-writing
ability and he could write thousands of words on theory of Buddhism. When
consulted, this Maitreya could answer in poems and perform exorcism rituals.
When a patient is believed to be possessed by spirits, Maitreya would shout at
the patient and make mudras (hand gestures) towards the person. In addition,
this Maitreya Buddha could heal sickness with blessed water and also to perform
Feng Shui audit to say the least. So, Bro Chan was pretty revered amongst the
followers. Having said so, Bro Chan could not remember what he has done when
Maitreya leaved his body, nor he possess any power on that matter.
So, while everyone was sitting on the floor listening to
Rinpoche’s dharma talk, Bro Chan suddenly stood up as if he was drunk and then
laughed: “Ho! Ho! Ho! I am the Maitreya Buddha! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
Naturally, some of the participants were stunned and for
those who knew Bro Chan and his relation to Maitreya well, they start to
prostrate to Maitreya. All of a sudden, a solemn Buddhist dharma talk
transformed into a talk show session as people started to discuss about this
strange phenomenon. The most stunned person I supposed would be the Rinpoche
himself. I noticed his eyes opened wide, mouth opened wide and jaw dropped.
This was perhaps his first initiation to True Buddha School. Of course, I could
only hold my laughter until I reached home…
After a while, the Rinpoche recovered from his culture shock
and he sang a short prayer to Guru Padmasambhava and lifted up a Mahakala torma
(ritual cake) and handed to the Maitreya Buddha and said: “Oh, honourable Maitreya
Buddha; please accept my offering of this delicious cake!”
At this instance, the Maitreya that possessed Bro Chan with
smiling expression and protruded his right hand to take the torma while
laughing with the familiar voice: “Ho! Ho! Ho!” However, as soon as the
Maitreya’s hand touched the torma; he shouted: “Wow! Wow! Wow! It hurts! Get
that thing away from me!”
After jumping and yelling for a while, Bro Chan’s body shook
and trembled; and he collapsed onto the floor. When he regained his consciousness,
the first word he said was: “I thought I saw Mahakala!”
After the encounter with ‘Maitreya Buddha’, the Rinpoche
decided not to continue with his dharma activity in this area as he thought the
locals are not ready yet to embrace authentic Buddha teaching at that time. Of
course, after I just walked out from the dharma centre; I had to burst out: “Ha!
Ha! Ha!” or I would be stuffed to dead if I continued to hold those bursting
energy in my stomach…
Sadly Mr.Liew, some of my Buddhists brothers also believed in Lu Sheng Yen although they don't take refuge under him. They said he can do miracles, safe people, give people luck like boosting business,lottery etc, lots of followers, etc. So he must be got Ajininomoto ( skills).how to advice them?
ReplyDeleteJust let them be. It is a free world. As long as they believe in something and not doing anything too bad. The wisdom of each person is different, certainly not everyone can see pure light this life time.
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