No 682 of Living Life Series 1
Be it mission in life or mission of a society or temple, what matters is the goal. The goal certainly is to know how to be happy and the ultimate of this is to be at peace.
Certainly this has nothing to do with more and more but knowing how to be happy and to value life. We must not attach a cost to happiness and peace.
We must learn to know how to be happy and to be at peace even if we have less than others. We should also not be happy just because we have more than others.
Happiness and the peace of life cannot be counted and what counts is whether we are willing to be happy and be at peace whatever we have in life.
But the ultimate peace is beyond what we need of the flesh and blood and what we can have in worldly needs. It is the peace of mind come what may.
The same applies to society what applies to the individual. We can have the goal and we work towards it but we should not feel bad because we have yet to achieve but what matters we make progress and we are able to move on in life in our own respective ways.
In a society such as a temple, we work to make men more fortunate and the worse of the lot need help more. We cannot just ask the worse of the lot to be holy and pious to be happy if they have ill-health and physical needs and if they are destitute. We have to attend to their physical and material needs.
That is why we need to have old aged and destitute homes, and we need to help those in community who cannot fend for themselves even in worldly sense. This however is not the end-all but the means to the end.
We cannot give them the sky in worldly terms but we can share with them how we can be contented with what we have and with what more we can possibly have and gain. Otherwise, Buddhists and Taoists will be in misery until they are fully enlightened like the Buddha and the Pure Ones.
We cannot tell men to give up with life and to be in physical misery till kingdom come. There is need for adequate physical comforts but too much and the want for more than necessary can create more wants and the very misery or dissatisfaction we set out to eradicate. There has to be the balance which is the Middle Way Buddha refers to and what adherents of Taoism refer to as The Peace of Tao - balancing of yin and yang.
In the mission of a temple, there is need for loving kindness for life. Love starts with self, then with family and friends and with the destitute.
We provide roof, food and accommodation for the destitute and rations and financial support for those who can still be in society. This however is of the world and more important than providing the essential basics of the world is the cultivation of peace of spirit.
Thus the mission of Lord Bo Tien (武天菩萨) started with aged home and provision of free rations through welfare arm of the temple. This is based on love but without love for self and for fellow men in the mission and temple, this will be meaningless and may border on hypocrisy and farce. This does happen once too often and pioneers and members can end up at odds with one another.
To say that the mission is just to provide aged home and welfare support to the unfortunate in society is not enough though the first step is to have physical and worldly sustenance. If men cannot have this, there is no point talking spirituality with them.
The next step beyond physical needs is to provide the spiritual needs so that men can save their souls. Men need to know the nature of life and what ails them and why more can be less and sometimes less can be more.
They need to know that they cannot arrive overnight and that the peace of the saints they wish for cannot be delivered on a plate by saints though saints can provide shelter and guidance.
It is true and good that many can seek blessings of saints to be born in heaven and from there to learn and cultivate spirituality - to eventually arrive at sainthood after many lifetimes. They will then have inner peace of the saints but meanwhile they must be at peace and be content with what they can have.
The mission to save souls must take into account different levels - (1) welfare activities for the destitute and unfortunate to address basic physical comforts and to provide social support, (2) then fellowship needs of people in a house of God, followed by (3) teaching everyone how to cultivate sainthood.
We cannot tell men to give up with life and to be in physical misery till kingdom come. There is need for adequate physical comforts but too much and the want for more than necessary can create more wants and the very misery or dissatisfaction we set out to eradicate. There has to be the balance which is the Middle Way Buddha refers to and what adherents of Taoism refer to as The Peace of Tao - balancing of yin and yang.
In the mission of a temple, there is need for loving kindness for life. Love starts with self, then with family and friends and with the destitute.
We provide roof, food and accommodation for the destitute and rations and financial support for those who can still be in society. This however is of the world and more important than providing the essential basics of the world is the cultivation of peace of spirit.
Thus the mission of Lord Bo Tien (武天菩萨) started with aged home and provision of free rations through welfare arm of the temple. This is based on love but without love for self and for fellow men in the mission and temple, this will be meaningless and may border on hypocrisy and farce. This does happen once too often and pioneers and members can end up at odds with one another.
To say that the mission is just to provide aged home and welfare support to the unfortunate in society is not enough though the first step is to have physical and worldly sustenance. If men cannot have this, there is no point talking spirituality with them.
The next step beyond physical needs is to provide the spiritual needs so that men can save their souls. Men need to know the nature of life and what ails them and why more can be less and sometimes less can be more.
They need to know that they cannot arrive overnight and that the peace of the saints they wish for cannot be delivered on a plate by saints though saints can provide shelter and guidance.
It is true and good that many can seek blessings of saints to be born in heaven and from there to learn and cultivate spirituality - to eventually arrive at sainthood after many lifetimes. They will then have inner peace of the saints but meanwhile they must be at peace and be content with what they can have.
The mission to save souls must take into account different levels - (1) welfare activities for the destitute and unfortunate to address basic physical comforts and to provide social support, (2) then fellowship needs of people in a house of God, followed by (3) teaching everyone how to cultivate sainthood.
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| 武天菩萨 Lord Bo Tien |
Thus the mission of Lord Bo Tien in early years was to have aged home and welfare activities but this is only the beginning and not the mission proper. The mission is to teach men to cultivate sainthood or Tao and this has to be from now and not wait till kingdom come when we are in heaven. It is never a moment too early to start now. We can only be sure and certain of now.
We must have mission sense and be mission ready to progress from stage to stage be it for our personal life or for mission of a temple or society.
This post is dedicated to Bo Tien Mission Observance Day which falls on the 13th Day of the 9th lunar month.
This post is dedicated to Bo Tien Mission Observance Day which falls on the 13th Day of the 9th lunar month.
