Heaven here and now and not wait for the afterlife

No 368 of Living Life Series 1
Duplicated from series 2 post of same name: Heaven here and now and not wait for afterlife

When we go for the spiritual life, the same values for spiritual life if applied to our worldly life give adequate optimum comfort and success in worldly life as well.

  

The spiritual values include having inner peace come what may, neither denying or giving up life nor overindulging in life, neither living in the past(thinking and brooding over the past or living on past glory) nor living only for the future. These are aspects of balance of yin and yang, the polarities of life. Such balance can bring inner peace come what may.

There is also the need to be balanced with respect to God, neither denying His existence nor fearing his existence but ever loving and practising the doctrine God and His saints stand for.

God is like a father. What a father wants out of a child is not adulation and fear of the father but to be able to grow up, be an embodiment of the values the father stand for.

 

These spiritual values allow us to gain spiritually simultaneously while leading worldly life as the values bring peace and comfort to both worldly and spiritual life. This is possible because our moment to moment life, that is, our daily life is the very ground for our spiritual practice and cultivation. We can have heaven and inner peace here and now in this life and not wait for heaven beyond this life. We have both worldly and heavenly gains. Worldly comfort comes with avoidance of denial of worldly life at one extreme and overindulgence in worldly life at the other extreme. The latter will result in suffering as the person is effectively the slave of life and not the master of life.

Our worldly life is our gospel. We learn from the gospel of life as it unfurls. The whole wide world and web is our temple for spirituality - for spiritual understanding and cultivation. We learn to be one with God. God is everywhere in the nature or world we live in and even in us and in our life.

We certainly can have heaven by having more inner peace here and now in this life and not wait for heaven beyond this life.

We practise the doctrine behind the Bagua. The bagua embodies the flux of yin and yang, the polar or dual contingencies of life like gain & loss, love & hatred, joy & sorrow, praise & blame, success & failure, denial & indulgence etc --- the balance of which yields inner peace. Inner peace is the essence of Heavenly experience which would lead to enlightenment - oneness with Divinity

The Bagua

Elaboration of extract from The shrine hall at Bo Tien Temple was designed based on the doctrine of Heaven.

 

God's way of reaching out to the many

No 367 of Living Life Series1
Duplicated from series2: God's way of reaching out to the many

In 1981, the emissary of Lord Bo Tien said, "Heaven however will not forsake the well being of the significant numerical many... Divinity will always reach out somehow to their hearts and souls and endeavour to change their ways." Lord Bo Tien's 1981 Anniversary Message

Thus there are many religions, and many sects per religion, many schools per sect and many styles of leadership and premises per school. This is the will of God or Divinity that all souls must be saved by more than one way but the underlying inner truth is the same inner peace leading to harmony of souls with the holy spirit of God, Pure Ones, Buddhas and Saints.

Thus even in a temple of the lord saint Lord Bo Tien, the few who know the doctrine though near to him may not be the ones to run a temple. But the many who know not the doctrine but still find interest in the temple albeit for the less noble motives may well end up running a temple.

This is a lord saint's way of reaching out to the many and not just to the few who know the doctrine. They are given the chance to make good but whether they can make good or may well end up like insects coming to a flower is the issue. They are given places in the sun by the grace of the lord and not by their goodness and value. Lord Bo Tien's 1984 Anniversary Message

Many may be taken aback that in any church or temple (such as that of Lord Bo Tien), the leaders may be loud mouth or unbecoming in other ways such as loose morals and even socially tainted and corrupt. Ordinary folks will find them distasteful and lose faith. They would think that the saint or god of that temple doesn't exist and just the concoction or mere figment of imagination of men. But perhaps this too may be that temple saint's way of reaching out to the many, not just the goody-goody. Often the popular priest, pastor or monk is no goody-goody.

In the first place, perhaps goody-goody men are rare and even non-existent. Thus even any anchor pioneer may have his dark side. After all, who does not have dark side? Only "pharisees" think they are angels and above all others, as they deem themselves as having no dark side.

At best, men can only be an unpolished diamond and thus far only one man has been referred by Lord Bo Tien as an unpolished diamond. Who is he? He must be an elder in the mission of the lord saint.






 

God and the genesis of life and religions

No 366 of Living Life Series 1

THE 2012 MISSION DAY MESSAGE
God and the genesis of life and religions
Duplicated from series 2 post 177

 

God Alimighty -The Pure August Jade Emperor

 

In Chinese culture the Pure August Jade Emperor, Yü Huang Shang Ti heads the Heavenly Palace of gods. The Chinese refer to him as Tien Kung, the Heavenly Father. He is the supreme head of the manifest or apparent universe that comprises Heaven and realms of existence below including man and hell but he ranks below the Three Pure Ones in the supreme pure heavens beyond the manifest universe.

Originally, Yu-huang was the assistant of the Divine Master of the Heavenly Origin, Yuanshi Tianzun. Yuanshi Tianzun is said to be the supreme beginning --- the limitless and eternal creator of apparent universe with Heaven and Earth. After creating the apparent universe, he picked Yu-huang as the ruler of the universe of Heaven and Earth. Yu Huang became the Jade Emperor and he oversees and moderates the development and fate of beings through his subordinate deities. He is ultimately responsible for the deitification of other gods, or for their exit from the pantheon.

Theoretically there should be a series of Jade Emperors but the life span is so long that it is as good as eternal in human terms. Like all heavenly beings, he is capable of creation of heavenly abodes, beings and entities. He is spiritually developed and enlightened but may not be in the sense of buddhahood but the apex of the path of gods and buddhas overlap and the zenith is one

The Jade Emperor's Birthday is designated on the ninth day of the first lunar month.

The apparent manifest universe we are in started with 無極 (wuji: 'nothingness'). Do note that this does not mean non-existence but mere metaphor on energy state before evolutionary and creative chain of events.

Jade Emperor as the head of the pantheon is however not responsible for the original creation process itself but hand picked into the appointment by Divine Master of the Heavenly Origin, Yuanshi Tianzun, the first of the Three Pure Ones.

Jade Emperor is however of capable of further creation of abodes, beings and divine entities.

The Three Pure Ones were brought into existence through the interaction of pre-existing primordial forces including yin and yang. The first to emerge is The Divine Master of the Heavenly Origin, Yuanshi Tianzun, followed by the second and then the third Pure One.

You can say that Divine Master of the Heavenly Origin, Yuanshi Tianzun brought into existence the second and then the third Pure One came each with his own supreme pure heaven beyond the manifest universe with its levels of heaven, earth and hell.

Readers may wonder as to where the Buddhas come in. As the saying goes amongst the sages of old in China, "What's on Earth will be mirrored in Heaven" There are the clergy and there are the laity on earth.

Whilst all in heavens are spiritual, there are those who deal with the governance of the apparent or manifest universe with heaven and all the realms below including the human and hell realms, there will be those who are the clergy and they are the buddhas who are respected by the non-buddha laity in heaven.

The Jade Emperor and the deities in his pantheon are rulers of the apparent universe. They often consult the buddhas and carry out their advice and intervention but the latter do not overstep to take over the ruling and governance of the manifest or apparent universe

The buddhas and posats (bodhisatvas) are present in both the apparent or manifest universe and the supreme pure heavens above the manifest universe. Posats too can be present in Hell and they can traverse across realms.

The Jade Emperor or God Almighty as the overall ruler of the manifest universe resides in the heaven of the manifest universe and oversee all the realms below.

He reaches out to all beings through prophets and saints of the various religions and sects. These prophets create their own sections of heaven and in this way, beings saved by religions take on spiritual paths and in time are reborn in the specific respective dormains of heaven to continue further spiritual growth. 

Thus in God's plan, there must be not one religion or sect but many and they complement and not compete. But men being men and not God and saints tend to compete and even ridicule one another and this has caused rift and hatred amongst many in the name of God and saints. How ungodly can this be!

That is why God tasked Lord Bo Tien as one of the many more saints to come and he like the rest to come will re-explain the true essence behind the need for the many religions and sects and will not start his own. These messenger saints will however make use of the existing religions and sects to explain the grand purpose of the Jade Emperor.





For more academic information, do read wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Emperor