Good Morning. Merry Christmas to all of you. May all of us receive a good energy from the loved one that for our life to be more peaceful. God bless us. Time for us to practice meditation on this early Saturday and also on this Christmas day. Let us begin.
May all of us and sentient begins be free of suffering and may the glorious and peaceful Christmas always be with all of us. Peace to the world.
Let’s put the right hand on top of the left hand. At this moment we all join with the very peaceful and joyful Christmas season around the universe. We connect together with all, with no differences. Only love and forgiveness for us to be together. Let us receive a good energy from the king of love from the Christmas and may all be blessed from all. May the energy connect us with the peacefulness within.
Breathe in expanding the belly, hold it right there for three seconds, concentrate on the heaven gate point. Breathe out, sunken the belly, chanting the mantra.
Mu A Mu Sa Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng (7x)
Just relax. Maintain the sitting position. Remember connecting with the Buddha and receive the energy. Wisdom and compassion energy is always good for all of us to connect to. First of all I would like to say Merry Christmas to all of us. Together we celebrate the wonderful season, the season of love, of giving, and sharing. The season that we come together. The wonderful season that we call Christmas. The whole family gets together. The community, the whole world gets together with love. With unconditional love. At this season we look around and share love with all no matter what has been done wrong or right. It is no matter, the season of Joy, Christmas, the season for all. It is very loving season. Loving holiday. Together with this Christmas spirit of holiday seasons, we at the Xa Loi Temple in Maryland, our Sangha and community share with you all and may all be blessed. May all our families always be blessed.
We are talking about today, take care of what we plant. It reminds me about a couple of weeks ago even though it was a winter season. Me and Eileen planned to plant Bamboo around the forest in our temple. After we planted, Eileen volunteered to take care of them by watering and keeping an eye on them to make sure they are ok through out the winter and ready for the spring season coming. We know the future year to come those Bamboo are going to be beautiful. There is some kind of Bamboo that Eileen planted 30 to 40 feet tall. Very big, 7 inches diameter. I love it because that bamboo is tall and big. When the wind swings by it is going to make a wonderful music called the Bamboo music. If you want to listen to that music in the future just come to our temple now to take care of our Bamboo and water it we welcome volunteers.
The deeper meaning we meditate on, everything in our temple, from the flowers to the trees, bamboo and simple gardens. All the vegetables that Su Co Bao Co and Eileen plant we take care of through out the year. It is hard because our temple is very big. It seems to be very small if we love to take care of. It is also truth, the spiritual and also meditation. Our meditation, meaning the same. If we want to live a peaceful way and remain engaged and connecting with the Buddha to receive a good energy for our life. To Bless our life and bless others. We have to take care of what we practice every day, not just plant it there and then never take care of it. Buddha always suggests us and guides us through all kinds of techniques to learn how to take care of ourselves to remain in meditation to purify the negative energy. With the very busy life we just connect with all kinds of practice when we are sad, when we are suffering. To deal with that for a moment, but not consistently. After that we forget and everything will go back to how it was. We need to take care of what we practice. We practice every Saturday, but during the weekdays we all need to spend at least five minutes to practice in order to remain connected with the Buddha otherwise all things in life will lead us away.
If you practice right and correctly, the peacefulness and joyfulness energy will be awakened. You will fill with that. You will know it mentally, spiritually, and physically. You will feel healthy and strong. There is nothing else you need to seek to fulfill your spirit because meditation that connects with the Buddhas is connecting with the Buddha nature within to know ourselves better every day. There is nothing else we need to connect to if we could even connect to our own self. To be with the universal means be with yourself first. Taking care of what we practice through our every day for five minutes is needed. The more we practice the more we show the care of what we do. Gradually it will grow up strong enough for us to be harvested. The good energy that naturally flows within us every day.
We reflect from the past two years seeing the pandemic happening here in the United States and also around the world. There is so much fear created. People love to play that game to create more fear to inject into our minds fear, and fear and fear. Slowly they don’t want us to go our to do anything but just to be afraid and stay home. They are going to feed us whatever to maintain silence and fear. Look back before two years. We were wonderful, we all enjoyed going out and doing whatsoever freely. But now very scared. The question is do we want to live like that forever? The more information from the media is the more fear created. When we connect with the Buddha, we receive right information for us to not be afraid and to take care of what we do every day.
Mindfulness breathing techniques, chanting the compassion and wisdom mantra always reminds us that there is no fear that will take us down, we tackle the fears. Peacefulness energy is always surrounding us as long as we are understanding and taking care of that. We have been practicing meditation for almost two years every Saturday. A very simple technique breathing in and out meditating on the wisdom and compassion. Connecting with all the Buddhas to receive the energy to motivate ourselves to stand strong and transform to make our life much better every day.
In order to make a difference is to practice in taking care of what we practice every day. The good gift we can unwrap for ourselves and offer to our loved ones is love and compassion and also the wisdom. Our meditation provides us with all of that. The more we practice the more we lift to be peaceful and enjoy our life.
With the Christmas we look around with all of our relatives, our family, our loved ones. We are thinking about them all day and night every second of our life. No matter what trouble, struggle, with our family our loved ones. Sometimes it is happy, joyful, but also sadness, angry. No matter we still remain as a family, we still remain as a Sangha and community, as a husband and wife, children and we still connecting with our parents. Life has many different tastes. Life has many different tastes, sometimes sweet, sometimes very sour. Mixed all, but what, we all still be there for our loved one. In Buddhism we enjoy with all other people whatever that helps people to be happy and joyful and peaceful. We always be there to be with them. Mu A Mu Sa means compassion beyond religions. Beyond the definitions of whatever we created. Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng means the wisdom of knowing the truth of unconditional love. With this unconditional love we all break through all the trouble, all the struggle, to come together. Take care of what we do every day, does not mean just taking care of meditation. But by doing meditation for 5 minutes, you take care of everything within the peaceful mind. You could ask how come mediation helps us to take care of all. Because by doing mediation we maintain the peaceful compassion and wisdom energy knowing how to flow and balance everything we do every day in a very natural way. Disconnects from those kinds of energy takes us far away from the root, from the Buddha nature within far away from our true self and we are going to get lost. Let’s reconnect ourselves with the peacefulness compassion and wisdom especially this Christmas. We promise ourselves that we will take care of whatever we are doing in a good spirit in a simple way we call Taking care of what you plant. Just like Eileen is going to take care of the Bamboo watering it. At the temple we all take care of part of what belongs to the temple to maintain all of those in a peaceful way. For those who have the right time to come we connect and receive a good energy.
Now together I ask you to humble yourself to be with us to do the meditation to return back to the mindfulness breathing techniques with the two mantras Mu A Mu Sa and Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng to connect with all the Buddhas’ bodhisattvas and all the enlightened ones to share the spirit of Christmas to share the peacefulness energy. This is the season of forgiveness, of giving, of love. May all be love and be peaceful.
Breathe in expanding the belly, hold it right there for three seconds, concentrate on the heaven gate point, breathe out, sunken the belly, chanting the mantras:
Mu A Mu Sa Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng (7x)
Thank you. That is all we do for this Saturday this Christmas day. We mediate to receive good energy and to offer to all. Merry Christmas. Thank you.
