Good morning. We welcome all of you to the meditation hour on this early Saturday morning. Time for us to meditate now. Just sit down the way that you feel comfortable and just follow what you know. We are going to meditate within a moment so be well prepared.
Let’s begin.
Na Mo Shakyamuni. May all sentient beings no longer suffer by anything. May all be blessed, especially our parents. Our family, and our friends be blessed and receive a good energy, the compassion, wisdom, awakened energy directly from the Buddha. Peace to all. Let’s put the right hand on top of the left hand. Today we meditate on going beyond the thoughts. In mindfulness meditation, when you breathe in, you know that you breathe in, you are sinking down lower of your body, expanding your belly. You know it is there and hold for three seconds. You concentrate on the heaven gate point, which is in front of your tail bone, then you release it, let it follow the back bone. You breathe out, sunken your belly chanting the mantra and receive the energy. Offer it to all your loved ones.
We meditate on compassion with the mantra Mu A Mu Sa. It helps us connect with all the Buddhas and activates our compassion energy. We meditate with the wisdom mantra: Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng, the wisdom connected with the Buddha helping us to know that all phenomena are impermanent, suffering, and no I. We meditate on awakened energy, with the mantra Ma Sa Op Ue, helping us to be fully awake to live right and be peaceful. Let’s do it together. May all of you receive a good energy, and we share it with all.
Breathe in, expanding the belly, hold it there for three seconds, concentrate on the heaven gate point, breathe out, sunken your belly, chanting the mantra, and receiving the energy.
Mu A Mu Sa, Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng, Ma Sa Op Ue (7x)
Just remain silent and observe the energy flowing within your body. Listen to your breath. Allow the energy to flow. No matter how. Just be there with. Make friends with the energy. Connect with the energy. You feel the energy flowing, touching your body, and moving your body. No matter which part. Let it flow and flow with that. Enjoy the moment now that you watch your breath, and you watch your body. We need to be very friendly with our body. Supporting our body receiving the energy. Don’t forget we only have one body now. We need to be with it. Understand the body by allowing the energy flowing and connect with. Let the body to relax. Time for us to allow the body to relax. Stop working to force the body to do what we want. Time for us to be one with the body, with our mind, with our spirit. Now it feels so great. So much energy flows within my body. I believe when you practice this you receive a good energy too, and then the energy that circulates within us, also is able to reach out to all our loved ones. If we are thinking about our loved ones, we are sharing our energy that we receive directly from the Buddha and it connects with all our loved ones.
The mantra we practice Mu A Mu Sa, compassion mantra, awakens our compassion and connects us with the great source from all Buddhas. In order to increase our motivation to be with our Mu A Mu Sa, just compassion, it is wonderful. It is the heart of healing physically, mentally and spiritually. We all benefit from the practice, and we dedicate time to practice. We will know the benefits for ourselves.
The second mantra, the wisdom mantra, lighting up the wisdom to see through. Whatever comes into our lives, we understand the root of that, and we will be able to go beyond. That mantra is Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng.
The third mantra we call the awakening mantra or welcoming the Buddha to our life. When we are fully awake, and when we are filled with wisdom, wherever, whenever, the buddha always comes to us. Buddha means awaken. Ma Sa Op Ue, means Buddha, means awakened. We need to be fully awake to experience life. Just one time we are chanting these three mantras. It is helping us a lot. Today we talk about “going beyond the thought”. We all know our thoughts are very limited. Sometimes we cannot think very clearly. Our thoughts are just leading us around and around. Just like the horse running around the fence, cannot enjoy the big field to be free like others. We get stuck there with the thought. We cannot sleep, we cannot break through. We are tired and upset. That is not good for our health. You know it makes us sad.
Depression could come and take over us. Very stressful. That is not what our life is about. So we meditate, go beyond the thought to understand. Of course, our thoughts are helping us a lot if we are able to concentrate. Thoughts help us to live right. But the wrong thought, negative thoughts, push us down. We need to select a good thought to motivate ourselves to be better. Today we don’t talk about the good thought or the negative thought. Today we talk about going beyond those thoughts to go beyond.
One example that I see here in our temple land, we have a young master, Eileen, Su Co, and members her. We try to create a beautiful garden. It does not take one month to build the gardens. It takes years. No we enjoy so many flowers around. Recently spring came, and we see the flowers like tulips, and soon we we see peonies, roses, all kinds of beautiful flowers. It took a long time. We still plant a lot of flowers now. There are some places very easy for Eileen to dig down because there is no gravel, no rock. Some places there is 1 foot of gravel deep. It is very hard to dig. We have a drill that can drill through the gravel, to go beyond the gravel layer, and touch the very good soil that we can plant. That is what mean when we say go beyond. We get used to thinking, and thought after thought, layer after layer. We satisfy ourselves with those thoughts, and they get harder. Never allowing us to go beyond. So we just get used to the old thought and circle around. Circle back around and around. Life is so precious. So beautiful. It is good for us to discover more. The beyond of life that we think for ourselves. So much for us to enjoy to offer to our loved ones. Through the layer of the gravel thoughts that we had build for many years. It is not easy if you don’t have the right tools. Dig with the shovel is ok, takes a long time, but with the drill it is very easy.
In order to go beyond the thoughts, we drill ourself with meditation. We have three different tools that combine together. A very good combination to go beyond your thoughts. Remember. Go beyond the thoughts using the special gift given to us when we were born. There are so many gifts we never unwrapped and did not use for our lives. So when we go beyond, we enjoy our lives. Compassion, wisdom and awaken, help us to be alert, awake and aware, so that what so ever comes to us we can go beyond. Very helpful, very beautiful. How old or young your are does not matter. The moment you break through and go beyond your thought is when you see the treasure you already have.
There is another example. Just like a bird can jump from one branch to the others. Bud he cannot see the other trees on the other side of the field. He can fly, he flies over the distance to discover a lot more beautiful fields, forests trees and flowers, jumping and flying to help the birds to discover. We have the wings of meditation to help us fly from one to the other to discover more to enjoy our life. Life is joyful and peaceful. As long as we know how to fly over our thoughts. We don’t circle back. That small circle of thought that we get used to does not need to be ending up our life there. We are traveling around and beyond. With the thought that we are there and couldn’t go beyond. Take a moment to think and re-evaluate. Time for us to go beyond and discover. Buddha was awakened. He still is like a best friend coming to us to introduce to us, yes, we have wings, we can fly high beyond our thoughts. We can drill down to the layer of thought to plant the beautiful flowers. Yes, if you come to the temple, you will enjoy a lot of Beautiful flowers, you will still see Eileen, monks, nuns, and members still digging, planting and arranging because we love to discover the most beautiful that the temple lands offer to us. Also we can discover what is more than what we see. That is why we have been planting, working, maintaining. Not just for ourselves to enjoy, but to welcome all people who have the right time to stop by to have a view of how we are taking care of beyond what our eye can see.
Our life is just like the garden of the temple. If you take time to take care. We enjoy our life. Don’t hesitate. Take a walk, slowly, step by step, together with the practice, we will all be able to drill down deeper. We will all be able to fly beyond to enjoy life. Don’t just stand there and suffer yourself by anything you cannot understand. Our capacity is to understand all. Our life is the main key for us to open up the heaven gate. If we don’t use our life as the key to open. We will end up in the prison of the old thoughts, and suffer from that.
Impermant means, nothing will be there forever. Impermanence means transformation. It is always transforming all the time. We work along with all is transformed to be with the moment we enjoy. Go beyond the thought is wonderful. Meditation is helping us to go beyond the thought so we can enjoy our lives. That is a good reason. Meditation helps us go beyond the thought to break through to heal ourselves. We are happy, yes, we suffer, yes. But we don’t want to get stuck in sadness, anger, we don’t want them to kill us. Life is much better. Just step together and take on the real action by practicing meditation with us every Saturday so together we can break through and go beyond our thoughts.
Let’s go back to the breathing technique together. We all meditate together. We break through, and drill deeper to plant the good flower. The flower of the pure spirit within us already. We offer our good energy, especially to all our parents. To those who are sick, that they are healed, those who are sad to be happy. We also offer our good merit energy to husband, wife, children and friends. May the war end, and let there be peace.
Together, may all sentient beings no longer suffer.
Breathe in, expanding the belly, hold it there for three seconds. Concentrate on the heaven gate point. Breathe out, Sunken the belly, chanting the mantra, receiving the energy and offering to all.
Mu A Mu Sa, Na Mo Ta Mo Ta Mo Da Ra Houng, Ma Sa Op Ue (7x)
Thank you. That is all we do to motivate ourselves to go beyond our thoughts and enjoy our lives. Tomorrow is the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday. If you have time please come. Thank you all.
