Why Burn Incense and Pray to Buddha for Blessings? Search Your Own Heart to Know What Lies Ahead
Every Lunar New Year, the expensive incense in temples sells at a premium; there are truly too many people burning incense and praying to Buddha for blessings. But misfortune and blessing have no fixed gate; people bring them on themselves. If one creates an evil cause, an evil effect will naturally follow; if one plants good conditions, blessings will also come. Each person need only search their own heart to know whether what lies ahead is good or ill—why pray to gods and Buddha? Seeking blessings by worshiping clay statues of Bodhisattvas is no different from climbing a tree to catch a fish.
When I was in junior high, there was a classmate who was arrogant and domineering, always fighting and swearing, intimidating his schoolmates; his mouth was vicious to the extreme, and he would constantly curse others to die badly. Before he was twenty, he was accidentally beaten to death by someone in a gang fight.
Misfortunes never come singly. His father was a rural bus driver; distraught over the loss of his son, he was distracted and got into a car accident while driving, falling and killing his own daughter, who was on the bus selling tickets. Then the two elders—one died and the other went mad. This family's end is deeply lamentable; looking into the cause, the root of the disaster was poor family education—the parents never taught the child to treat others well.
This is just as the Buddhist sutras say: those who viciously curse others will, sooner or later, have their curses fall upon their own heads (the original words in the sutras: "The Buddha said: Now you scold me, but I do not accept it; you carry the misfortune back to yourself. It is like an echo responding to sound, a shadow following form; there is ultimately no escape. Beware of doing evil."). So people actually need not care too much about those who speak venomously to us; if they do not reform their bad habits, sooner or later they will reap an evil retribution. The words they use to scold others will eventually become reality upon themselves. Their mouths seem to be scolding others, but in fact they are thoroughly scolding themselves and cursing their own families.
No one in this world is another's punching bag. If a person has not learned how to treat others well, always using abusive language or blows against people, then being beaten, even being sued or killed, is unavoidable. When my classmates and I discussed my old classmate's family's tragic affair, while lamenting their fate we also felt deeply the importance of character education.
Our village is large, and there are several such families. I remember once as a child standing at the village entrance and seeing a family of brothers, each brandishing daggers and wooden clubs, rushing off to beat a neighbor. The whole village was afraid of them; even so, the adult men of the village stepped forward to mediate and stop them, and finally no bloodshed occurred.
But these brothers mistakenly believed that because they were so tyrannical, others truly feared them, and thought they had won. Over ten years ago, when working away in Wenzhou, they got into a dispute with someone and habitually grabbed weapons to fight, even dragging a few young men from our village along. As a result they beat someone to death, and the fighters immediately fled.
But the net of justice has wide meshes, yet it lets nothing slip through. In recent years all of these people have been caught, sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or prison terms of over ten years. This family is now thoroughly finished, and has also ruined several other families.
The probability that evildoers receive evil retribution is far greater than for ordinary people. Such people also frequently go to burn incense and pray to Buddha, and some even claim to be Buddhist disciples. Don't these hypocrites think of themselves as good people? But the amount of karma they have created is enough to send them to hell a hundred times over.
I should clarify here that I bear no ill will toward Buddhists; my grandmother and aunt were devout Buddhists who ate vegetarian and chanted sutras all their lives, and even my mother and older brother can be counted as believers. I am well disposed toward Buddhism. Although I cannot accept all of the Buddha's ideas, I approve of many of the principles he advocated.
As far as I know, the Buddha does not recognize as his disciples those who break the precepts. In the Nirvana Sutra the Buddha said: "One who accepts and upholds this sutra but breaks the precepts is a bad friend to beings, is not my disciple, but belongs to the host of demons. Of such a person, I also do not allow [others] to accept, uphold, or cultivate this text. Better not to receive, uphold, or cultivate it, than to break the precepts while receiving, upholding, and cultivating."
The Buddha said people have ten evils, of which four belong to the mouth, and one of the four oral karmas is "evil speech." So a true Buddhist believer, even when disagreeing with others, will not utter wicked words, let alone raise a hand; those who utter wicked words are the "host of demons" who use Buddhism as a cloak. Since the Buddha said this, using whether one keeps the precepts to judge whether one is a true Buddhist is a gold standard.
So if people are cursed or treated rudely by those who claim to believe in Buddhism, they need not lay the blame on the Buddha. Buddhism is imbued with compassion and also emphasizes "taking the precepts as the teacher," not allowing Buddhists to scold or kill. Those who break the precepts are vulgar and base; they are demons, not Buddhists.
I have always been grateful for the vicious people I have encountered in life; it was precisely their viciousness that made me deeply realize the importance of protecting myself and that I cannot naively live in a fairy-tale world. My profession has let me see the dirty, sordid souls of many people; they are hypocritical on the outside, but their ugly inner hearts and faces are fully exposed before us.
I have not exposed these people—I do not guarantee I will never expose these hypocritical and filthy characters; I may at any time use my own self-media to expose them, letting them taste for themselves the online violence they so enjoy carrying out from dark corners. With my personal influence, I believe the evil they have done will be repaid a hundredfold or more.
Because of the special nature of my profession, for the rest of my life I will cautiously protect myself and my family, keeping my eyes wide open and giving vicious people no chance to approach me. Should any fish that slipped through the net approach me and an actual conflict occur, I will not hesitate to defend myself with all my might, even picking up a kitchen knife and striking directly. In the final analysis, such vicious people are just cowards who bully the weak and fear the strong, hide in the shadows to harm others, and have dark psychology. To preach compassion to truly vicious people is pedantry; teaching them a lesson is actually helping them reform from evil.
My father taught me martial arts as a child; I did not listen to him and train properly, but a martial spirit was cultivated. From childhood to adulthood I never bullied others, but I was never afraid of trouble either. Had I not had this personality, I would not have dared to slam the table and rise when society faced gross injustice and everyone else cowered in silence. Confucius said: "The wise are not confused; the brave are not afraid." Living in this world, one needs both wisdom and courage; otherwise one cannot protect oneself and one's family and will be eliminated by society.
The Buddha said there are five poisons in the human heart: greed, anger, delusion, arrogance, and doubt—greed, ill will, obsession, pride, and suspicion. The sins these five poisons can breed are countless. Many people's misfortunes are precisely caused by these five poisons. People should constantly examine their own conduct: have we done evil? If we have done evil, we should repent and reform. Those who never reform, making it a habit, and even vent their anger on others, may ultimately die an unnatural death and easily bring disaster to their families, killing the whole household. The cases of my classmate and the people in my village are good negative examples; what use is it for such people to pray to gods and Buddha for blessings?
In the Diamond Sutra the Buddha said that believers giving away countless treasures in almsgiving gain no blessing and virtue. What is true blessing and virtue? It is the compassion and wisdom rooted in the heart. The good or ill fortune on each of our roads ahead needs neither divination (the sages long ago said: "Those who know the Changes do not divine; those who are good at the Changes do not augur"—those who truly understand the rules of good and ill fortune can foresee them and guard against them without divination; those who must divine to resolve doubts have already fallen to a second tier) nor burning incense and praying to Buddha. By constantly reflecting on oneself and cultivating oneself, one naturally gains more fortune and less misfortune.
Moreover, true "blessing" in life has nothing to do with the promotion, wealth, and high flying that many people seek. A family being peaceful and healthy, with unity and affection among family and friends—that is the greatest blessing. It is better to have few desires than to seek much; in Beijing I have seen too many cases of wealthy and noble families finally falling into ruin and death. If people watch the news more and see the ends reached by treacherous merchants, corrupt officials, and violent bandits, they will surely understand that the world is impermanent and that riches and glory are but passing clouds.
On the evening of New Year's Day, one of my patients shared videos and photos of his family's Spring Festival gala. Looking at their family, I felt genuine joy and happiness for them.
His maternal grandmother bore eight children in her lifetime; the old lady is still alive and is a very long-lived elder. The descendants are united and affectionate, four generations celebrating the festival together; they built a stage in the courtyard and hung a banner reading "Mo Family Spring Festival Gala." The grandchildren took the stage one after another to perform. The old grandmother handmade several garments for her children, and her daughters also handmade clothes for their own children. Seeing their family truly enact the scene of "the loving mother's needlework in the traveler's coat," I was deeply moved.
I told this patient that with such a family, endowed with longevity genes and happiness genes and so full of love, he was bound to become an anticancer star. In fact, his anticancer outcome has been excellent; he is currently in CR (complete remission). His family gave him abundant love, and he himself treats others with kindness everywhere. I have only ever seen him ready to help others, never speak ill of them. Such a person I am genuinely willing to help, and I think others must feel as I do and would help him when he needs it, would they not? The blessing of such a person is born in his character.
One woman with ovarian cancer once said to me: blessed people take things calmly, and blessing comes to them of its own accord. What kind of person is blessed? One who is peaceful and agreeable from the inside out is blessed; one who is quick to doubt and insult others, even wishing them harm, and never repents, is a person who will sooner or later meet disaster. Bear in mind Confucius's teaching: "I examine myself three times a day," conduct oneself openly and honorably, or, as the Buddha said: "If a person has faults and himself understands they are wrong, reforms from evil and practices good, the sins of themselves vanish away"—then disaster will not come upon us.