Series on Questions and Answers about Mandala
Question:
Amitofo. May I ask, when entering the Mandala and praying for the deceased to be reborn in the Pure Land, I don't understand if being reborn means they no longer undergo reincarnation, or if they are reborn in a better realm?
Answer:
Thank you for asking. The answer is that I don’t know, because the truth is we just do our best. We know the formula in Buddhism, and we just follow that. We do it wholeheartedly, sending the energy through prayer to the deceased.
We may hope that the spirit will be reborn in the Pure Land. We wish for that, but there's no certainty that they will reach it. The truth is, we don't know. Those who reach the Pure Land don't come back to tell us. But there are some spirits who, before leaving, truly do give us a message in our dream. That is real. Where they go, no one knows. Sometimes, we might be clever, or we might want others to believe us, so we talk about the deceased going to the Pure Land, but we have no proof.
Over the past several years of organizing Mandala, every year I have had reports from people and stories from different individuals. I myself also have personal experiences and have seen a few things, and those are real.
One year, Mr. Thành came to tell me that both he and his wife had a similar dream, not exactly the same, but quite similar. In his wife’s dream, she saw a group of people in an entire region, asking for a plaque to be written for them. Mr. Thành asked his wife, 'So, who is this group of people, where is that region? Do you know where it is?' She didn’t know, but she said it seemed like there was a place like that in her hometown. The people in her dream requested that prayers be offered for them in the mandala. They did no ask for dedication of merits.
The next day, they came to ask me to write the plaques. I told them: “Please go ahead and write the plaque specifying for those who came to their dreams and then pray for them—even though you two don’t know who they are and where is that place.” They followed the instructions, writing the plaque and praying. When they entered the mandala that day, they carried the plaque for the beings who had appeared in the dream.
Later, after the mandala, that same evening she dreamed that she had returned to that patch of land; however, all the beings were gone, and when she looked up, she saw an entire bright sky above. Mr. Thành, on the other hand, had a different dream. He too saw a patch of land—though it wasn’t clear whether it was the same one his wife saw—but he only observed radiant light streams shooting up from below. They reported all of this to me.
On one occasion, while I was also conducting a Mandala in the US and we sent information to Taiwan inviting anyone who wished to pray to sign up by registering their names to be written on plaques, then sending them over to the US so we could display them on the screen at the event.
A volunteer in Taiwan took on the task of writing the names for those over there. Every day, he would write down hundreds of names, then type them up and send them over to us. That evening, while dreaming, he saw someone mention that his name is written differently, and he noticed that the character was written in a way that was different from the one he wrote down during the day. In his dream, he clearly saw how the character should be written, and the next day he corrected it accordingly.
He then called me privately and said, “Master, I’m not making this up. I dreamt it—I clearly saw the character written that way—and I even called the relative who submited the name, to ask: ‘Yesterday, over the phone, when you mention the name to me, I noticed it had a different homophonic meaning. Is that character really supposed to be written like this?” The relative said that this character was the one, and he apologized, saying, 'Yesterday, I didn't know this was the character, so I wrote the other one.’
Chinese has many different words with different meanings, but they sound the same.
The deceased want their names to be written correctly. The volunteer said, 'I'm telling you this, the Mandala is incredibly powerful.' The following year, that man from Taiwan came to the U.S. to attend the Mandala in person because he felt it was very effective.
Then, when I went to Taiwan to do a Mandala, there were some strange things.
There was a man named Paul Chang, who was a disciple of Master Hsuan Hua. He is from Taipei, but our group was in Kaohsiung. He didn't know there would be a Mandala. Yet one day, his wife woke up and told him: 'Last night, the Dharma Protector told me that Master Hằng Trường is about to do a Mandala but is short on money!' His wife told him about Master Hằng Trường: 'We haven't contacted him, but now he needs money.’
“But how did you know he needed money?" "Well, in the dream, the Dharma Protector said, 'Master Hằng Trường needs money, help him.'" Paul Chang said, "How could that be? I haven't heard anyone talk about doing a Mandala. The word even sounds unfamiliar, it seems like something is wrong here.”
His wife said, "Then you should call and check if it's true. I saw this in my dream, so I'm telling you.”
He picked up the phone and contacted his acquaintances. To his surprise, he found out that a Mandala was indeed being organized in Taiwan. He was shocked and tell that to his wife, then asked her, "How much should we give now?" He thought 200 or 300 dollars would be enough - 200 or 300 U.S. dollars.
His wife said, "The Dharma Protector asked us to help Master Hằng Trường, but do you think giving 200 or 300 dollars will actually help?” That made him feel embarrassed. Since his wife was criticizing him, he knew he had to give more. So, he immediately gave 10,000 dollars. He brought that 10,000 dollars to donate to the group in Kaohsiung for the Dharma assembly. Later, his wife said, "He's too stingy, here's another 10,000 dollars." They knew how powerful the Mandala is, so even though they weren't wealthy — they decided to give as much as they could.
I told you this, not to encourage you to donate for the Mandala. But the point is to show how effective the Mandala is, to the extent that not only spirits, but even the Dharma Protectors want us to help.
That year’s Mandala in Taiwan had a mysterious occurrence.
At the place where we held the Mandala, there were two halls. One hall was used for the Mandala, and the opposite hall was for the Dharma teachings. Between the two halls was a large open area, and you had to go through a door to enter each hall. When the Mandala begins, we close all the doors to both halls to maintain a solemn atmosphere. The participants placed their valuable items in the Dharma hall, not bringing them into the Mandala, so that door had to be locked after everyone left the Dharma hall and entered the Mandala.
Closed to the time when people are about to line up to enter the mandala, a mysterious phenomenon occurred that couldn’t be explained. Just as everyone was about to enter the Mandala, a strange lady suddenly appeared. She looked odd because she wasn’t dressed like the others; she wore clothes as if she had come from another planet, not from Taiwan. She wasn’t short—she was very tall. She entered the Dharma hall and asked for a bundle of plaques, a lot of them, several hundred. She sat down and began writing names on the plaques. Meanwhile, the bell rang, and everyone started lining up to pass through to the Mandala while she continued writing. The person in charge of closing the doors told her to leave. She refused, saying she hadn’t finished writing and needed to finish first. So, he waited outside for five minutes, then ten minutes. As the door to the Mandala hall was about to close, he rushed inside to call her out since that was the only door still open. The other doors of the Dharma hall had already been closed, and this was the last door that needed to be closed before entering the Mandala. He opened the door, but she had vanished, and the stack of plaques was gone too!
Where did she go? She was nowhere to be found, and they couldn’t find her. The man went around searching and then locked the door. He went out and reported to Mr. Ngô, who was my left-hand assistant. He said, "There was a woman sitting here earlier with a stack of paques, but she disappeared, and I couldn’t find her." Mr. Ngô checked the security cameras, but there was no camera in the Dharma hall.
However, in the Mandala, the ushers, who are the ones bringing the plaques to the liberation circle in the center, said they didn’t know why there were suddenly so many plaques already placed in a tray. Several hundred of them, and no one knew where they came from.
After the mandala, I investigated and asked all the ushers, but no one knew. One lady said, "I was the one holding that tray, and when I came to take it, I found the plaques already in the tray. We don’t have time to think, so I just took the tray and continued collecting the plaques from the participants.”
The question that arose was: who wrote those plaques, and who placed them in the tray to bring up to the Buddha?
The Mandala has a shape like the picture below, consisting of five squares and a circle in the center. That circle represents the liberation circle and is also the true mind. The Mandala has four entrances. We have people bring the plaques in from all four entrances to the liberation circle and place them inside that circle. When the plaques enter the liberation circle, as we chant mantras, recite prayers, and focus deeply, the spirits realize they are being brought into the presence of the Buddha, into the Buddha's light.
This philosophy is found solely in the Avatamsaka Sutra, and it is called the “Unobstructed Interpenetration of All Phenomenons." This means that phenomena occurring here in the human realm are simultaneous with those occurring in the Buddha's realm. These two phenomena do not obstruct each other, and that is why it is called “unobstructed interpenetration.” Unobstructed means ‘no barrier’. So, when we hold the plaque, that is the action of an ordinary being. When we bring this plaque into the place where the Buddha is seated, it is no longer the statue of the Buddha that is there but that area is the Buddha’s realm. Because these two events are without obstruction, when we bring the plaques into the Mandala, it means we are guiding the spirits into the Buddha’s realm. It is truly marvelous!
Back to the story in Taiwan, I investigated and concluded that the plaques were likely written by that lady. The writing on the plaques was very neat and proper, not sloppy. Can you remember the names of 40 or 60 of your family members or friends? That stack of plaques probably contained more than 200!
Every time we do the Mandala, do you know how many plaques there are? In Orange County, each time there are 30,000 plaques. Some people list many names on one plaque, but that’s not how it should be done. Each person must have their own individual plaque. One plaque represents one spirit or soul. Don’t think this is something trivial. The spirits view the plaque as a real entity, while we see it just as a piece of paper. So, the plaque is very important. It is not a creation in this century but was created over 100 years ago.
You may have noticed that we don’t charge for the plaques. Because if we charged, not even one spirit could be saved, let alone thousands of spirits. Anything that involves money, business, or exchange cannot save anyone.
So, we create these plaques to write the names of the spirits and we need your help to write the names of your loved ones in order for it to be effective. Then, you must personally go into the Mandala and pray with compassion, which is what makes it truly effective. Once the plaques are written, the spirits will be invited into the Mandala. And because of this, we can understand the mysterious lady. We don’t know who she was. She could have been Kwan Yin Bodhisattva or could be someone else, but it must take an incredible memory to write 200 plaques.
So, the plaque is very important and beneficial for the spirits. But for us, the more we practice the mandala, the more we are able to transform. Right now, I’m only talking about the karmic debt of blood, but there are also monetary debts, and most of all, emotion debts. Oh my, the debt of love is so complicated, who knows when it will ever end.
You asked one question, but I ended up answering 18 things! These are real stories, with real people and real events, not made up.
If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer.
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