At the beginning of this year, I suddenly received a telephone call from my sister who told me that she had had a dream. In the dream she saw the sun fall straight down out of the sky and set. At that time I was beside her and she asked me,
“Why has the sun set?” I answered, “Because the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the West want to welcome my Teacher to the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss.” And so she called me to see if something had happened to my Teacher.
At the time I didn’t want to believe that dream─I hoped it couldn’t come true. After I arrived in America, my attention was always directed towards the state of the Master’s illness. It was only after receiving the news of the Master’s Nirvana that I remembered this dream. At the time when the Master was about to be born in this world, his mother also had a dream in which Amitabha Buddha appeared. Now the conditions that brought the Master here to take living beings across have ended, and he has returned to the land where he came from. I believe his spirit will remain eternally and that he is still according with conditions and responding to opportunities to rescue living beings.
Feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness are like emptiness and form.
Again he calls, “Shariputra, pay attention, listen!”
All dharmas are empty of characteristics, lacking a nature of their own.
Not produced, not destroyed, the principle silently pervades.
Not defiled, not pure, the nature is separate from corrupting filth;
It neither increases nor diminishes─enlighten to the mysterious Middle Way.
In the pure and deep ultimate silence, all creation is transcended:
A sudden awakening to the original perfect fusion of self and dharmas.
From the Venerable Master Hua’s Verses without a Stand for the Heart of Prajna Paramita Sutra |
