Tea & Buddhism 🙏🇮🇳🇨🇳🇯🇵🍵🦜

August 26, 2024

Tea Craft Diaries

This morning, I received a message from President Su of Fuzhou Wuliting Strait Tea City Chamber of Commerce. Invited me to attend the cross-Strait tea ceremony and licensing ceremony on September 5. I said that it was not convenient to attend in Taiwan. He said that I could send a video and say a few words. I said yes, and I was ready to send a videos and ask him to send me the content of the event.

Life is very hard and very tedious, and it is not easy to be free. If you want to achieve something, you have to have lots and lots of tedious things to bother you, and it’s best to simplify things. However, it is not easy to simplify things, so you have to have a team or a group. In the agrarian society, there were families who could help with things, there were more people to help, and now it is up to groups to organize.

We pursue truth and beauty, so-called “truth and beauty,” and the real “truth and beautiful” is a problem that has no time and no space. Therefore, true goodness and beauty is also an eternal pursuit, the pursuit of perfection, goodness, and holiness is the same, just a goal, an ideal pursuit.
In the afternoon, I went to the clinic to see the doctor for some stomach pills. The doctor said: There was no fever, only mild inflammation. Just take a pill and eat it. For more than ten days, my stomach was always uncomfortable.

For the question of Eastern and Western learning, we have to accept the Eastern view of life under the influence of Eastern; However, today it is an open world, the whole world is a village, a community with a shared future, and it is also necessary to consult each other. It is important to know and learn Western culture. The teachings of Buddha are more than 2,500 years old, 544 years earlier than those of Jesus. The theoretical development of Buddhism is older than the theoretical evolution of Jesus’ Christianity, and the compassion and love for all living beings is more thorough. From the Four Noble Truths to the Four Pledges, Mahayana Buddhism has been integrated. The cosmic truth enlightened by the Buddha is “suffering, gathering, extinction, and Tao.” This is the level of ethical principles set by the Buddha regarding the essence of truth, which, through the practice of the world, has developed into the “four outstanding vows.”

I. The meaning of suffering. Because all sentient beings suffer so much, they make the promise that “all sentient bodies have no limit to their vows.”
II. Meditation. Because suffering is accumulated by karma, I would like to “swear an endless sorrow.”
III. The Buddha, in order to enable all living beings to bear witness, therefore made a vow to learn “the infinite vocabulary of the Truth.”
IV. The Truth of the Dharma. In order to bring all sentient beings to the Dharma, he made a promise “The Dharma is a supreme oath to be fulfilled.”
When the Buddha meditated under the linden tree, he discovered the phase of the truth in the universe, in the world and in the world, the “cultivation path,” and proclaimed the first trifold Dharma to the world.

The first illustration was to explain the definition of the content of the four Noble Truths: this is suffering and compulsion; This is a collection of appeals; This is extinct, verifiable; This is the Tao, and it can be modified.

The second instruction is to teach the disciples to practice the four teachings of the Holy Truth in order to eliminate their troubles and obtain their relief: This is suffering, and you must know it. This is the book, and you must leave it; This is extinction, and you testify; This is the doctrine, and you must practice it.

In a third testimony, the Buddha told his disciples that he had realized the Four Noble Truths and urged them to learn the same as if they were courageous and diligent: This is suffering, and I know it. This is the set, and I have broken it; This is extinction, and I have proved it; That’s the mantra, and I’ve mended it.

The two understandings of suffering and compassion are the causes and consequences of the world which are boundless; compassion is the cause and suffering is the consequence; The two understandings of extinction and Tao are the causes and consequences of the world in the realm of understanding. Tao is the cause and extinction is the consequence. To practice the truth of this Buddhist law, one must practice through the four vows of oath, and can reach the six thousand steps of the vast Buddha Dharma. Therefore, the Four Pledges of Mahayana Buddhism can be said to be mainly for the Buddha to implement in practice and practice the four holy truths of Buddhism as said in the past, which is the gradual perfection of Buddhist philosophy in the development of space and time. From the Buddhist doctrine of the Four Noble Truths to the practical and evidence-based Four Pledges, it is clear that the Buddha’s teachings have a timeliness, coherence, and even developmental character, which can be consistent throughout the system, so that the Buddhism transcends historical time and space.

The Four Noble Truths are like the process of healing a disease: suffering, like a man’s disease; Several causes of illness; Taoism is like a cure for illness; Extinguish if the disease has been cured. To learn the Buddha is to eliminate the troubles of greed, avarice, and delusion. The four Noble Truths are from the world of enchantment to the world of enlightenment. A path of liberation from the yoke of suffering to the end.

The Four Noble Truths explain the relationship between life in the universe: the universe inhabited by life is called the world, and the world is made up of a cluster of suffering. If one wants to escape from the suffering and reach the heavenly kingdom of the earth, one must die.

The Four Noble Truths, together with the Twelve Initiates and the Three Dharmas, constitute the three major programmes of Buddhist teaching. Although the names are different, the meaning is the same: the main content of the twelve initiation is the ideological basis of the triad, while the four Noble Truths are the specific forms of the initiation thought. All three are the fundamental ideas of the early Buddha. The four Noble Things, the twelve initiates, and the triad are the foundation of Buddhism.

Courtesy: Taiwan tea master Fang.