What Determines the Height of a Person's Existence?

Living in the mundane world, if you had to choose between high technology and high moral character, which would everyone choose? Which one determines the quality of a person's life? Or replace high technology with high academic credentials, high culture, and high personal quality, or with high position, great wealth and honor, and great power. High quality does not entirely refer to the enjoyment of the physical body and material pleasures; it mainly refers to the mind's enjoyment, as well as present and future karmic retribution. Within the six realms of saṃsāra, the heavenly realm has a higher quality of existence than the human realm, the human realm has a higher quality of existence than the three evil realms, and the noble ones who have transcended the six realms of saṃsāra have a higher quality than ordinary sentient beings.

The reason I raise the above questions is that recently, as well as some time ago, I have seen elementary and middle school teachers with virtually no teacherly virtue, and even university teachers without the deportment of a teacher; even some undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and international students have very poor moral character, regardless of gender or age. Seeing these people, I know that the current educational environment is extremely bad. The goal of education is not virtue, but knowledge, diplomas, degrees, and credentials—valuing the external and not the internal. If teachers are like that, can they educate students to be excellent in both character and learning? Learning can be excellent, but character cannot be. Education pays less and less attention to the quality of the mind; there is no education aimed at elevating the mind and spirit, and even learning is used merely as window dressing, for acquiring the various resources of the world. Is education abroad good? It is not good either; likewise there is no education of the mind and spirit, no attention to people's moral character and quality.

Is the Buddhist community good? Likewise not good. The monastics and laypeople in Buddhism all come from the mundane world and cannot separate from it; the old defilements cannot be removed, and the new defilements cannot be shut out. Buddhist educators cannot even resolve their own afflictions—especially laypeople, whose worldly minds and selfish desires are heavy—so how can they educate their students well? If things go on like this, what hope is left for humanity? Data and materials from various sources show that humanity is on a downhill slide. When it slides to a certain point, it will slip down—slip down into the three evil realms. Not many people will remain in the human world; the numbers will grow fewer and fewer.

Modern culture and knowledge cannot fill people with positive energy, cannot elevate humanity's thought and morality, cannot sublimate the mind and spirit. Likewise, the knowledge and theories in Buddhism have not raised the personal cultivation and quality of Buddhist practitioners—with the exception of a few individuals of high quality and awakening. So for people of low quality, without cultivation and without virtue, can their quality of existence be good? Whether it is good or not, just look at the world's general environment in recent years and you will know: all kinds of disasters, natural calamities and man-made catastrophes occurring frequently, small-scale wars unceasing, and there is no guarantee that large-scale wars will not appear. People's hearts have become more selfish, and all are short-sighted, caring only about the square inch before their eyes, unable to make long-term plans, let alone consider matters of future lives. Judging from the overall world situation and its trajectory, the outlook for humanity is very grim.

Then, from a longer-term perspective, from the perspective of cause and effect across the three lifetimes, what influences humanity's destiny—culture, knowledge, and theory, high technology, or humanity's own moral character, cultivation, and practice? What determines cause and effect? Is it determined by the culture and knowledge, status and power, wealth and so on that the worldly masses recognize—those things that represent a person's worldly standing—or is it determined by humanity's thought and morality, and by concrete, actual bodily, verbal, and mental actions? If it is the former, then where are all the successful people of past and present, those of great fame and great wealth and honor? Search through the six realms—in which realm are they? How many have attained human bodies? How many have ascended to heaven? And how many are in the three evil realms? Why did the emperors and nobles of the past fall into the three evil realms after death, while nowadays there are reports of farmers and ordinary people at the bottom of society being directly reborn as humans? What determines such cause and effect?

I once said to a disciple that regarding a child's education, cultural knowledge is fine as long as it is roughly adequate; there is no need to compete with others, spending high prices to learn knowledge that is of no benefit to birth, death, and saṃsāra, theories that have nothing to do with one's own moral character. Those things cannot determine one's destination in birth and death, and may even increase the karma of birth and death. A person should be more down-to-earth. What does it mean to be down-to-earth? Whatever relates to the great matter of birth and death is the most down-to-earth; everything else can just be muddled through—it is all unimportant. What future prospects, what wealth and honor, what superiority over others—none of it is necessary. Look high and far: one should harbor great aspirations, not drift along with the worldly current of the masses. Only by transcending the mundane is there a good future.

From middle school onward, I studied with practicality in mind, always asking myself what use this subject was, what use that subject was. If I thought something was useless, I would just muddle through it and not study seriously—especially the liberal arts subjects requiring memorization; I generally did not study them at all. In high school, I studied according to the teacher's attitude: if the attitude was good, I studied carefully and thoroughly; if not, I just muddled through. When I was in a good mood, I would take first place in exams; when not, I would hover around upper-middle, so the teachers dared not criticize me. In university, I evaluated every single course one by one and found that ninety percent of the courses were useless, so I studied extracurricular books; when disturbed, I would go to the school library to read, and when I found nothing worth reading there, I went to the city library. Every day I would drop by the classroom to check the situation and leave before class started; when classes were over, I returned to the classroom by myself to read books. For exams I always crammed at the last minute, yet I never failed a single one and never needed a makeup exam. In this way I muddled through to the end of my student days.

Be more down-to-earth as a person. What is genuine and real transcends the mundane; what is vulgar and worldly is not genuine. What is not real cannot last long—without knowing when, it vanishes without a trace, and you do not even know where to chase after it.

"The mind is the master of all things; it does not wither with the four seasons." In worldly dharmas, if one does not attend to the mind's actions, one cannot obtain good karmic retribution; in supramundane dharmas, this is even more so. Studying Buddhism and cultivating practice is precisely cultivating the mind; the goal is to change the mind's actions—the mind is the target of all cultivation. If one does not attend to the mind's actions and the mind's nature, but only delves into theoretical knowledge and engages in techniques, this is the behavior of abandoning the root and chasing the branches. Many people just keep reading books, researching, pondering, and speculating, paying no attention at all to the mind's nature; they do not cultivate the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, do not practice the bodhisattva's six perfections, do not bring forth the bodhi mind, yet want only the fruit, not knowing what is called fruit, where the fruit comes from, or what the fruit represents. With heavy utilitarian minds, they take shortcuts, yet in the end circle around the longest way. The mind is the root; the shortcut is precisely cultivating the mind. If the mind is good, everything is good; if the mind is not good, nothing is good. As for knowledge, theories, and various techniques, if they have nothing to do with the mind, then technique is merely technique, and there is no fruit.

What is fruit? In fact, there is no fruit at all. The so-called fruit is just a term chosen to express and describe the degree of purity of the mind. If the mind is not pure, the term "fruit" cannot be used to describe it. Fruit represents the pure state of the mind; if the mind is not pure, using techniques will not yield any fruit.

A few months ago I wanted to explain the Noble Eightfold Path again in more detail, to discuss in detail what is "right," and to what degree "right" must be achieved in each aspect before the Eightfold Path can be considered fully cultivated, before the conditions for realizing the fruits are complete, and before self-view can be eliminated. To this day I have not been able to squeeze out the time to teach it. Not many people pay attention to the cultivation of the seven factors of enlightenment, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment—these are precisely the cultivation of the mind, the conditions for seeing the Path. People nowadays are short-sighted, so ignorant and utilitarian that they rush only toward the result, ignoring the process and the prerequisite conditions. What fruit can come of this? The fruit of birth and death in saṃsāra, the fruit of the three evil realms—nothing else.

Most Buddhist practitioners cannot bring forth the bodhi mind; they have no vows or vow-driven conduct, pay no attention to Buddhist affairs, ignore the affairs of sentient beings, close their eyes and care only about their own little matters—extremely selfish, wanting only to receive and never to give, let alone to repay. "To repay upward the four kindnesses"—these matters have nothing to do with them. The kindness others have shown them, that is all just what others ought to do; they can barely take care of themselves, so what kindness do they care about? They owe the four kindnesses with a clear conscience, without any guilt. They offer not the slightest repayment or dedication to the Three Jewels community, to which they owe such deep kindness. "A drop of kindness should be repaid with a gushing spring," yet they, having received a gushing spring of kindness, are unwilling to repay even a drop. Such people who know neither kindness nor gratitude—no matter how much Dharma they have studied, no matter how much knowledge they have acquired—gain not the slightest actual benefit. They will die just as they would have died, and transmigrate just as they would have transmigrated.