Appearance of the Buddha in this world was for the sake of saving all the people from the fire of 3 poisons (they are Greed, Anger and Stupidity) and guiding them to attain Perfect Enlightenment. This is Lotus Sutra, Chapter 3, “A Parable On the way to Rajagrha, Magadha, Sakyamuni and His 1000 disciples who accompanied Him stopped by Mount Gayasirsa.

Standing at the top of the mountain, they looked down on a town burning furiously. The Buddha then preached a parable of a burning fire: “Just as the town below is burning furiously in a fire, or more furiously than that, a fire of the evil passions of the 3 poisons is burning in our mind, causing every perception thought, and action of ours to be the source of our agony and suffering. However, when we observe this correctly and try to stay away from our evil thoughts and actions, the fire of evil passions in our mind will disappear.”

Sakyamuni Buddha teaches us that there are 8 sufferings of people. They are sufferings of birth, aging, illness, death, meeting those one hates, separating from loved ones, not gaining what one seeks, and attachment to one’s body and mind. And they all stem from our evil passion.

I think that the basic reason why we have so many difficult problems hovering over the world today is we human beings, cannot find the solution to these problems and keep the world in harmony because of our evil passions.

It is preached in the Lotus Sutra. “The cause of suffering is greed. When greed is eliminated, there is no cause of suffering.” This urges us to curb our desires in our daily life and be satisfied with less. It is also true that various desires and agonies proliferate when we compare ourselves to others. It is necessary, therefore, for us to stop evaluating ourselves against others. Instead, we should recognize the interdependency of everyone and that we all live in association with others. In other words, this world is composed of not only us human being’s but also many other living being such as animals and plants as well as inanimate objects like oceans, mountains, rivers and lands. Realizing that mankind is just one of many members of the natural environment, which are all interdependent and are of one flesh. Therefore, I think that we should show our respect to all things around us.

Thank you for listening.

Cin Cia Kam Xia