Dari Rulai Temple of Karuna

Living Buddha Dechan Jueren, 4 June 2003
Dari Rulai Temple, Los Angeles, CA
Translated by: Jaliniprabhakumara
Transcribed by: Decheng

In the old days in a village there was a guy called Yang Ur Hoo. Yang was not afraid of anything. He was not afraid of heaven or earth or anyone. He was simply a brute, he yelled at his parents, beat up old people or young people or anyone. Everyone in the village was scared of this guy.

If he wanted to drink some liquor and had nothing to eat with it, then he would go to some household and ask for a chicken, and the people there would feel it was their honor to give a chicken to him. He would take his bottle and go to the winery and get whatever wine or liquor he wanted. The owners had to let him do whatever he liked.

One day after he had drank a lot, he ordered his father to brew some tea for him. In the old days when they had to boil water to brew tea, certainly it was hard work, because they didn't have stoves or electricity. They had to actually build a fire first. When his father was pouring boiling water into the container he was kind of careless and spilled some on his own feet. So Yang's mother came to help out.
Because there was a delay for Yang to get his tea, he came over and slapped his mother a few times. His mother said, "You are such a bad person. One day, certainly the lord from hell will judge you."

This guy was not afraid of heaven, and he was not afraid of earth. He said, "I don't believe there is a hell, I don't believe there are ghosts." He started to open up his mouth and yell loudly, "Which ghost dares to come and get me? Which ghost dare to come get me?"

It just happened that time, two officials were passing through and they heard Yang's comments and felt that he was way out there. I say they are officials, they were the angel of death officials from hell, so they threw the cuffs over him and took his soul to hell. When these two officials from hell threw their cuffs over him, that's when they took his soul, and that's the moment his soul left his body and he realized it was too late.

The two ghost officials dragged him to hell. Then he put out his feet and tried to stop at the doorway and tried to yell out, "Help! Help! Daddy! Mom!" But he had the cuffs and the chains around his neck and he was unable to make a sound. He turned around and could see his own body laying there and saw his mother. She had seen that her son had died , so she put down the father and went over and tried to shake Yang's body. The father was no longer paying attention to his burned feet, and he ran over and tried to take his son's body into the bed and to care for him. His parents were trying to call him back and were crying very loudly.

These two ghosts just dragged this person to hell. Of course he was trying to slow them down and put his feet to the doorway to stop from moving, so the other ghost kicked him a few times and said, "Your father and your mother treated you very nice and you still behaved this way. Move your butt!" They dragged him to the lord of hell.

The lord of hell began to judge Yang. The belief is that the lord of hell's two attendants, one had an ox head and one had a horse head. They had torturing apparatus, nine different things laying before them. Yang got scared and knelt down in front of the lord of hell. The lord of hell looked down from his desk at the person lying down there and said, "Wait a minute, I told you two to go and grab another person, how come you brought this one here?"

The two ghost officials told the lord of hell what happened, "We knew we were supposed to get this old lady living next door but we happened to pass by and hear This guy yelling so we grabbed him instead." They told the whole story.

The lord of hell said, "Enough! For beating your father and mother, certainly you will get your punishment, throw him into the boiling oil!"

Yang got so scared and said, "I dare not to do that again, ever!"

But you have to understand about the reality of the universe. When the time is not up for the person, even in hell, the lord of hell can say this angrily but the ghosts dared not to do it. The time was not up for that person yet. His life was not supposed to end yet. So in a way, those two dragged him to hell not to punish him, but to educate him and show him there really is a hell.

Yang was begging for mercy so the lord of hell decided, "O.K., take him on a tour, show him what's in here."

So Yang went on a tour in hell, and saw many ghosts being punished for their behavior when they were alive. They were poking out the eyeballs, and breaking the legs and arms, and sawing off the body, and all sorts of stuff. Yang got very, very scared. After his trip in hell, then they returned in front of the lord of hell, and the lord asked him, "Do you dare to beat your own father and mother again?"

Yang said, "I will never do that again."

The lord asked him, "On this tour, how many familiar faces did you recognize?"

Yang said, "I have seen many old friends and relations."

The lord asked him, "Have any of them asked you to do something for them?"

Yang said to the lord, "They asked me to do some things for them. Some of them said they owe a certain person some money, some said they owe a certain person a favor. They asked me when I return to the other side of the world, when I come back alive if I can give the money to the person that was owed."

The lord asked, "What else?"

Yang replied, "There was an acquaintance…a scholar."

The lord of hell asked Yang, "What's this business with the scholar?"

Yang replied, "This guy told me that when he took the national exams he cheated and borrowed other people's answers to the exams."

The lord asked, "What did you see he was getting in hell?"

Yang said, "I saw that the scholar was being punished in hell, I saw two ghosts grabbing his hands, taking a knife, and cutting, stripping his fingers, then dipping them in salt, then they put them in boiling water and cooked them."

The lord of hell asked him, "What did the scholar say to you?"

Yang said, "The scholar told me when I return to the living, to make sure and tell all the young children to study well and never cheat."

Then the lord said, "Hmmm, well…this scholar is certainly repenting now and understands his own bad deeds. He may be released now. Release him! Now for those others that asked you to do something for them, if their favor money has been paid off to the people that they owe, then their sentence will be lessened, and they will be released. If not, then they will continue to receive their punishments. If when you return to the living, if you have not delivered the message that all these people are being punished here, to the people that they asked you to tell it to, then you will receive punishment."

When Yang heard this from the lord of hell, then he realized he was going to be released back to the living, so he bowed to the lord of hell and said, "I will certainly do this and I will be good."

The lord of hell said, "You may return now," and commanded his two officials, "Deliver him back and get me the old lady that lives next door, it is her time."

When he was returning to his house, before he entered the body, he saw his father and mother and his wife and kids all there crying and dressing him up in a new set of clothes. He saw there was a red coffin waiting for him outside the door. In the old days if you died young, then they had a red coffin for you. Many neighbors had come over too. All of them were helping out, and it was about time to take his body and put it in the coffin. That's when he entered back into his body, and he sat up and scared everybody out.

He said, "I'm not dead!" Yang got up and bowed to his father and mother and promised never to beat them again. At that time they even had a feng shui teacher there, ready to pick a good place to bury him.

So he told his story to all the people there and his family members, "Well, those two ghost officials were supposed to grab the old lady next door, it was her time to die. At that time when they were passing by our house to get the old lady, I had just slapped my mother and was kicking her, and saying there's no ghost who dares to come and get me, so they came and got me and dragged me to hell."

Yang told everything he experienced in hell. Of course, people there didn't believe much what he said. Why is it that they didn't believe him? Because he had a reputation for being a big liar, so nobody believed him. Then he began to tell them who still owed so much money to the living who were there and that was why their spirits were stuck in hell. People still didn't believe him, so he told them, "Well, this person in hell told me, if you go to this place in this house, you can open up a secret compartment, you will find some money there, and you can return it to the person that he owes."

He told everyone everything that he learned in hell. A few hours later, they heard the crying sounds next door, the old lady had just passed away. At that time, everyone there began to believe that what Yang said may be true. A few of the family that were there were neighbors, and went to look in the places for the money, and they all found it.

Ever since that experience, this guy, Yang Ur Hoo, learned to become a very good person. He not only respected all his elders and cared for all young ones, but he no longer stole things from people. He remembered the scholar's comments to tell the children to study well and not to cheat. This Yang Ur Hoo had not much education, but because of the scholars comments in hell, he helped educate the children by supporting them financially, and at the same time he also attended school and learned for himself.

When he was in his old age, he wrote a book. 'Da Hoo Li' the book is a Chinese title…hard to translate. It means something like, Beating Hell, Accosting to the Lord of Hell, or something like that.

In China today, stories about hell, there are actually ten lords, or ten kings that sit on the bench of the judge in hell, and all these things that happen there, all these stories came from this guy. This is a real story. At that time his home…the scenery was like…there were two lions in front of his house, and I think there are pine trees behind the house. The kind of books that talk about hell, they usually have this kind of image on the cover of the book. Two lions standing…going into a gate, a door, with big trees and mountains behind.

This story has a lot of truth in it. There is a common Chinese saying, "Three feet off the ground, there are spirits. Because what our eyes cannot see, does not mean they don't exist." When we do dharma practice, what that means is to really correct oneself to the point that we have rid ourselves of all kind of falsehoods, and we are real to ourselves. So we have to be a real person, and not lie. If you were to lie, in appearance you would be lying to others, but at the same time you are lying to yourself. All your deeds, there are secretaries to the lord of hell, they record everything that people do. However, if in the past you did bad things, but now you realize it and begin to repent, and no longer do bad things and be able to continue to be good, some period of time later, they may actually strike off the page that recorded your past bad deeds. So in the past, certainly everybody made mistakes.

Often the reason was because we didn't understand much, and we made mistakes. There's nothing to be afraid of if you make mistakes. What is to be afraid of is if you don't accept your own mistakes…recognize them in order to change them. If you really correct yourself, you will never make the same mistake over again. Every one of us, we often make mistakes whether we are aware of it or not.

How to change to correct oneself? This is important. When we work on ourselves to change ourselves, that means we have to be realistic. I often say if you want to change everything, then first you have to be able to change yourself. Only when you are able to change yourself will you be able to change the conditions of your environment.

I remember there's a drawing called the pendants of Buddhas, or the complete hierarchy of Buddhas. In that drawing, in the front row, is Ksitigarbha bodhisattva. There are two guys standing next to Ksitigarbha, one is an older guy with a beard, and he is holding pens and some kind of notepad in his hands. That is this guy Yang Ur Hoo, that visited hell. That's his reincarnation, so when he attained awakening, he became the attendant to Ksitigarbha bodhisattva. Yang Ur Hoo in his later incarnation was called Yangyin. His name Yangyin sounds like yin and yang. So people refer to this guy, he keeps records of the living and the dead, of their deeds, good and bad.

Why is he holding pens and a notepad in his hand? It means he is an attendant of Ksitigarbha bodhisattva. Whatever you say or whatever you do, he will record and take notes of the year, month, day and time. When your time comes, and they take you and drag you to the lord of hell to be judged, on your judgment day you will not be able to deny what was said or done.

If we know this much, why is it that we do not want to really change and be real to ourselves, and to begin to correct ourselves while we are still alive? Dharma practice is really working on oneself. If you have practiced so well that you have corrected yourself and you no longer make mistakes and are always considerate of others, when your time comes that you have to leave this world, what comes to get you are not the two ghost officials, it's a white horse and carriage-cart. And you don't go to the lord of hell to be judged, they will take you to heaven. If you have not practiced well in your life to correct your behavior and your mistakes, then you will certainly hear the clicking sounds of the manacles. When we have time again, I will tell you more stories from this book, by this guy that visited hell. Even though I tell you these stories, and they may sound like jokes, but in hell, this is really so in reality.

When that day comes, if you were to become my disciple, you don't have to worry about it that much. Even if you were to end up in hell and go to hell, they will shut their door and wont want you to come in because you have learned many mantras. Mantras have a lot of unimaginable things. The ghosts in hell will not even be able to stop you so they don't want you to come in. However, it doesn't mean you can do bad things or make lots of mistakes either. Because, hell will not judge you, but certainly the law will judge you, and for the next few lifetimes you will be born to die, to experience a few different terrible deaths, and that's your karma if you were to do bad things.

This is to tell you, never do anything to cheat or lie to others. And never take advantage of others. Never spread rumors and talk about things that have not happened. Never take things of others. Don't owe favors. Including….etiquette….sanitation, and respect your elders and your parents, and really help people that need help. And really learn how to respect everyone. Continue to learn from the strengths of others in order to change ones own shortcomings so you can be a better person. Then naturally the ghost officials will not come to bother you. What is dharma practice about? Dharma practice…you have to be real to yourself. You have to have that moral sense.

These next few days if you are over 60 and are doing the longevity practice, take these next few days to memorize the mantra well. When I return I will lead the practice for you. If you are unable to memorize the mantra, when I return I will not wait for you. I will start the practice, and whoever knows the mantra will learn it.

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