(Second question: If our mind is not pure, can we meditate?) Try to make it pure. But the more you meditate, the purer you’ll get. (But the pure one is… I mean… Sometimes, for example, one of my friends, every day he goes to church. Every Sunday, he must attend the church. But when he goes inside, in the church, he brings me along. He’s very holy. He’s very holy. But after he steps out the door, out of the church, he goes to the market on the corner there. He goes and buys a lottery.) Buy what? (Lottery.) (Lottery. Lottery. Lottery.) Huh? (Lottery.) Lottery! Ah! Lottery, is that unholy? It’s very cheap, no? Right? About ten dollars or something? (One dollar.) Huh? (One dollar.) One dollar only is alright. And this is allowed in the country, no? So it’s OK. You don’t call him unholy because he buys a one-dollar ticket. (OK. Thank You. Thank You.) Why do you like it so much? I see you’re enthusiastic! What is it about it? You like the ghost girl? Should he send it to your room next time? What is it that makes you so happy? What was it? (Unusual question.) Unusual question. All of you are unusual.
(Master, I have a personal problem with the meditation aspect, after initiation.) After initiation, you have a problem? (The problem is that in our daily life, most of us are mixed in an environment of mixed, interrelated.) Right. (So, to be a complete [vegan] would actually be, not to say impossible, but difficult really, especially if you are running a business or if you are meeting friends.) Really? (Or if you go for...) No, no, no. OK, OK. Enough, enough, enough, enough. I know all your excuses.
(I’m not making excuses, like…) It is. (…attending a wedding dinner.) It is, it is, it is. You are not the only business. What are you doing of a business? (So in other words, do we want to make ourselves alienated. That means, when we sit in front of a ten-person table, and we do not just… we just sit there and drink [non-alcoholic]. Can we do that or not?) Sure. (I mean, this is what we are asked to be, no?) No, you can tell them that you are vegan, and they would prepare something for you. Just [be] straight, say, “I’m vegan from so-and-so day. My doctor tells me I am on a vegan diet, Dr. Ching Hai.”
(Sorry.) Yes? (I have another question. I have seen one of the shows, like the one of the Chinese shows, which is Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch.) Yes. (I have seen one part that He had eaten among the robbers and the bandits.) Yes. (But He purely ate vegetables in the mixed food. Can I do that?) You want to do that? (Because…) It’s no good for you. First, you don’t know whether He truly got the vegetables out or He cooked alone, because He cooked. He was the one who cooked for them, so why should He cook with the (animal-people) meat and then take it out? He should have cooked different dishes. So now, first, we don’t know, OK? We’re not sure about whether He was a pure vegan or not, so we cannot say yes or no. Now, second, it’s no good for you. It’s not nutritious enough. So you might just as well cook it with a proper diet with tofu, and gluten meat, and all kinds of beans, and/or bean curds and that, so that you have enough nutrition. If you just pick out vegetables from the (animal-people) meat dish, it’s already (animal-people) meat marinated. It’s not very nutritious for you. Please keep on with your vegan diet if you truly want to aim for eternal life.
(OK, in that case, I understand. In that case, I will have to sacrifice and be more or less alienated.) You cannot… you don’t have good food from your wife? (See, again, my family constitutes mostly of the Taoism environment.) Understand, yeah. (And in order to be…) Learn to cook, cook yourself. Cook yourself well, OK? I feel very sorry for all of you because you were born in a very unfavorable condition. If now and again you have to force yourself in this situation, of course, I don’t say anything, but it’s not good for you, only. Whatever benefit you get from two hours of meditation, it’s “beef-en” away in this beefsteak gravy. It’s a waste of time. Understand? It’s too much waste for your effort. Otherwise, I feel very sorry for all of you. Very, very sorry.
But I was also a very busy housewife before, and working for different purposes. But I was also keeping the vegan diet very strictly. Many of the businessmen here, they travel around the world, and they keep the vegan diet, and they won’t die. You stand up? He travels; he lives in hotels all the time. He can never stay at any home because he always travels around the world. His house is a hotel. Yeah. And his wife also. Sometimes she can come and cook for him. Sometimes he has to eat just salad and vegan cheese, and fruits, and nuts, and vegan milk. These are very pure foods, and they’re very nourishing.
Some of the Indian yogis, they drink for many months, and they walk miles every day, not that they sit in the cave. One of the names… I forgot. Ramdas. Ramdas. He was a Saint of India. He’s not very famous. Maybe you don’t know Him. (Yes, that’s right.) You know Him. And He wrote a book about Himself. He climbed mountains and crossed rivers. Sometimes He meditates, but sometimes He doesn’t. He walked all over India. And sometimes He goes on like this for many months. And no problem.
But I do feel very much sympathy for you, believe it or not, for all of you. I wish it could be better for you, but we were born in the wrong place. That’s why we have to leave. Otherwise, you will keep eating (animal-people) meat forever here and you are grinding yourself. We exchange our soul for a few pieces of (animal-people) beef. It’s also not worth it. It’s very difficult. I understand all these problems. Eat vegan cheese, and tofu, and fresh vegan yogurt, fruit, and nuts. (Red beans, green beans, all these can eat? Any beans?) Any beans at all. But not the sentient beings. I’m playing with words.
You take a rest now. You suffered from carsickness today; don’t work so hard. Ask others to do it. (Master.) Tell them to do it themselves, and you take a rest.
(Sorry. I’d like to share with the brother here, that in Singapore, there are lots of places he can entertain because I personally have been brought to many restaurants by my own boss, who is a non-vegetarian. Cafe Palm has gotten a special section of vegetarian [vegan] food. Raffles City, the Western restaurant near the Pinnacle.) But not everyone can afford to go to restaurants every day. (No, I know. But he’s talking about entertainment.) Oh, understand. Take them to the vegan restaurant and tell them, “Eat the salad, or you will die.”
(Master, it’s because in Singapore now the fashion is towards healthy eating.) Yeah. (And a lot of restaurants now are preparing separate menus. You just have to ask the waiter) Yeah. (and tell them first.) Even on airplanes, in hospitals, in the army, everywhere now. (Because I started off not knowing any. And when I told my boss, “I’m a [vegan], I can’t just follow you for lunch.” And he’s basically a banker, and he says, “No problem, I can just find you something.” And he went to a restaurant and asked them, “Do you have [vegan] food?” And they all came up with all the dishes that I could eat.) Yeah, sure, sure. They respect you for that. No one forces you to eat (animal-people) meat. But sometimes with the family members, we might have more problems than with the work colleagues. Right? Right.
(But according to my wife, she said, “[Vegan] food is more expensive than non-vegan food.) I do not think so. I do not think so, brother. Is vegan food more expensive? (No.) No, not really. No, no. She probably is not used to the price. Tell her to look again. (I think we’ve got to look at what we’re getting. If we’re getting enlightenment, paying a “price” of being a [vegan] is very minor.) Right, right, brother. That’s it.
(Master, there’s always a question I’ve been asking myself. I mean, you read the Bible, the first chapter of Genesis, it says that God said that men were created from Adam and Eve. And then they committed sin,) Yes. (and they were chased out of the Garden. And then after that, they started to do farming, trade animal[-people], all this kind of things like that. But according to science, like archaeology, they found that men are actually very primitive; they stay in caves, all this. And how, I mean, like, there’s a contradiction there. Right?) Yes, before Adam and Eve fell, they lived in Heaven. But later, they lived in caves. That’s also correct, or not? (But the Bible says that they started to do farming. That means they were quite high in the mind.) Yes. Some of them were doing farming, but some are wandering to other different places, and maybe lived in caves. Or maybe after a disaster, like Noah’s flood, farms were all gone; they lived in caves and dug in again, tried again. Our civilization, according to history, had ups and downs many times, so different. There are a lot of great civilizations before us. And then, also, there were periods of darkness and things like that. So it could be that Adam and Eve first came, they had a glorious civilization, but afterward, the descendants have sunk probably deeper into the lower understanding. So, the life in the world has changed again, into a little bit of darkness.
(Then the story about the Tower of Babel, that’s how so many races came about. Is that true too?) It’s true, because we always… It’s symbolic. You don’t need to believe in the Tower, but you should believe in the story that our ego is even higher than what God can stand. So, Hes has to destroy it, so that we may live in our humbleness and know God within ourselves. Otherwise, we keep building all kinds of material, towers, or whatever, and being proud of it, and forget our greater Wisdom. We can build the whole universe even, never mind being proud of only one tower. God wants us to know that we are greater than that. To build one tower is nothing. But they were proud of it. That’s why God saw that they were going to[ward] destruction. They were proud of a materialistic achievement. Only a small part of their power and forgot their greatness, that they created the whole universe. And are omnipresent, omnipotent. That’s why God destroyed it, and separated them. As a symbolic… It’s a story for our lesson on ego. These stories are told by Enlightened Masters. Sometimes They invent a story, or They tell a story in symbolic ways to teach Their disciples, to convey Their message in a clearer way, so that they’ll remember better through a story.
Photo Caption: Even a Tiny Thing Shows Character
