Question: Dear Master, on the way to the Truth – the ultimate goal. Do the religious dedication and the belief in Buddhism important? How important is that? And how can we cultivate the beliefs and devotion to Buddhism?
“Some people can understand when they do good deeds, some can do only when they understand. For those who only understand by doing good deeds, we have to open meditation centers and retreats. For those who will practice only when they understand, we have to teach about the Truth and answer the questions. Both are essential. This is solving problems of not knowing what is good and not knowing what is right. In Thabarwa center we emphasize both practicing meditation and volunteering or helping the others who are in need. We get what we give, we don’t get what we don’t give. Because of giving accommodation, food, medicine…, we can accompany old and sick people, that’s why we receive many accommodations, food, medicine, and Dhamma friends as donations for free. Besides, we are sharing about cause and effect and our experiences of the Truth. That’s why we also understand more and more cause and effect and the Truth. In this way, we are developing both material and spiritual.
The cause of lacking spiritual knowledge is not sharing what we understand and not dealing with all kinds of good deeds by keeping precepts and controlling the mind stable and pure. What we are doing here in this meditation center is for everyone, all conditions and everywhere, every time. We should not understand that meditation or doing good deeds need to be practiced only in the meditation centers. Doing good deeds is for both who are able to do or not, who can understand or not. Because of not understanding like this, people are not practicing. If we do this continuously we are sure to develop not only our spiritual standards but also that of the others who are concerning us.
To know the Truth and to get enlightenment, religious devotion and belief are essential, not to reject. Religion may be the most powerful of all in society. If we don’t believe it, we cannot have the power of religion. We need to attach to religion but if we cannot detach we cannot understand the Truth by our own experiences. If we accept religion we can understand about religion and we can use it. Besides, we need to know our strong attachment to religion also. It will be helpful to detach from attachment to religion. If we don’t understand about religion we cannot get involved in religious ceremonies. If we cannot detach from our attachment of religion we cannot help others to detach also. With attachment we cannot experience the truth by ourselves. If we don’t have the right understanding of the Truth, we cannot believe the religion fully. Without religion we cannot have even knowledge about the Truth. Without detachment of the religion, we cannot have our own experiences of the Truth. When we are using religion we should try to be using only, by knowing our own greed, anger, and absence of mindfulness. We need to correct our mistakes all the time. We must dare to abandon the misunderstanding, the idea of someone or I, something or mine. We must be able to be unified with nature or the Truth.
Believing in someone or something or a time, a place are the causes of ignorance and attachment. Because all these are not real, just to-use-only. We need to believe in religious persons, religious leaders, places, teachings; not to reject, we need to believe like this; but not to attach, we need to be mindful of our present actions of good deeds. The more we can emphasize doing good deeds at the present moment, the more we can detach from the others. Believing in the present actions of good deeds including keeping precepts and keeping the mind to be stable and pure is the best we can do. This is the way to use our beliefs correctly.”