MAITREYA ERA

Using the supernatural efficacy to nourish the spiritual consciousness to establish the SECT.
Using the Dharma electricity, Divine electricity to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using the absorption through sitting meditation and martial arts to establish the ESSENCE.
Using the tranquility together with flowers, fruits, and vegetarian food to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

When a Tao practitioner likes this subject of meditation, they believe it to be the absolute highest truth, to which no other subject can be comparable. In some countries, the most talented meditator can dry out the 7 wet towels covering their body. Elsewhere, the practitioners use meditation to exercise the muscles, to prepare the spell by using Artemisia (an herb) or by tattooing, and to train the Tao of martial arts. While in Vietnam, this meditation is practiced mainly on the Thất Sơn Mountains, and the practice absorbs the quintessence, energy, and spirit.

2. Meditation of Impromptu Speech

Using the worship with faithful mind to establish the SECT.
Using the planchette writing and penetration into the body, appearing through impromptu poems to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using the tranquility, sitting meditation, and holy efficacy to establish the ESSENCE.
Using the drum-castanets, offering ceremonies, and formal dress to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

Tao practitioners, who like the impromptu meditation, and who are practicing their impromptu speech, often don’t realize anything happening outside, readily consider it to be the absolute highest truth, so that no other meditation subject can even compare to it. This sect has too many forms of practice because of the different degrees of superstition such as the praying for the Buddha-Mother, for the Great Saint, for the Divine Fairy, or medium, penetration in the body . . . All are not outside of planchette impromptu speech and the practitioners clinging on it.

3. Meditation of Deity or Meditation of Deity Power

Using the brilliant supernatural efficacious Deity to establish the SECT.
Using the admiration and sincere mind to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using the laborious sitting meditation with calm mind to establish the ESSENCE.
Using the purity, shrine Deity, and drum-castanets to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

This subject of meditation belongs to the sect of Deities and Saints, based primarily on the supernatural efficacy and miracle. The correct prophesy makes its practitioners sincerely supplicate in the hope of being patronized and given blessings by the Deity or Saint; they are thus clinging on it and believe it to be the absolute truth of highest value, so that no other meditation can be comparable.

4. Meditation of Human and Heaven

Using the ascension to heaven to establish the SECT.
Using thoughts to train the quintessence-energy-spirit to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using tranquility, study, and sitting-meditation to establish the ESSENCE.
Using fineness and noble speech to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

Nowadays, this sect of meditation is highly esteemed in many countries around the world, and it is under study. Learned people like to first seek for a way to foster their spirit, to feed their body and cure diseases. They make use of sitting meditation to take in the Divine electricity, to be disembodied, and to absorb the quintessence-energy-spirit, making their spiritual consciousness able to mutually empathize with heaven, illuminating awareness of the universe. Secondly, they use the sitting meditation to study Buddhism, aiming to get insight into the metaphysical knowledge. Today Zen and Yoga are practiced in Japan while the theosophy is followed in South Vietnam.

Image from

https://neuro.wharton.upenn.edu/community/winss_scholar_blog2/

5. Meditation of Still Tranquility

Using rigorous rules and precepts to establish the SECT.
Using the tranquil practice, leaving the love and renouncing the family to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using the sitting meditation and begging for food to establish the ESSENCE.
Using virtuous deeds and meritorious deeds to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

This sect is established and organized similarly to that of the meditation sect of the Patriarchs with costumes similarly to when the Buddha was still in the world, holding a bowl on one’s hands, solemnly walking and standing; it aims to escape the secular world. However, it goes astray because it is unsuitable for the current times: since all activities and occupations in society are much developing prosperously, the monks and nuns are unable to keep the rigorous rules and precepts, leading the failure of the sect. When the sect has not been accomplished, the principle, essence, and application are all false, and the practice becomes the practice of tranquility. It is called the meditation of still tranquility, aiming at enlightened tranquility. The enlightened tranquility requires the abandonment of the ego and self-possession to accomplish the tranquil enlightenment. On the contrary, without abandonment for enlightenment, the practitioners carry more forms and sounds called Dharma forms – Dharma colors, making their practice way become an illusion of the Buddha form; they are in obscurely isolated tranquility and vague about the truth.

There is another sect of this meditation. This sect still follows the above sect and principle exactly, but they pursue their objectives in a more flexible way. They find a way of resolving unconscious attachments. They adopt strict rules to fit each level of the practitioners. This sect is called the original sect.

Buddhist monk Thích Minh Tuệ, 2024.

(Born in 1981, Vietnam)

Image from rfa.org

The monk meditation sect is the Meditation of Still Tranquility.

6. Meditation of Fairy Tao

Choosing the mountain-forest and leaving the secular world to establish the SECT.
Using purity and a tranquil mind to establish the PRINCIPLE.
Using the sitting meditation and leaving desire and love to establish THE ESSENCE.
Using the austere life with vegetarian food to establish the APPLICATION. —T. V.

The Fairy path often has fixed thoughts, reflective thoughts. It is due to one’s root-nature and level that leads to the fine, rough and delicate in the practice of sitting meditation. The meditation of Fairy path likes beautiful and noble Dharmas. They choose and select before entering into the training, preferring to a remote place in the mountain-forest. Others getting tired with earthly life, go to a high mountain to break away from the secular world, practicing meditation and exercising magic power.

Nowadays, it is also rare to find a practitioner of the Fairy path. Only when Buddhist practitioners have not understood thoroughly the Dharma practice way, even they faithfully believe in Buddha but going astray, their practicing way still becomes the blessed rewards of Divine humans, falling into the Fairy path.

Those wrongly entering into these six subjects of meditation are clinging to the four forms: Divine form, human form, living being form and false embracing ego form. They all have been mistaken from the former to our days.

• The Divine form is the form of clinging to fixed thoughts, filtering good and bad, evading kindness and cruelty, selecting to take or to refuse. Therefore, such practice becomes training and gets lost in the Fairy Tao.

• The human forms often conserve their individualities and personalities and therefore, they are often attached. Their love and hatred are interwoven. They often lose their way wrongly despite their belief in the Buddha.

• With living being forms, they vary a great deal in their practice. When enjoying, they actively practice a lot. But when feeling sad or bored, they neglect their practice. The Buddha has preached the No Increase, No Decrease Sutra to help living beings through practicing the Middle Tao Principle, in order to return to the no-receding. By receding, they fall into hell; while increasing, they are lost in the Fairy path.

• With the false embracing ego forms, they often believe themselves to be right and correct. Therefore, the Buddha has taught to leave one’s self and practice until one reaches the True Self.

The Buddhas have passed down the sutras explicitly, in which the teaching is not lacking. Tao practitioners need to practice getting adequately virtuous deeds and effortful deeds, relying on the four forms to understand thoroughly, without clinging to any region, in order to avoid the wrong way.

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