I have a portrait of Guanyin Bodhisattva at home and I don’t want to do it anymore.

Buddha statues are objects of respect. If you no longer want them, please send them to the temple. You must be careful. The following is Teacher Liu Suyun’s instructions on this issue and other cases where others failed to deal with the problem;

What topic should I talk to you about today? There are still these two sentences, "If you see different thoughts and change things, nothing will happen, but if you stay calm with your body and mind, you will succeed." I want to talk about this topic, the previous one of "Failure to change things based on different opinions". I want to start with a few things that I have experienced, and I will tell you a few stories. When I tell this story, I want to talk about a problem. ? How to treat religious beliefs correctly? Just such a topic, how to treat religious beliefs correctly? Why do I want to ask this question? Just a few things that I have personally experienced make me feel that I should talk about this topic.

The first thing is that a few years ago, three or four years ago, I went to the hospital to see a sick Buddhist friend. There were four people living in his ward at that time, and the person sleeping next to me, a Buddhist friend, was a man who was probably around 60 years old. When I saw that image of him, I felt fear in my heart. Why? The face is ferocious. His face is the color of iron. Everyone knows what color the iron is, and his face is that color. Then those eyes, that helpless and hopeless look, make you feel really pitiful when you look at him, and his whole facial expression is very terrifying. Our Buddhist friend and I, because when Buddhist friends met, we talked about some things about studying Buddhism. After this little Buddhist friend got this disease, he had some mental pressure, so I went to relieve him of the pressure. I just sat there and chatted with him about Buddhist matters.

After I finished chatting, when I came out of the ward door, the wife of this man in the hospital came out with me. After she came out, she said, I heard what you just said, can I ask you a question? I said okay, if you have any questions, you can ask them.

We were in the corridor of the hospital, and she said, my husband used to be in very good health, and rarely caught colds, but this time he got this strange disease. Look at his face. The color of a person’s face has been a disease until now. I’ve been to many hospitals across the country, but I can’t find out what the disease is. It’s been seven or eight months now, and the name of the disease hasn’t even been determined yet. I don’t know what the disease is. What kind of disease is it?

I said, you didn’t check to see if there is anything going on at home.

His disease is quite strange, and the hospital hasn’t given it a name yet.

Later she said, I thought about it, does it have anything to do with my family?

I asked you to tell me, what is it?

She said that my family originally believed in Buddhism, and I worshiped a Guanyin Bodhisattva and a Maitreya Buddha. She said that later someone advised me not to believe in Buddhism, but to believe in the same way as me.

I won’t say what I believe here.

She said that I agreed later. After I agreed, it was about how to arrange the Buddha statue. She said this was the person who advised me not to believe in Buddhism and told me how to deal with it.

I said, what did you do with these two Buddha statues?

She said that I threw these two kinds of Buddha statues into the garbage dump outside.

Oops, my heart skipped a beat at that time. How could I do this? But I can't say it because she and I don't know each other.

Later she went on to say that she agreed that as soon as I threw them into the garbage, a gay man came out from another door of our house, and he picked up the two Buddhas.

I felt enlightened at that time. I thought there was still some hope. After all, someone had invited the Buddha statue home.

She said that not long after, my wife got this disease, which became more and more serious. She traveled all over the country and could not find out the name of the disease. This was the first thing she said. She asked me, she said, do you think my wife's illness has anything to do with this?

Then what should I say? When I said it didn’t matter, it wasn’t from my heart; when I said it did, she and I didn’t know each other, which would increase her mental burden. No matter how specific and detailed you asked me to say, It’s clear. Maybe I’m not that specific or clear.

I said, I can’t say it doesn’t happen, and I can’t say it’s because of this. Did I say anything else?

Later she said that my husband was in the same situation at home. My daughter and my uncle also believed in Buddhism, and they also worshiped Guanyin Bodhisattva and Maitreya Buddha. Something happened to her family.

I said what happened to her family?

She said that the young couple fought and quarreled, and when she got angry, they threw the two Buddhas from upstairs to downstairs.

If it is left downstairs, if it is not copper or porcelain, it will definitely break.

She said, not long after this happened, my little granddaughter. I remember at the time, she told me that year that her little granddaughter was seven years old and she also had a strange disease.

What strange disease did I say she had?

She said that this child bleeds from all her orifices. From time to time, you don’t know when she will bleed, and you don’t know which orifice will start bleeding, and you can’t stop it. This disease is also I traveled all over the country and saw basically every hospital available, but I still couldn’t figure out what kind of disease my little granddaughter had, and it’s still the same now.

She told me two things about their family. Especially for herself, her husband's matter is purely a problem of her own family. She threw the two Buddha statues into the garbage dump, and this is how she handled it. Then her daughter and son-in-law were angry, fighting, and quarreling. When they were angry, the young people might be so angry that they had no place to vent their anger, so they threw two Buddha statues from upstairs to downstairs. I guess her family must not be First floor. These two things, I thought at the time, how could such a problem occur? This was the first time I encountered such a thing.

This is the second time I have encountered this kind of thing. It is also a Buddhist friend I know. I have a good relationship with him. I have known him for a long time. It should be said that I have known him for about thirty years by now. . I, a Buddhist friend, worshiped Guanyin Bodhisattva in his home. Later he became ill and passed away. After I found out, I went to see him off. What's going on? Later, someone told me that his belief had changed and he no longer believed in Buddhism.

I no longer believe in Buddhism, so I thought that what the person at the hospital told me aroused my alarm, and I wanted to ask how to deal with his Buddha statue, because he worshiped Guanyin Bodhisattva, I know this.

Later I asked what happened to the Buddha statue, but maybe because he didn’t want me to know, he avoided it and didn’t tell me directly.

Later, more than a year later, I learned from another source that the Buddha statues in his family were treated in this way, smashed and thrown into the river.

This is this Buddhist friend, because he changed his faith from Buddhism to another religion. This time lasted until his death, which took about a year. He was in good health, so I was surprised by his death. Why did he leave so well and just leave? When I went to see him, because I was in a funeral parlor, either he had his original appearance, or he was a little unrecognizable to me.

So after this Buddhist friend left, I felt uncomfortable for a long time. I just wanted to be such a good big brother to me. In the end, something like this happened to him. I don’t know, I don’t know. He proselytized. This is the second thing I encountered.

The third thing happened this year, which happened recently. In less than two months, a Buddhist friend I was very familiar with, an old lady, passed away. Because of this old lady, I have been visiting her from time to time over the years. She has been bedridden for several years. During this process, every time I went there I told her, sister-in-law, don’t forget to recite the Buddha’s name. Have you recited the Buddha’s name? My sister-in-law said, read it, read it.

But in the past few years, whenever I went to see her, she was always listening to the old master giving lectures and playing CDs. The last few times I went, three or four times, I noticed that she was not watching the CD, but I didn't take it to heart, I didn't think much about it. I thought she was lying on the bed. Maybe she kept watching and she was so tired. Maybe she knew I was going to see her, so she turned off the TV. This is what I thought.

Later, before this old lady passed away, I went to see her for the last time. I asked her, Sister-in-law, we practitioners of Buddhism are all taboo on this topic, so are you taboo on this topic of life and death? ah?

She said I don’t have any taboos. If you have anything to say, just say it.

Sister-in-law, people will leave one day. If you leave one day, what rules do you want to follow? For example, should we follow the Buddhist rules or the secular rules?

Sister-in-law said, follow the Buddhist rules.

So I thought, my sister-in-law has this instruction, follow the Buddhist rules. Later, on the day my sister-in-law left, a Buddhist friend told me that my sister-in-law had left, so I rushed over immediately. She had already left that morning. When I went there, it was already an hour or two after she left. When I saw her, she was quite peaceful and her face looked good. She didn't look ugly. I touched my body and arms, and they were all relatively soft, not very stiff. At this time, I thought that my sister-in-law had told me to follow Buddhist practices, so I wanted to see what the clothes she had prepared looked like. Later, they told me that the clothes she prepared were from lay people, not Buddhist ones. The one with lotus flowers. I think since I’ve prepared, let’s just use this one and don’t have to change it again. I’m not that persistent about these things, so just let everything go.

Later I told the children, I said that your mother had told me before that when she left, she would walk according to Buddhism and not according to secular principles.

After I finished, the child asked me, Aunt Liu, what are the rules for walking in a Buddhist house?

I said walking in a Buddhist house is very simple, just recite the Buddha's name, invite a few Buddhist friends to come and recite the Buddha's name, and then when you leave, you don't take any dog ??food, dog whips, etc., or throw a funeral basin. , these are common to lay people, and our Buddhists do not have these. It is just a simple process of reciting the Buddha's name, then sending it to the funeral parlor, and then cremating it.

At that time, because the child said something, Aunt Liu, my mother no longer believes in Buddhism, does she still follow Buddhist rules?

I was very surprised when I heard this. When did the old lady stop believing in Buddhism? How could I not know?

At that time, the child had already hired someone to preside over the matter. After the matter was over, the master also said that he could not follow Buddhist rules but had to follow secular ones because the old lady no longer believed in Buddhism. I can't say anything else at this time. Since the old lady no longer believes in Buddhism, I don't know when the old lady stopped believing in Buddhism. They said that they should follow the rules of the secular world, and the master who came to preside over the matter was also invited. , then I really can’t say anything else. If I say anything else, there may be conflicts among several children if they don’t agree on it.

So I said, okay, okay, let’s do whatever the invited master says. Whatever we do is fine, it’s all up to Amitabha. That's all I said. Later, the old man's funeral arrangements were really carried out according to the rules of the secular world. Even those things I mentioned just now may have been done, and they did not follow the rules of our Buddhism.

Regarding this matter, I just let it happen, but I always feel that I am a little regretful. I have known my sister-in-law for more than 30 years. She has been so good to me, which is really special. care about me. Because of this old sister-in-law, she knows that I can’t cook or cook. When our two families lived upstairs and downstairs, whenever her family did something good, the sister-in-law would lead the whole family downstairs for dinner. Everyone lined up to go downstairs to eat. For such a good old lady, you said she left, but I couldn't help her. On this point, I do feel a little regretful in my heart.

At that time, I thought, what should I do with my sister-in-law’s Buddha statue? Later, a Buddhist friend reminded me, Sister Liu, when you went to see your sister-in-law, did you find that her Buddhist hall was gone?

I said, I really didn’t pay attention, because she moved to a new place with two houses. I went there and didn’t go to the other house to look at or move around. I don’t have that habit. I am in my sister-in-law's room, chatting and chatting with her. I said I really didn't pay attention, I thought the Buddhist hall was in that room.

She told me, no, at first the Buddhist hall was moved to the airing platform. I said this seems wrong. How can the Buddhist hall be placed on the drying platform?

She said I know, she put it on the drying table, but what happened to her later, I don’t know.

So now, I really can’t tell what my sister-in-law will do with this Buddha statue in the end. I didn't dare to ask the child because I was afraid of causing conflicts between the children, because I knew that her younger son had some thoughts about his mother not believing in Buddhism.

I remember one time when I went to see his mother, he said something that I didn’t pay attention to. He said that my mother no longer believed in Buddhism and had changed her mind to something else. Afterwards, he said that on the day of the change, my mother fell down and was bedridden from then on. She never got up again until his mother left. Later, I thought, this child once said this to me, saying that his mother fell down on the day she converted to her religion, and became bedridden after the fall. This has been the case for the past four or five years. Isn’t this true? Got the right number?

So this, I personally experienced these three things, which made me feel like, what should I do? Should I say this? I want to say it, will I hurt others? Because it involves issues of religious belief. But I feel that if I don’t talk about it, many fellow practitioners later told me about this problem, saying, Teacher Liu, you really have to talk about this matter, otherwise it would really be a problem. I said, will it hurt anyone if I say it? Are you criticizing people? Are you engaging in separation and attachment?

These Buddhist friends said, Teacher Liu, we all know you. You are not the kind of person who makes distinctions or attachments. If you don’t say this, things like this may happen again in the future. That should have been the case. You have gone through a good journey and a bad one in the end. Why don't you talk about it? Based on this situation, I thought I would talk about this issue today, but my original intention is that I really don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t want to praise myself and destroy it. If I say that I believe in Buddhism, I will just say that it is good to believe in Buddhism. It’s not good to believe anything else. I don't mean this at all, and I ask fellow practitioners to understand my feelings at this moment.