Chua Duoc Su

In addition to the sublime teachings that guide people to understand right and wrong and treat each other in a spirit of peace and joy, there is also prayer, a spiritual tradition of most religions. Particularly in Asia, especially China and Vietnam, every time the Lunar New Year comes, without anyone telling anyone, on the first day of the year, Buddhists, fellow countrymen, and young people all go to the Temple, or to the communal houses and shrines that worship sacred beings to worship and pray for blessings, peace, hoping to resolve the grievances in their daily lives, and hoping for complete peace all year round.

Buddhism is a religion that satisfies both worldly and transcendental aspects.

A- Transcendental:

In terms of intangible aspects, true practitioners often have little contact with life. When they clearly understand that fame and wealth are illusions, people are born and leave this world empty-handed. Therefore, they live contentedly, that is, living with enough, to practice the Dharma. To create provisions for themselves to progress on the path of enlightenment and liberation, by returning to nature with the grass and trees in the fields:

- In the spring, I go to the stream to play

Listen to the birds singing in the mountains, calling for the sky to rain flowers

Draw a bowl of water and go home

Stop by that apricot village, and ask about the old tea.

There are also those who:

- Spring comes to the fields of flowers and grass

Spring comes to a thatched roof

Pine and chrysanthemum go to the narrow alley

Ephemerals and illusions enter the paradise.

B- The World:

In terms of the world, usually, every time the Lunar New Year comes, Spring comes, The pagodas, Monasteries, Communal Houses, and Temples, are all decorated neatly to welcome the new year, and also to create a means for men and women to have a place to travel in the spring, pick lucky fruits, pray for peace, and pray for blessings at the beginning of the year.

Talking about praying for peace and blessings:

- Praying is the desire to have a happy and peaceful life, without illness, suffering, less risk, uncertainty...

- Peace is stability. There are three types: Body peace, mind, and stable circumstances.

So praying for peace is the desire for:

- Body peace: Being healthy, living long, without illness, without accidents, risks...,

- Mind peace: Wanting a peaceful and comfortable mental state, without anxiety, without fear, without crisis, without stress and frustration...,

- Safe circumstances: Wanting a warm and happy family situation. Good living conditions, good living environment, good relationships, having many favorable conditions in life...

Everyone wants to have that. That is true because when you go to the temple with a sincere and pure mind, there will be results. However, to get 100% effective results, instead of waiting to go to church once a year on New Year's three Day, or praying for peace for three days at the beginning of the new year, it is not enough, but you must wholeheartedly arrange your time to direct your life towards self-cultivation. Train your body and mind, and actively build your personal life and social life based on the spirit of cause and effect, that is, you must have:

- Right view: That is, seeing, knowing correctly, correct perception,

- Right thinking: That is, thinking correctly, positively,

- Right speech: That is, speaking truthfully, gently, lovingly, with practical benefits for yourself and others,

- Right action: That is, correct behavior, the three karmas of body, speech, and mind are pure,

- Right livelihood: That is, making a living through a correct profession and work,

- Right mindfulness: That is, correct thoughts, always remembering good things, not having crazy delusions, not having thoughts of greed, anger, ignorance,

- Practicing meditation to gain the ability, you can control your emotions, feelings, and psychology, not easily be attracted, tempted by negative, unwholesome behaviors and lifestyles,

- Having wisdom so that you can perceive, understand correctly, and positively helps to identify what is good, what is unwholesome, and what behavior brings peace and happiness to you and others.

Even higher, you see the nature of life as dependent origination, impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self, so that you do not have the illusions and false views of ordinary people. From there, you are no longer bound, entangled, and no longer have insecurities and suffering. Thus, if you want to build a happy and peaceful life, there is nothing better than trying to create a lot of good karma, not creating unwholesome karma that has not yet arisen, and abandoning unwholesome karma that has been made.

Maybe your current life is facing many difficulties, suffering, and unhappiness. It is due to the karma from previous lives or the past of this life, but the good karma created in the present can partially neutralize the previous bad karma. Because additional factors are involved in the cause to the effect, the karma will change. There are also cases where karma does not form due to the strong intervention of conditions.

Therefore, you need to understand that everything in the present is not entirely determined by the karma of past lives but also created by the karma in the present. That is the attitude of life, concepts, negative or positive thoughts, and behaviors in the present. Therefore, you do not create bad karma, but creating many good karma in the present is a wise attitude to improve an unsatisfactory life and build a happy and peaceful life for yourself. That is a positive way to pray for peace.

You can also turn heavy karma into light karma by worshiping at the beginning of the year, repenting of the karma you have created, and making efforts to practice, creating good karma to neutralize the bad karma before it forms bad karma. By practicing good deeds, and cultivating morality, concentration, and wisdom, you can neutralize the light karma that you should have received.

Apart from transforming the mind, all causes and conditions that interfere with the law of cause and effect are temporary or counterproductive. For example, using the power of spells or supernatural powers to prevent or avoid karma can only be avoided temporarily, not forever. Only when you have a good heart, the actions of body, mouth, and mind are all good, then those karmic causes are by the original intention of the Buddhas. By the great compassion of the Buddhas, you will attract good results, which is expressed in the fact that your prayers are answered, so you encounter many favorable conditions, etc., but it is not the Buddha or Bodhisattva who bestows blessings or eliminates your karmic obstacles.

No one can bestow blessings or bring misfortune to you, not even the Buddha. If you create many bad karma that others can bear for you or help you escape the suffering, then the law of cause and effect has no value. The Buddha saves you by helping you improve yourself and then change your circumstances.

When you initiate a good mind, you create good karma, which leads to good results:

- A peaceful and happy life, meeting many things that are satisfactory and satisfying.

Thus, your actions of worshiping Buddha at pagodas during the three days of the New Year are good. Going to pagodas to make offerings to the Triple Gem, respecting the Buddha, and respecting the Sangha are good actions. Being a good karma will of course lead to good results, but in reality, no one will give it to you. Therefore, in the Dhammapada, the Buddha taught:

- In all dharmas, the mind leads, the mind is the master, the mind creates. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you like a wheel following the foot of a draft animal. On the contrary, if you speak and act with a pure mind, peace and happiness will follow you like a shadow following a shape.

Therefore, if you live an unrighteous life, an unwholesome life, specializing in:

- Stealing, robbing, cheating, appropriating, buying and selling fraudulently, lying and deceiving, getting rich at the expense of others' blood. Or if you live a loose life without responsibility for yourself, your family, and society such as drinking, gambling, depravity, debauchery, causing suffering for yourself and others, then no matter how much you pray, you will not be at peace, no matter how much you pray, no one can save you.

You should remember that the meaning of praying for peace in Buddhism is different from folk beliefs and theistic religions. Because in the book there is a saying:

- If you have a mind but no form, the form will arise from the mind,

If you have a form but no mind, the form will be destroyed by the mind.

That means:

- A person with a bad appearance but a good mind will have that appearance transformed into a good appearance thanks to the good mind.

And a person with a good appearance but a bad mind will lose that appearance.

Thus, cause and effect is the truth. A Buddhist disciple deeply believes in the Dharma, and as a Buddhist disciple, one must have deep faith in cause and effect, because what you sow is what you reap, which is a truth. Anyone who comes to the temple on the first day of the year to worship Buddha prays for peace for themselves, for their family, for their clan, for their country, and for the world to be peaceful and happy. If this devotion belongs to everyone, it will become a great power, and peace will be achieved. This wish is very good, but to fulfill that wish, to build that peace, praying is not enough, you must act completely.

As I have said before, the first three days of the new year, are the days when Buddhists, fellow countrymen, and young people go to the temple to worship Buddha, pray for peace, pray for blessings, and hope that the year will be blessed. But to be effective, as a Buddhist, in addition to going out in the spring, and the points I have suggested, you must always have faith in your heart:

- Repent, make vows, strive to practice diligently, and dedicate.

You need to have a deep impression of those thoughts, thanks to which you will be able to perfect yourself in a year and build up blessings so that you can reap good results all year round. This is something that Buddhists should pay attention to. For Buddhist disciples who want to pray for peace and liberation, there is nothing better than sowing blessings for themselves and everyone. In this spirit, if you are a Buddhist, when worshiping Buddha, you should have the wish to praise Buddha:

a- Spirit of praising Buddha

When you stand before the Buddha altar, light incense, in your mind you secretly recite:

- Great kindness, great compassion for living beings,

Great joy, great renunciation to save sentient beings.

Before bowing to the World-Honored One, you praise the Buddha's virtues of great kindness, great compassion, great joy, and great renunciation, then bow to the Triple Gem with your sincere mind. You examine yourself to see if your virtue of compassion is open, whether you have joy and renunciation or not. Next, you

b- Praising the Dharma of Buddha:

Also while standing before the Buddha altar, holding incense in your hand, secretly recite:

- The Dharma of Buddha is high, profound, and mysterious,

Hundreds of thousands of eons are difficult to encounter.

Now I hear and see, I respectfully uphold,

Vow to understand the true meaning of the World-Honored One

Praise the profound, mysterious Dharma that is difficult to encounter. Now you have the good fortune to meet, now you hear the Dharma, then vow to develop the spirit of learning, practicing according to the Dharma, and vow to preserve the Dharma. Understand the profound meaning, the heart of the Buddha sent into the Dharma, then you apply it to practice and progress towards liberation.

The first three days of the new year, the beginning of the year, worshiping Buddha has all the meanings like that, but you often do not pay attention to how to pray, bow, repent, make vows, and dedicate. Therefore, your worship has not been fully accomplished. Because you have not fully understood the meaning of the ceremony, you do not have a sincere heart towards the ceremony. For the worship at the beginning of the year to have the blessing of the Three Jewels, of the Dragon, and Heavenly Protectors to help you fulfill the wishes of the ceremony on the first day of the year, you need to examine your mind, so that this year your loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity can truly be fully developed.

When praising the Buddha's Dharma, you also need to praise with your sincere heart. Understanding the Buddha's teachings means understanding the wishes and aspirations of the Buddhas, hoping that sentient beings will be enlightened and liberated. The Buddha's teachings teach about cause and effect, if you sow a cause, you will reap a result, if you do not sow a cause, you will not receive a result. Therefore, if you do not want to reap the results that you have sown badly, then from now on you must sow good causes, sow blessings, and transform bad causes into good results. Only then will you understand the profound meaning of the Buddha's teachings.

Next, you repent, the spirit of repentance at the beginning of the year is a fundamental factor in having peace, because everyone makes many mistakes throughout the year, if you are pure at the beginning of the year and make strong vows, then that year you will have the blessings of the Three Jewels.

Just like a dirty vase that you pour clean water into, the clean water will become dirty water. Therefore, if you want clean water, you must wash the vase before you pour clean water into it, then you will have clean water. Likewise, when you go to the temple to pray at the beginning of the year, you must sincerely repent so that the sins of your body, mouth, and mind from many lives can be eliminated. However, you do not just recite the repentance ceremony to finish; the spirit of repentance must be continuously kept in mind so as not to repeat the mistake. Because:

- Repentance is regretting the mistakes you have made.

- Regret is being ashamed, vowing to eliminate those sins, not to repeat them.

That is the spirit of repentance at the beginning of the year. You understand yourself better than anyone else, and what mistakes, shortcomings, and errors you have, so these days you need to sincerely repent. Repent and repent why in the past years you have been negligent and not enthusiastic in helping people, still lying, being aggressive, and easily angry. You still have a mind of arrogance, jealousy, selfishness, pettiness, and lack of joy and openness. You know these shortcomings better than anyone. From now on, you vow to strive to eliminate these bad things, your heart will be more tolerant, more forgiving, always speak the truth, and build a spirit of solidarity with everyone. Once you wholeheartedly repent, you will be praised by Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. Because you are a Buddhist disciple who has strived to practice and has a noble mind.

Whoever always looks at his faults and vows to eliminate them will gradually become a good person, gradually become a saint. Therefore, the day of praying for peace and repenting at the beginning of the year is a sacred day that makes you have a sacred impression in the spirit of looking at faults and vowing to eliminate faults.

After repenting, you make vows, and these vows help you gain power. For example:

- You have a habit of getting angry as soon as you see or hear something, and this anger makes you feel uneasy, lose sleep, and do many harmful things to those around you.

For a long time, you often cannot stop when encountering unpleasant things, so today you also sincerely vow to not let anger arise all year long, to develop a compassionate heart, and to be open to unpleasant things when they happen. This will be proven by Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, and Dharma protectors. So if you encounter something unpleasant that makes you angry, at that moment the vow you made in this New Year's ceremony will develop its power, making you stop your anger, develop wisdom, and be calm.

The reason why the New Year's ceremony has sacred power is because of your sincere heart. Everyone wants peace for themselves, their family, relatives, neighbors, country, and humanity. Each person has a sincere heart to carry out that passion. Each sincerity, each thought of joy, renunciation, and non-attachment, nurturing the Buddha mind, is sowing the Buddha seed in the heart, guiding everyone to a peaceful and liberated mind. Your virtue and merit are first for you, then for the hope that everyone will be liberated, and no longer mistaken. If the spirit of praying for blessings and peace at the beginning of the new year comes from the sincere heart of everyone, it will bring great strength, whatever you pray for the village and the country will be successful. But you must pray with a sincere heart of repentance, vows, and dedication to achieve success.

The Buddha, the Bodhisattvas, and the Holy Sangha pray for everyone, not just for one person. Therefore, you must see clearly, that you want to have peace thanks to two parts:

- One is due to the pure power of the Buddhas spreading everywhere, influencing your New Year's mind.

- Second, thanks to your awakened mind, seeing the power of the Buddhas, the boundless love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, your mind is free from greed, anger, and ignorance, so you are peaceful and pure.

Therefore, the Venerables want everyone to understand the meaning of the first day of the year to go out in spring and understand the sacred value of the New Year's prayer ceremony so that the ceremony can be completely successful.

So the spirit of going to the temple to worship Buddha at the beginning of the new year is very sacred, not just simply traveling in the spring, at the beginning of the new year as you think. And going to the temple is not only about offering money to the monks and nuns, offering to worship the Buddha and that's it, leaving everything to the monks and nuns to do, but you also have to understand how to worship to get the desired results. Like that, you should not let the monks and nuns do everything, then your mind is not complete. Leaving everything to the monks and nuns is done, or saying that you don't need to pray, you just need to cultivate your mind is enough, both are not correct. Because your mind does not have enough strength to overcome karma, but needs many people to join forces, that is the blessing of the Three Jewels, the prayers of the monks and nuns to dedicate.

In short, going to the spring, praying for peace, and praying for blessings at the beginning of the new year is a tradition and also an opportunity for you to accumulate merit. Coming to the temple, you contemplate the image of Maitreya Buddha always having a complete smile and complete peace thanks to practicing the virtues of joy and renunciation. Because joy is happiness, renunciation is letting go. At the beginning of the new year, you learn the virtues of Maitreya Buddha, which are joy and renunciation, to have a peaceful year.

At the beginning of the new year, I wish all Buddhists of all monasteries to diligently repent and vow to build good dharma. Do not ignore even a small good deed in daily life, in family, in the neighborhood, and if you want to have complete peace, you must be enlightened as the Buddha taught. You must see life as a dream, an illusion, not be bound by it, causing you to be sad. You must see that all dharmas are impermanent and selfless. When you see something that is not as you wish, under the perspective of impermanence, you not only see yourself but also other things.

Finally, more than anything, you must receive your own Buddha mind, because the purpose of the Buddhas of the three times is to open the minds of sentient beings to believe and receive your own Buddha mind. This is the spring of perfect peace and perfect freedom that Maitreya Buddha has realized and taught to sentient beings. These are the essentials to build a peaceful and complete year for you.

Therefore, if you only pray for external appearances, without repentance or vows, even if the monks and nuns pray and bless you with sincere hearts, they cannot help your wishes come true.

I hope that all of you understand this clearly.

I hope that on the first day of the year, Buddhists will make sincere vows and dedicate them to everyone, not just you so that your compassion can grow.

I pray that the Triple Gem will bless you all to achieve your noble wishes, health, peace, and diligent practice, and all your good wishes will come true as you wish. Your family of Buddhists will also rely on this good merit to increase their blessings, fortune, and longevity, and to encounter the Buddha Dharma and progress in their practice.

I wish the masses immeasurable peace and happiness.