Chua Duoc Su

According to the concept of the world, the person who is considered to have a perfect life must be the person who must have money, excess material, and high fame. In the house, servants, and helpers. Out on the street, someone goes ahead to clear the way, and someone behind protects…. On the contrary, it is not considered a perfect life. However, according to the Buddhist concept, a person's life is considered perfect, not about money, and fame, but about merit and karma. Each of you, who is born into this life, has different karma or blessing.

As a blessing, someone is born a king, crown prince, or princess. There are people who were born as officials, presidents, prime ministers, leaders, capitalists, educators, scholars, doctors, etc., there are also many people who are born with extraordinary beauty, making everyone who sees it fall in love. There are beauties, beauty queens... All of this is due to the blessings of many previous lives of these people, and now they only enjoy what they have planted in the past. They have done meritorious deeds, they have given alms, have made offerings to the Three Jewels, helped the world, helped the people, helped the country, etc. That cause in the past kept accumulating in one or more lifetimes to become some great benefit, when they become human again, they themselves inherit the blessings that they have cultivated and created before.

As karmic retribution, there are people who, when born, have to fall into poor families, and lack food, clothing, and lack of everything. There are also many people who were born without eyes, ears, nose, tongue, limbs, etc.

Because in the past those people committed the killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, etc., which means they have borrowed too much from the karmic bank, so now they have to repay the old debt for many lifetimes. So even though those people in this life try to work as hard as they can in all professions, poverty is still complete, because the karmic debt has not been paid off, but poverty has not ended.

To be considered a perfect human being, one must have all five blessings. Those five blessings are Long life, wealth, peace of mind and body, knowing how to accumulate yin virtue, and being at ease at the time of death.

- Longevity: A life that does not die prematurely, but has a long life of blessings.

- Wealth is money, wealth, gold and silver abundance, and having a noble position.

- Peace of mind and body is a healthy body and a peaceful mind.

- Accumulating yin virtue is often doing good deeds to accumulate yin virtue.

- Peace of mind at the time of death means that these people can know in advance the date and time of their death. At the end of their lives, there will be no adverse disasters, the body will not be sick, and the heart will no longer have attachments and worries about the family and world, peace and freedom to leave the human world.

1- Longevity:

The day you were born you know, but the date and time of your death no one knows. Except for those who dedicate themselves to spiritual practice and get enlightened, if not, no one will know how long your time in this life is, and when you face death. So the proverb to warn yourself really well is:

- Early morning does not guarantee afternoon.

Knowing the truth of human life is impermanent is of great benefit to you. People who understand that human life is impermanent, not real, so the distractions and cravings also know how to control themselves, not have the opportunity for cravings to arise. Awareness of human life is impermanent, it is the clue to wisdom and also the first step to overcoming the sea of sufferings of birth and death. The book has a sentence:

- People with compassion live a long life.

Indeed, if you treat people with kindness and tolerance, you will definitely get good results. A person's reason for living a long life must be a result of his past or present life having loving-kindness towards all beings. Therefore, people in this world want to sow long life and do good deeds, so they often go to temples to worship Buddha, chant sutras, listen to Dharma, and give alms to be able to practice the elements of longevity:

- Cause of longevity::

The origin of longevity is formed from benevolence, and compassion to help all beings. Freeing living beings by yourself, praising and admonishing others to do the work of freeing living beings, and giving material wealth to everyone and all species.

- Condition of longevity:

Longevity is formed from a calm mind, a spirit of harmony with everyone, without anger, a disciplined life, knowing how to regulate eating, drinking, living with a schedule, not working too hard...

- Nurturing compassion:

Compassion is the basic foundation of good seeds. Talking about compassion can be roughly divided into two aspects:

1- For people in society, you help people living in poverty and difficulties.

2- For animals, you must strictly observe the precept to kill and often release living beings.

If you want to live a long life, you must not only help the poor and miserable, but you must also have compassion and love to protect animals. For example, seeing a baby because he doesn't understand should kill or mistreat animals for fun, you must advise and teach them, don't let their killing habits grow, make them lose all compassion, even lead to murder.

Talking more about causes and conditions for longevity, the Sutra of Giving Food or the Sutra of Five Blessings is written:

Those who give food and drink in this life or in the next life will receive five kinds of blessings, which are:

- Longevity is a long life.

- Peace is peace of mind and body.

- Beauty is a beautiful face and body.

- Force is a body with full energy.

- To speak is to have eloquence, to speak well.

In addition, if you give food, you will get rich retribution, because giving food is also giving away material things. If you have a sincere heart while giving, you will receive retribution in this life or the next born into a noble family, respected and admired by many. If you are a follower of the Buddha, the practice sessions such as chanting, worshiping the Buddha, reciting the Buddha's name, repenting, meditating, etc., are all reasons for prolonging life.

If your short life is of course the result of killing animals in your previous life or this life, you must accept the evil retribution. This is the cause and condition of premature death:

- Cause of premature death: Killing animals, mistreating, torturing animals or people...

- Condition of premature death: Always angry, all day worried about eating, working too hard, making friends with evil people. . .

2- Wealth:

Your wealth in the present life is due to your reverence and almsgiving in your present or past life. So, if you want to be rich, you must sow the seeds of reverence, humility, and generosity right now. Having understood the cause, plus your own efforts, means the support conditions, you will definitely get rich results.

If you seek wealth without creating wealth, you will never get the results of wealth. So the most basic thing of wealth is that you have to cultivate many causes of giving without having to seek retribution or the enjoyment of riches.

The main cause of getting rich is giving money and material things to the poor and miserable. If you put your own strength to get rich, it's just a kind of help to get rich! If there were people in the past life who did not do benevolence and almsgiving but in this life try their best to earn money, they would not make any money, or even if they had money but had no way to keep it, soon lost anyway.

Thus, the fundamental cause of wealth is generosity. And the reason to be on the throne is that you bow to the saints and sages in the ten directions, and respect all sentient beings. Although living in an unfavorable situation, still keep a humble mind, not using tricks, bribes, or running around to find out. Those who meet good predestined conditions, favorable circumstances plus enthusiasm in work, or are promoted by others are all signs and conditions of nobility, not the main cause.

Someone said: If I am not rich, how can I give alms?

In fact, anyone can give alms, even the very poor and needy have the opportunity and capacity to give. For example, each time before eating, you can give a few grains of rice to small animals, or invite people to drink a bowl of cool water. Just a small thing like that does not need to spend money. So, giving is something that anyone can do if they want to. So the Buddha said:

- If you rise above all your own poverty to generate generosity, you will one day be freed from the sea of poverty. If you have low self-esteem and think that you are poor and have nothing to give, you will forever be unable to escape the armor of poverty that surrounds you and will not have the opportunity to change your status.

In this life, the reason you are poor and miserable is because of the stingy, greedy, and selfish actions you have created in your previous life. If you want to improve that poor or bad destiny, you must first get rid of your stingy mind, behavior, and habit.

In addition, you also have to know how to rejoice in merit, that is, when you see other people get something good, you will also be happy according to their happiness, not jealous...

3- Peace of mind and body

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Thus, in order for the body and mind to always be at peace, it must clearly include three factors: physical, mental, and social must go together. A peaceful body means a peaceful and happy body. Peace and happiness are understood as very good states. When the materials in the body interact and harmonize with each other, they will be at peace.

Peace of mind means that the mind is not disturbed by external circumstances. In order for your mind not to be swayed by external circumstances, you must practice four immeasurable minds: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. At the same time, you also have to understand Impermanence, Suffering, No-self, and Emptiness, all of which are caused by conditions...

Social well-being is even more important. Relationships between family members, relationships between neighbors, and the wider community will help you lead a happy life. Know freedom to live happily. Freedom is inner freedom, to turn inward to rely on yourself because the best doctor is yourself.

4- Accumulation of Yin Virtue

Longevity, wealth, peace of mind, and body at the end of life are all the results of the accumulation of yin virtue. If your past life did not accumulate yin virtue, then your present life will certainly not have a long life, no wealth, nor a peaceful body and mind. If you don't accumulate yin virtue right now, then in the future it will be very difficult to get good conditions.

You should know that the accumulation of yin virtue is the source of all joy and happiness, as well as the foundation of merit and all good fortune. Suppose you are rich, but currently, you are not cultivating the cause of accumulating yin virtue, then all enjoyment and consumption will turn into luxury, because there is no good cultivation, when enjoying all the blessings and retribution then, of course, they will become poor and miserable. Therefore, the venerable ones teach:

- Enjoying a lot of material things will wear out the blessings, and enjoying the five types of sex, there is not much time for happiness, but suffering in Eternal life.

When you use material things, they will forever no longer belong to you, only giving them to the appropriate place in Buddhism, called cultivating a field of merit, is yours. Taking from the society to use for the public affairs of the society, those assets will have lasting meaning, because they will not be taken away by natural disasters, man-made disasters, robbers, kings and mandarins, and children of bankruptcy. Therefore, the ancients advised you to give alms to accumulate yin virtue.

If you don't give alms and cultivate virtue, your future life will be extremely tragic, especially when you die, all money, material things, friends, relatives, authority, and influence are tied to force your way to liberation. In fact, those things are not brought with you at birth, not taken away at death, only the good or bad karma created while you were still alive will really pursue you like a shadow with a picture. This is to say that if you cultivate morality at present time, blessings will follow you. So, from now on, you should not hesitate, but must be determined and make efforts to cultivate morality.

5- Peace of mind at death

Knowing in advance the date and time of death is a very difficult problem, it seems, that few people can achieve it. Many people have seen the struggling state of others when they are about to die and have felt the pain before parting, so they once lamented that:

Namo Amitabha Buddha, I really don't ask for anything else all my life, I just hope that I will be fine when I die.

Usually, when people are about to die, they fall into limbo, fumbling around, unable to control the six senses. Bewildered like a crab in a pan of boiling water, like an ant in a hot pot. On the body, there were scary scenes such as convulsing muscles, eyes widening, lying down, and mouth gasping. Buddha taught:

- The suffering of a dying person is like a tortoise being molted.

Often you see the scene of struggling, crying and groaning, and many other gestures, it is just death karma appearing on the outside. In fact, in the heart of the dying person, they are extremely afraid and miserable because they have to part with loved ones or because they are attached to possessions such as:

- My children, my wife, and worries about the house, garden, possessions, or the intention of doing something unfinished, make the mind fall into a tragic state of shock.

Naturally, the dying person's mind feels lost, without support. That is hard to imagine!

The extremely rich are not all at ease at the time of death. People who live for a hundred years are not necessarily comfortable when they let go of their hands and close their eyes. Looking back, from the past to the present, there are many magnanimous heroes, they used to roam across the five continents and four seas, their majesty could move mountains to fill the sea. But really when it's time to die, there aren't many people who are gentle enough to leave!

Indeed, it is as if someone had to leave their body in the battle to go to war. Some people were forced to die, and others were sent to exile and shot to death. Some people are poisoned to death, others are accidentally killed. There are even people who died and were beaten in the body by whips and were hunted and killed for nine generations

Some people do not die in their bedroom, but in the field by suicide. Or being run over by a car, natural disaster, starvation, burning, drowning, etc. The unlucky people died unsettled, in panic, and filled with grudges. If there is hatred or panic in the heart ... then that person will definitely be reincarnated into a bad realm, such as making the body of a poisonous snake, or wild animal, ... to reclaim the old enmity

If there are people who enjoy all their blessings and then go back to living in starvation and die, they are very likely to turn into hungry ghosts. People who die in shackles will often become animals in the next life, and most people will be burned to death and go to hell….

Some people suddenly die, their bodies have to endure great suffering, and their hearts are always sad and resentful. Not keeping mindfulness, but in his mind aroused hatred and afflictions, such a person is easy to falls into the realms of hell, ghosts, and animals. So, the Venerable One often recommends making a vow:

- May when I come to die,

The body is free from sickness and pain, the mind is free from greed,

The mind does not pervert and is led by the saints...

By cultivating merit and vows you can achieve according to your practice. Maybe:

- A small comfort at the time of death: No sudden disaster, no illness, but passed away.

- The average comfort at the time of death: Not only is there no illness, but also no resentment or guilt in the heart. This is what it is: Rise up without shame to the sky, bow down without shame to the earth, and die peacefully.

- Great comfort at the time of death: Know yourself in advance of the time of death. Body and mind are not obstructed by karma. Freely liberated, he passed away and personally saw the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

This is a perfect human being. People who have a peaceful state at the time of death should absolutely not rely on that to generate pride. Having such a thing must be achieved by cultivating many blessings and wisdom. Ease of death and good karma in the past life are closely related, but the most important thing is that your mind is calm and morally cultivated in this life. Unless you are generous with the virtue of yin, put an end to false thoughts and devote yourself to practice. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to be at peace at the time of death.

There are many causes of comfort at the time of death, but there are roughly three conditions:

- Do Not Do Evil, through which you should not do evil deeds such as killing animals, stealing, committing adultery, lying, drinking and getting drunk, not taking advantage of other people's comforts, etc. With this course of action, you will not create more resentments that accumulate every day. At the time of death, there will be no wrongdoers to disturb and prevent your liberation.

- Must-Do All Good, that is, the mind often makes vows to benefit sentient beings, then follow that vow to practice. For example, you often release living beings, help people in need, print sutras, make statues, make offerings to monks, etc. If you make a good relationship every day, not only will your body and mind enjoy a lot of happiness, but also when you die, you will often be protected by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who will help you and lead you to be born in the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss of Amitabha, the Eastern Land of the Medicine Buddha, or whatever good realm you want to go to. Then what better than that!

- In the midst of keeping your mind pure, whether you are doing good deeds, reading and chanting sutras, meditating and reciting the Buddha's name..., all of them focus on keeping your mind pure, so you will be at peace at the time of your death. Although life in society is full of turmoil, you have to deal with thousands of tasks every day, but most importantly, you must always keep your mind pure, that is:

- Although the work is busy, the mind is not busy.

If you make a lot of effort to practice like this, when you die, your mind will be free of attachments.

Human life is like a stream of water that goes downhill forever. Months and years piled up, and people's lives gradually shortened. In life, it seems that everyone wants to make themselves rich and lucky and no one wants to fall into a difficult situation.

Longevity, wealth, peace of mind and body, accumulation of yin virtue, and comfort at the time of death, all these five blessings are closely related. The life of a person who is considered to be perfect is that person's life is peaceful and happy because of the gathering of these five blessings. If one of the five blessings is missing, it cannot be called a perfect human life. Because some people live a long life without merit, life is very poor and needy. There are people who are rich and have a lot of wealth, but their lives are short, or they are afflicted with mental suffering. There are people who are poor but have peace of mind at the end of life…v..v… the circumstances of life are colorful and different. But in the end, only those who have enough five blessings can life be considered a perfect life.

In fact, of the five types of blessings mentioned above, the most important part is still the fourth blessing, which is the accumulation of yin virtue. Accumulating yin virtue is the cause and source of merit. Blessing is the result and manifestation of the cumulative effect of yin virtue. If you only need merit but do not accumulate yin virtue, then you are the one who left the root to find the top. So please note:

- Longevity, wealth, peace of mind and body, and peace at the end of life, these four blessings are the result, and the fourth kind of merit, which is the accumulation of yin virtue, is the cause.

The reason for this life's longevity, wealth, and peace of mind and body is the result of a past life filled with virtues. And the comfort at the end of life is mainly the result of cultivating good virtues in this life. In other words, longevity, wealth, and peace of mind and body are the results in the present life, while the peace of mind at the end of life is the retribution in the future.

With these five kinds of blessings, it is very difficult to find peace at the time of death. Because in this life, you create a lot of yin virtue, then you will have a peaceful death. But longevity and wealth are not necessarily like that! There are some people in this world who are rich and have long lives, but they do not like doing meritorious deeds. This is because their past lives were virtuous, so they are retribution today. As for the people of this world who are rich but do not like to do meritorious deeds, not only are their bodies and minds not healthy and peaceful in their present life, it is certain that in the future it will be difficult to close their eyes in peace.

In short, being a human without knowing morality, character, and wisdom but constantly searching for knowledge, industry, material comforts, and lust is a huge omission. As above, I have introduced the five merits and causes of cultivation to achieve those five types of merit:

Longevity: Longevity is mainly the result of compassion.

- Wealth: Wealth is the result of giving and reverence.

- Peace of mind and body is the result of a pure mind.

- Accumulating yin virtue is calling on you to make good connections, gather merit and practice an honest mind.

- Peace of mind at the end of life is due to your actions, fame, and fortune, doing good without clinging to good, so you can be like that. In other words, this is the result of your mind-stream being unobstructed.

Although there are many ways to cultivate merit and good conditions, all blessings and wisdom do come out of the heart, as long as you have diligent practice in your mind, sow many good causes, and often uproot it weeds: Greed, anger, delusion, selfishness, and often bring compassionate water to the field of mind to be healthy, and also often use the light of wisdom to illuminate all good causes. If so, the five blessings will be produced, and you will live the good life of a perfect life.