Lord Bo Tien in God's grand plan

Learning Point No 336

It is very clear that the lord saint Lord Bo Tien did not want to start a new religion or sect. He didn't even want to have shrine dedicated to him. 

That his organisation to spearhead the mission to save souls through existing religions and sects is named after him is just incidental. If he had his way there is no need to use his honorific name for any temple. He wants us to know that there is the same God and same way to Heaven and sainthood in all religions and sects. 

Small wonder that his name is just an honorific that of martial from heaven. His image in general's attire reflect the sense of purpose as in military mission. 

The many colors reflect the diverse races and cultures that God must reach out to not via one religion or sect but through many. His scepter in right hand depicts the divine instrument of mission entrusted by God the Jade Emperor. His left hand in salutation bids all to be steady and to move ahead in unwavering way. 

That he said he would not come down to speak to those at any mission related temple at Singapore after the first 13 years demonstrated his resolve not to be the purpose of the mission but to be the initiator and facilitator of mission. He did promise that he may come down once more but if all are in harmony and the mission is entrenched. 

Adoring him will be to no avail for he is not meant to be a saint of a temple or to be a saint of an existing or new sect or religion. He just wants to be in background and perhaps to fade into history. 

What he wants is for the reawakening of the inner truth of God and the Tao or Tou-li, the logic of reasoning for all to be saints in Heaven. This reawakening must take place not through a new saint or sect, not through a new religion or temple but through the existing churches, temples and religions. 

This invokes sense of both joy and sadness in the writer - inner truth netizen 2. But the lord saint will never waver and betray the mission to save souls through the reawakening of the same inner truth behind religions. 

He would rather that people like the writer forget him and he is kind to the writer by blessing him with the support and guidance of saints of existing religions. Ji Gong the living Buddha is God sent or rather sent by Lord Bo Tien but the writer will still miss the lord saint. 

This is despite his saying that those who know the doctrine knows him. Those who know him not but practise the same one basic doctrine in any religion or sect are near to him though they know him not, for he Lord Bo Tien is the embodiment of the inner truth behind all religions and sects. 

Lord Bo Tien, we miss you but the in your absence, the doctrine is what we have to treasure and our religion can be any or none. This is as per your wish and the mission is above all else. 

Why bother?

Learning Point No 335

Why bother to go to a temple or church if one has nothing to gain by going? Why bother to go there, if one is not out for worldly gains but just wants some peace in life? 

Why must we go there to get some peace from the hustle and bustle of life and to remind ourself that there is more in life than the mundane world we are in?  We can better do so in quietude away from the hustle and bustle. 

Why bother to have temples or churches in the first place when all we need is to communicate with God and saints direct? 

Why the need to communicate as such with God and saints when the doctrine is more important and living in the doctrine will bring us the peace of God and saints in us? 

Why go through men to reach God and doctrine when we know men tend to add flavor of their own and cause more confusion, complexity than clarity and simplicity? Why bother to know more when we end up having less by knowing more and be perplexed? 

Why not go for the basic and be one with God and saints? Why bother to be tied down with fear and guilt by the dogmas and rules in religions that are more the making of men than of God and saints? 

Why bother when what matters is the heart and not what goes through the gut? Why act to pretend and to please men when even pleasing God is not the way? 

What matters is how good you are at doctrine and at having peace and ease in life come what may be it of body or of soul. So why bother if you can be at peace even if religions, men and others talk ill of you? This is the way. 

The way is not to bother but to be at peace and right in the heart and not what you do, believe or how you please others be it God, saints or men? What men say of God and saints may be hearsay and even heresy. These are the mere impressions of men. 

Portrait of happy go lucky Ji Gong
who is good at heart and not bothered
by the ways, opinions and rules of men

It is the spirit of "why bother" than enabled Ji Gong to be who he is. He is not bothered if others chide him for eating meat and drinking wine, for he knows he is better off than those who don't but are not pure at heart. 

What matters is the heart and not what goes through the gut or for that matter what one does but has no heart in them. This is the lesson of life we must learn from Ji Gong. 

Be yourself and be good at heart and not be silly in trying to toe the ways and thinking of other men even if these have to do with temples and churches, for these are created more by men in the name of God and saints? 

So dear friends why bother the next time you are not sure and are more riled by the ways and beliefs of men in a church or temple. 

Be yourself and know the Tao or tou-li, the logic of life. Why bother to dwell with and follow these other men who make the tou-li so far removed and complex when the logic of life is simple and plain - just be good, be true and be pure at heart. 

Do not pretend or be what others think you must be. Why bother? If we can do this, there will be many more of men who are saints of sorts like Ji Gong. 

It is bothersome to be bothered. Just be simple and have the peace in life. Don't let others bother you or you be bothered with them and their views. Why bother? Just be what you can be so long as you have peace.  

But do something with you life if peace is not with you. Perhaps then you have to be bothered why and how to have peace. 

Go for the simple life and the basic truth of oneness with God. It is between you and God. Let none or others bother you or they will come between you and God. 

It is because men like droves flock to religions, churches and temples, and come between a man and God and his saints, then that poor man see not God and peace of God but the complexity of men and the schemes and devious ways of men in name of God and saints. 

Why bother with other men? Keep your distance and your peace. If need be, do be alone to be one with God and saints. Let no other men stand in the way. 

But should you have more of the peace, do share your peace and way of peace with other men caught up by the whirlpool of wow and woes of life, the sages of old refer to as yin and yang, the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations. 

But if you cannot have this luxury, then why bother? Otherwise, you may not have your peace in life for long. Peace and love start with self before it can go beyond the self. 

Saints like Ji Gong are rich and abundant with peace and love and could share with many who have affinity to come their way. 

But are you a saint as yet. Do you have the makings to be one in the foreseeable future? So you may want to think thus. Why bother? But at times, you may have to bother. 

The question is when and how not to step over the limit or threshold of usefulness and worthiness for your fellow men. If you have little peace yourself or want more of peace yourself, how can you preach to others and give them peace. 

If you hope to have more peace by bringing more into your flock, you may be insincere and deluded that having more in the flock will bring you peace and peace to them as well. Peace must come from within and not fall from the sky. 

Those who are lacking or empty of peace are like empty vessels that make the most noise. They create more empty vessels that together make more clatter and din that will drown the meager peace that may be there. 

There will be no peace for sure but hue and cry over the fear of death and hell. How can there be peace with the endless din and more so with threat of hell - the threat that comes from men and not God and saints. 

The young Ji Gong was threatened with expulsion from monastery for not toeing the norms of society but he did not bother with the gossip. He left the monastery to pursue the true calling of the heart and he succeeded and was and is ever a blessing to other men, regardless of calling or faith. 

He is a torch eternal of peace and joy for all men and through his life and example, he dispels the threat of hell for breaking the traditions and norms of men in the name of God and saints. 

He liberates men to be free from the shackles of fear. He frees men from the woeful chaining by rules and regulations and dogmas that ever stifle the growth of the heart for truth and Godliness so that men may be one with God and saints. He is Ji Gong.

So let us be like Ji Gong and not be bothered by the dogmas and rules of men in the name of religions, not that these are not good but they are only means to the end but not the end in themselves. 

If we are bothered, these rules and dogmas will be ever so bothersome and will detract us from the end of having peace with God and saints. So let us think every now and then if we need to be bothered. Why bother? This may be put in another way. When do we need to bother? 

Make or break more a choice than a destiny

Learning Point No 334 

In life be it mundane or spiritual, there is always the choice. How do you want life to be? 

If you do little or nothing and don't work for it, little or nothing will materialize  If you work for it you will get it. 

But if you set your eyes on more than what you can handle, you may fail but even if you succeed, you will be struggling with life. Then life is no longer a joy but a pain at every turn and corner. 

If you think that mundane life is waste of time and go for spiritual at expense of all else, you will create problems for yourself. You will end up no where near spiritual bliss but far from it because you are at odds with life by denying the life of flesh and blood, the life of the mundane. 

You will be better off by taking care in moderation  the mundane life, the needs of flesh and blood so that you will have health before you can go for even the basic be it spiritual or mundane. 

But if you choose to do more than you could handle be it mundane or spiritual, you will send your life into a tumble and be worse off. 

So do know how to moderate. Go for all and you will end up with little or none. Be modest and do what you can and even before you get what the modest goals you set out for, be it spiritual or mundane, you are already at peace. 

The process is as rewarding if not more so than the end result. This is the way of the wise. Remember that make or break depend on yourself. Make or break is more a choice than a destiny. 

It has to do with being contented and at peace even before you get what you want. It has to do with not wanting more or doing more than you are capable of and comfortable with. You may be capable of more but the cost to your peace in life may not be worthwhile. 

It has to do with not running away and doing nothing and expecting blessings, be it mundane or spiritual to drop down from the sky. 

It has to do with the balancing of duality of yin and yang as depicted by the feet of Lord Bo Tien atop and balancing the elements at his feet - representing worldly contingencies such as gain loss, denial and indulgence, envy / jealousy at one hand and the open-hearted rejoicing with others blessings at the other. 

It has to do with no denial, no struggling and no clinging but just being at peace and doing what you can, at peace you are at peace and comfortable with.

Make or break is more a choice than a destiny. You are a master of your own life. Joy or sorrow is often more our making than of fate. 

Even fate is not really predestined but the result of our past handling of life be it present or past life. 

But you could make the change, to want to be at peace and be contented with life come what may. Do not run from life nor race forward in life chasing after more than you could handle. 

Make or break in life is more a choice than a destiny. So choose wisely and be at peace even before you choose and act on your choice. 

That is the way which sages of old set out to do in life. This is for both spiritual and mundane. 

What applies to spiritual if applied to mundane will enable you to make it in life - both spiritual and mundane. This is the teaching of all saints. Lord Bo Tien reiterated on this principle in life. 

Others' beliefs promote insight on your own

Learning Point No 333

Know the views of others that differ from yours and you will know your own views better. Whether you change your views or not is another issue. 

Even if you don't and you hold to the belief that your views are right, by knowing the views of others and why they are different from yours and what makes them have such views will enable you know your views even better. 

In short, you will gain insight of sorts. But this is not a once-off process but a continual learning process. 

In time, you will wonder how you come to know more and that what you believed years ago is the same and yet different from what you know now. 

This whole preceding discussion applies to any belief, be it related to the mundane or spiritual. Let us dwell on spiritual applications 

To know your own religion or saint better, you must know other religions and saints better. 

Initially, you may start with perspective that your religion or saint is miles apart from other religions or saints. 

But with knowing better the other religions and saints, you will in time understand your own saint and religion better. 

You will realize that what are different are in fact the same. It is as though they belong to different points of a circle. It is the same circle after all. 

All hail from the same Divinity or God. 

God and the Saints of religions

Even in a temple or church, members may hold different views on how to run it and what should be the mission or emphasis. 

Do not run down the views of others and say yours are correct but try to understand and know their views and why they stick to them. 

Learn how to accept their views and yet not agree if you cannot agree. 

That way you may learn to understand your own views better and how to marry your views with that of others. That is the challenge. 

The way of course is to know others views better and in process gain more insight on your own. 

Others' beliefs can promote insight on your own and enable you to make your beliefs more whole, more complete and more inclusive. This will take time and requires magnanimity, patience and tolerance. 

Any Bo Tien mission-related temple is a role model that this is the way to go and knowing others views promote insight on your own. That way there will be harmony and oneness even in diversity of views - oneness of yin and yang as in Bagua.

The Bagua shrine floor at Bo Tien
mission-related temple at Singapore
echoes the harmony of yin and yang,
the very diversity of views
that seem conflicting and yet is one.
Knowing more of the other views
will promote insight on your own.

Clueless and lost in the house of God

Learning Point No 332

Many are those who go to the house of God all because they want fellowship and a sense that all will be well if they are sheltered by God and the saints. 

For religions to catch the attention of the lot, they have to be innovative and re-invent and to be able to capture attention. How else can they do so except to use the same very ways of the world that make them feel that sense of void amid abundance? Yes, these are the ways that attract them to God through the house of God.  

God is in everyone or as the Buddhists would say there is the Buddha nature in everyone. But men overwhelmed by the material world, cannot see and let alone feel the immaterial divine God and his saints. 

Men cannot see the only one tree of Divinity in the vast pasture of life but men can see the forest of trees if the forest is big and attractive enough. But once men go to the forest, they get tangled with the many trees and wonders of the forest and will still miss the tree of Divinity. 

This simple parable or analogy explains why men in the house of God may still feel the absence of the substantiality of God though they may be awed and carried away by the forest of trees. 

They may feel secure in the forest but are still clueless where God or the tree of Divinity is. They mistake the forest of trees that is the beliefs, practices, the dogmas and the ways of charismatic men as God and as evidence of God. 

Religions and sects do their worthy roles to catch the eyes of men to the vast forest comprising the paraphernalia, the very eye catching activities and antics of men of religions and sects. But then men must know how to separate and decipher these from God. 

The danger nowadays is that men may be clueless and may even feel lost in the house of God. They think they know God and saints when all they know are the forest of activities and men of religions and sects but they have yet to know God. 

The trees of the forest catch their attention but having reached the forest, they need to know where is God and not just be awed by activities and men in the houses men created in the name of God. 

Thus many may be clueless and lost in the house of God. In reality, God is in them and in their hearts. The house of God created by men should instead of sidetracking them from God and saints, awaken the  presence of God and saints in their hearts. 

Otherwise, they would be clueless and lost in the house of God. That would indeed be ironical. The institutional buzz and hive of human activities are meant to attract them to God and not make them be clueless and lost in the forest of activities. 

Let not men or activities stand between God and the heart of every man, more so in the house of God, or rather the house of man for God. It would be pathetic if a man ended up clueless and lost in the house of God.

Lord Bo Tien said that the whole world is a temple or house of God, and the various religions are the pillars. All men are in the universal temple or house of God. 

Yet, because of being caught up by fellow men and the myriad activities, they don't even know they are in the house of God. They ask where is God? They are clueless and lost in the house of God. 

Worse still, they end up adoring and idolizing men rather than God and saints, just because these men can speak well and rouse their emotion. They are even ready to part with money and life when so aroused. Men may then end up terrorizing fellow men in the name of God.

That will be cult-like and unbecoming. But what to expect when men can be carried away and be lost and clueless of who is God and who is man. This can and has happened in the house of God. 

Thus in any mission-related temple of Bo Tien Mission, all must know who is man and who is saint. No one should mistake the medium or Elder Ling, the anointed leader as the lord saint. Man is man and saint is saint.

But till this very day and year 2013 and for many generations to come, there will always be those who will end up seeing a man as saint or idolizing another man instead of the lord saint. 

Some even act as though they are better than the lord saint and the saint better take a back seat and they be the saint's mouth piece. Perhaps it is obvious that they and the many others are clueless and lost in the house of God. 

Do not by any stretch of imagination belittle them though, for however good we may be, we did or do commit the same folly at some time in our life. They are just like us and we like them though we may insist we are different at this point of time. 

Point one finger at others and three fingers point back at us. Those who crucify others will end up crucifying themselves. So do not be too happy to say others are clueless and lost in the house of God. 

We all are or were or will be. All have to learn and be wiser from the learning. Lord Bo Tien did say that we need to learn from our own weaknesses and from that of our fellow men. Any saint or prophet would say the same. 

So what if we or others are clueless and lost in the house of God? Isn't this part and parcel of the learning process. 

To be lost and clueless in the house of God can be both good and not good. Isn't this the case? Well you the readers have to decide. 

Ask Elder Ling Diung Kwong and he will give you a earful and you may wish you never ask him in the first place. But never say he is wrong for he may well be as right as you though you hold different perspectives from him.

Cheers and Omitofo.

Living up to the image of the lord saint.

Learning Point No 331

Many have eyes but do not see. Many have ears but do not hear. Many have access to doctrine but have no heart in doctrine. 

Many have the image of a lord saint in front of them but they have no regard for the image but only for their own image and needs. 

They worship their own image and not that of the lord saint. This is their choice and they have to live up to that. They live up to their own image and not that of the lord. That is pathetic. 

If they know the doctrine, they will live by the doctrine. They will then live up to the image of their lord saint and not live up to their own. 

The doctrine is in the image of the lord saint. The doctrine is the image and the image is the doctrine.  This Lord Bo Tien did say with regards to his image. It is as simple as that. That is so and so be it. 

He is Lord Bo Tien. He is no general
Like a general, he has a mission
The many colors of armour reflect
the diverse races, religions and culture
His right hand holds on the scepter -
the doctrine of God and inner truth
common to and behind all faiths and sects
His left hand bids all to be steadfast
on mission of inner truth way
which is in his posture.
His feet atop the duality of elements,
the yin and yang, not to suppress but to balance 
the duality of worldly contingencies
like praise blame, gain loss, joy and sorrow
This is the way to harmony and divine peace

If they live up to the doctrine, they live up to the image of the lord saint and they project the image of the lord saint. They project good image of themselves and the lord saint. 

Do live up to the good image of the lord saint and not undermine his good name in the very house of the lord. 

This post applies to followers of any saint or prophet. 

Much ado over the fools and the wise

Learning Point No 330

---- a tongue in cheek post, meant to inject tinge of humor and realization or awakening through humor but others may find the humor distasteful and bordering on arrogance. This is not the intention. Do pardon the use of words 'fools' and 'wise'

Bird of the same feather stick together. Fools think alike and are never alone but the wise are those who never fear of being misunderstood. They find themselves alone. 

Fools have no problem with company but the wise stands alone and do not need company. Fools need acceptance and concurrence by others but not the wise. 

Fools are not sure of themselves and want others to agree with them. Only then will they feel they are right even if in fact they are wrong. 

Those who think they know the doctrine of God must have confidence in themselves. If they need others to say they are right, then they do not really know. 

If they need to win new converts to their views, they are fools and are insecure and want company - the more the better. They badly need reassurance in numbers. 

The wise knows they are right even if others could not see their point of view. The wise thus can stand alone but fools need company. Fools think alike and are never alone but the wise  rather be alone.

Those who know the doctrine stay away from the temple but those who know less or know not the doctrine talk as though they know allot and are at the temple to show they know more. 

But if men know allot in the wrong knowledge but get lost in what they know, they actually know not and are lost. They seek company of others to get reassurance that they know when they do not know. They talk allot because they want reassurance that they do know. 

But empty vessels make the most noise. They attract people of like minds and together they create the most noise but with little or no substance. 

Fools think alike and cannot be alone. The wise thinks differently and prefers to be alone than to be ruffled by the many fools who try to prove them wrong. 

The fools need company and find the wise a pain in the neck. Fools think alike, talk allot and relish company but not the wise.  

So if you do not go to a temple, this does not mean you are not good or wise. Perhaps you either know nothing and are couldn't be bothered type or you are wiser than the many in the temple. 

Lord Bo Tien did say that the near may be far and the far near. Those who are at a temple may know less than those not at the temple. 

But to the lord saint, it is alright to know less so long as you have doubts and want to question, to disagree and to know more. Why? If such men are able to clear their doubts and end up knowing more, they will no longer be far but near. 

But then perhaps they may then find themselves alone and may need to stay away from the fools - those who know not and ask not but think they know allot. 

(The scenarios described would not happen in a Bo Tien related temple for those at such temples would know better. Omitofo)