The Story of the Empressed Monk: Flowers Fall, Life is Like a Dream

Life is like a big dream. After waking up, even if there is still some impression of the dream in your mind, you can no longer hold anything with your hands.The ancients said, "A finger flicks the wind and flowers fall, and life is like a dream without trace." Life is like this, and you are busy running around in the uncontrollable changes in time and space until you die.

After awakening, it is "emptiness", but before awakening, it is a feeling of impermanence in the world and being teased by this unpredictable life.All things are born, destroyed, and change, and cannot be moved. There is nothing eternal and unchanging, just as the Buddha said in the Sutra of Impermanence: "The earth, the sun and the moon, and the time come, all return to the end; there has never been a thing that will not be swallowed by Impermanence.

When the Buddha was in the bamboo forest temple, one day he accepted a prayer from a layperson and went to the city with his disciples to teach.After the end, on the way out of the city and back to the temple, I happened to meet a man who drove the cows back to the city.The ox are all fat and leaping along the way, and they often conflict with each other with their horns.

It is like a man holding a stick, eating a cattle, and old age and death are still the same, and he will also take care of his life. It is not the same as a man or a woman in the clan. He will be decayed every day and night, and his life will be destroyed, just like a fluorescent water.

When he returned to the bamboo forest temple, after the Buddha had finished washing his feet, Ananda bowed and asked for instructions: "World-Honored One, the disciples did not fully understand the meaning of the verses you said on the way back. Please pray for the World-Honored One to give mercy and teachings!" The Buddha told Ananda: "On the way back, did you see the cattle shepherd driving the cattle back to the city?" Ananda replied: "Yes."The Buddha continued: "The owner of this group of cows is a butcher's home. He originally raised thousands of cows. In order to make the cows strong and fat, the butcher hired people to shed the cows every day to eat grass in a place with abundant pasture, and choose the fattest cows every day to slaughter them to make money.After one day, more than half of the cows had been slaughtered. However, the confused cows were unaware of it and were still happily eating grass and having fun or fighting with their companions every day.I am so sad that they are so unwise that I say this verse.”

Then, the Buddha taught the public: "Not only these cattle, but people in the world also do not know the truth of impermanence, and insist on having an unchanging self, and only know how to covet the joy of the five desires every day, and even hurt each other for the insatiable desires.When impermanence comes, he is unable to transcend, and he falls into the abyss of reincarnation in vain and cannot escape for generations.So, what is the difference between people in the world and these cattle!

Yes, not only do these cattle do not know the truth of impermanence, but even people often encounter irresistible fate and hardships in a daze.Master Shengyan said that many people feel like they are in dreams from birth to death, and they are busy, noisy and quarrels in it, which is serious.Some are making trouble, some are making trouble, some are making trouble, and some are making trouble both body and mind.But the whole world, and everything in time, is constantly changing every moment. There is no eternal thing. People have birth, old age, sickness and death, and the universe has growth, existence, destruction and emptiness. These are impermanence.

Impermanence is suffering. Master Shengyan said that the process of life in human beings itself is a painful fact, and in this suffering, impermanence also contains impermanence. Impermanence produces white hair, impermanence urges separation, impermanence leads to inability to seek, and impermanence turns friends into enemies.Impermanence is emptiness, it cannot be eternal, not real, unpredictable, and changes at any time. This is impermanence and emptiness.

Impermanence has no eternity, but Master Shengyan often says that "impermanence is eternity". On the surface, it seems to be a paradox, but in fact it is not contradictory.Buddhism talks about "impermanence", which means that nothing is ever changing, only the principle of "changing often" will never change, so impermanence is eternal.If one day sentient beings can recognize and accept this fact, they will understand that the desires in their hearts are all false thoughts, and that everything they are attached to is not an eternal existence. Only by thinking about these things and letting go of attachments can we be liberated.

A poem by the poet Li Bai said in an orderly manner: "Heaven and earth are the opposite of all things; time is the passerby of a hundred generations.But life is like a dream, how much joy is there?"It means that the world is a hostel for everything, and time is a passerby from ancient times to the present. Life is floating, like a dream. How much joy can there be? Why should there be too much obsession? Su Shi, a literary master of a generation, also lamented in "The Former Red Cliff Fu" "I mourn my life for a moment, and envy the infinity of the Yangtze River."In the face of the vast universe, life is just a moment, and it is destined to be bumped by the impermanent world.Therefore, people in the world should practice. Once they are enlightened and wake up from their dreams, their hearts will be open and clear, and they will no longer be attached to life, death and self, and become the "great enlightenment" mentioned by Master Sheng Yan.