From right to left, Senior Venerable Thích Thánh Minh, Most Venerable Thích Thông Hải, Most Venerable Elder Thích Chơn Thành, and Venerable Thích Trừng Sỹ
THE DHARMA WORDS OF THE MOST VENERABLE THERO
THÍCH CHƠN THÀNH
Dear the Most Venerable Elders, Senior Venerable, Venerable Monks and Nuns, along with distinguished Guests, Dharma Sisters and Brothers,
One day, a journalist Đoàn Trọng of Little Saigon Station asked me: “I have known the Most Venerable and the Most Venerable Thích Quảng Thanh for a long time in the Community activities, but recently, what the two Venerable Monks also share together, solve together, it is really the mind with the mind, why so, respectfully Venerable Master”?
I smile and calmly respond, anciently and presently, the Buddha has often taught his disciples about the law of cause and effect. The past is the bud, the fertilizer, and water. Today is the young bud, the beautiful flowers and sweet fruits. The Buddha’s teachings are so simple. With many different conditions, when seeing the effect, people know the cause, when seeing the cause, then they understand the effect.
Likewise, in previous life, the Master Quảng Thanh and I were born in the same hamlet and village, two of us met everyday, went out together, and knew each other better than siblings. The two of us from when young until twenty joined each other to leave secular life for monastic life to become Buddhist Monks and live in the same Temple. Because of this, our Dharma brothers share all the Buddhist affairs in the temple. Therefore, I know a lot about this Master.
At the present life, we were born from two different spaces and time, I was born in Phú Yên Province, the Master Quảng Thanh was born in Phan Thiết City of Bình Thuận Province, but growing up, both of us lived and cultivated in the two various Temples in Trà Cú mountain, away 18 kilometers from Phan Thiết City. This was the Holy Land of Vietnamese Buddhism many hundreds of years ago, founded by Patriarch Hữu Đức from Phú Yên Province coming there to cultivate. He sat in meditation in a small cave of half a bedroom today, and he attained enlightenment.
Patriarch Hữu Đức, the founder of Tà Cú Mountain Temple
Everyday life, he only used vegetables and fruits picked by gibbons and monkeys to bring them to make offerings to him. On the mouth of the cave, there were two White Tigers coming from the deep forest to take turns to protect him. Where the White Tigers lived, there no animal would dare to snoop and disturb him.
Thanks to the good causes of many previous lives that remained in the subconscious until now, even though at the present life, we were born in two different places, we met each other on an unfamiliar space in the United States, especially in Orange County. Therefore, the Master Quảng Thanh and I met and loved each other like two friends of the past. At that time, he built the Bao Quang Temple in Santa Ana City, and I built the Lien Hoa Temple in Garden Grove. Sometimes when I visited the Bao Quang Temple, I still found my friend Dương Thanh Tùng, that is, the Master Quảng Thanh enthusiastically working as in the old days so that we could easily go back and forth to exchange confidences.
Since then, our love, our understanding, our thoughts, and stance were all the same and often shared each other’s sweetness. Therefore, when I sat in meditation, I recognized the Master Quảng Thanh was my sincere friend in many past lives. His gestures and ways of speaking in this life are not different from the previous life. His love is full of immense as before. He always opens his love to help homeless people, but his mind is not tired and does not complain at all. With his mind that is not tired and does not complain at all. Despite meeting rainy and sunny days, or sometimes he got sick, but he still tried to do charity meals for the homeless.
Dear Venerable Monastics, Dharma Sisters, and Brothers, there is no longer any more time, we will see off the Most Venerable Master Quảng Thanh to the native land, Western and Pure Land, where there are no birth, old age, sickness, death, and suffering, and there is a life of eternity, about many light years from this earth. Although it is very far away, he will rely on the Dharma Body of the Amitabha Buddha for only a moment, just a moment, because the Buddha’s Dharma Body is the essence of the Universe. Now, in this dignified moments, please wholeheartedly recite the names of Amitabha Buddha in order to see off to the Late Most Venerable Quảng Thanh into the Pure Land peacefully.
Namo the Amitabha Buddha
Translated by Ven Thích Trừng Sỹ
