■Book 148─Power of Mantra
■Written by Master Sheng-yen Lu
■Chapter Three
Thus, I wrote a verse:
Filled with joy while reciting the Buddha's name and mantra
Now there is lineage in the Saha world
Continue to recite sincerely and respectfully
The blessing of deities and spirits will be with one perpetually
There is another story related to the Earth Deity Mantra.
There was a period when an epidemic swept through Taiwan and many livestock were killed. I observed many plague ghosts roaming in the wild and biting the animals to death. Owners of many farms approached me for help.
I studied the constellations and noted that the Five Plague Deities had descended from the southeastern area of the sky. This meant that an epidemic would sweep across the region, resulting in the deaths of many chickens, ducks, cattle, sheep and pigs.
I was worried, so I approached Cheng Huang, the City God, for help. He said, “This is fate, it has nothing to do with me!”
“Even if it is the will of the heavens, I cannot just watch people suffer.”
“Don't interfere. People's hearts are too corrupted.”
“It's hard for me to be at peace if I don't try to help them!” I said.
Cheng Huang said to me, “You, Sheng-yen Lu, try to help people every day, but their suffering is due to their own actions. One day, if someone hurts you, I wonder if anyone will save you.”
I answered, “If someone hurts me, that's my own karma - but looking at all these livestock suffering, I really feel for them in my heart.”
Cheng Huang then taught me a solution.
Take four sticks of bamboo and chip away the green outer layer. Each stick must be one foot six inches long. On an Accomplishment Day of the lunar calendar, chop the bamboo sticks. On each stick, inscribe the letters of the Earth Deity Mantra in either Chinese or Sanskrit.
In the afternoon of a lunar Removal Day, consecrate the bamboo sticks. Recite the Earth Deity Mantra one hundred and eight times for each stick. The more you recite the better. On a lunar Stability Day, hammer the bamboo sticks into the four corners of the ground of the respective farm.
When this is completed, a plague will not touch the respective farm. I taught this method to the farm owners and it worked! Each farm that was lined with the mantra-empowered bamboo sticks was protected from the plague. Not even one livestock animal died.
However, many other farmers were unaware of this method and during that year when the epidemic occurred, a lot of livestock died. There was hardly enough time to bury every dead chicken and cattle, and the carcasses piled up high like a hill.
One farm owner relayed this incident to me.
One night, he overheard a conversation that took place outside his farm. However, it was not human beings but plague ghosts who were talking. A large number of them arrived outside the farm.
One ghost exclaimed, “An aura produced by a certain mantra surrounds this farm. We cannot enter.”
“What mantra?” another asked.
“The Earth Deity Mantra.”
“That mantra is no big deal. It cannot stop us. Let's go!”
“No way!”
“Why not?”
“The Earth Deity is, after all, a virtuous god.”
“We have our orders by heavenly decree!” the ghost shouted.
“But this mantra is empowered by Living Buddha Lian-sheng, Sheng-yen Lu himself.”
“Really!”
The ghosts fell silent. One of them suggested, “Let's leave this place! We can feed ourselves elsewhere. Besides the small Earth Deity Mantra, there's also the Buddha's edict. It's better to leave it alone.”
Thus, this bunch of ghosts left the farm.
Let me share this with you. Many wealthy men owe their riches to the help of spirits. Many disasters are the result of mischief from spirits. All of these incidents are caused by spiritual entities.
Confucius once said, “Respect the spiritual world but keep your distance.” This means that the spiritual world does exist, but keep your interactions with them to a minimum.
In the Bible, Jesus once expelled spirits and exorcised demons. In the Catholic's instruction for the Exorcistate, the third of the Minor Orders, it outlines the rite of exorcism. The seventy-five-year-old Father Amorth is himself a famous Catholic exorcism priest!
The invisible spirits are worthy of our attention!
