Do you believe that different practices would receive
different treatments from the spiritual realm? Whatever answer you might have,
please hold on to it and allow me to complete the below story and then reveal
to me what you think.
A few years ago, 4 True Buddha (TB) masters and I went to a
famous haunted building in Penang to meditate. All of us were practising the
Yamantaka Tantra but of different lineages. The TB masters were: Yong, Lim, Tan
and Chin respectively. During that time, the haunted house was accessible to
almost anyone though now it is listed as restricted area.
The 4 TB masters went into the haunted house first in the
evening with all their ritual implements: bell, Vajra and etc. and they first
prayed in a shrine in front of the haunted house. After choosing their
locations, they started to do their TB specific Yamantaka ritual and then
meditated at various locations of the haunted house. I went in in the midst of
their Yamantaka ritual and I quietly found myself a place further away from
those masters so as not to disturb them. And since my lineage requires me to
perform a simple Yamantaka fire offering to the local lord first, I didn’t want
the smoke from fire ritual affected the masters’ concentration.
The next morning, after packing our belongings; we sat
outside of the haunted house and chatted casually for a moment sharing our own
experiences:
Yong said: “Before I meditated, I performed the Vajra
boundary protection and further sprinkled the compound with holy water and
thought all will be okay. But somewhere around 3am, I felt my body was covered
by a layer of chillness. This type of chill was no ordinary chill as it seemed
to have originated from inside my mind. As a result, my body couldn’t stop
trembling with cold and I had to give up meditation and cover my body with my
raincoat.”
It would be a little surprised to hear Yong’s chilled to the
spine story as temperature in Penang is almost always hot though it could reach
23C during the Northeast monsoon season. From the way Yong described, I thought
he was almost certainly possessed by a ghost.
Then, Lim said: “Perhaps the ghosts didn’t want me to recite
the Yamantaka heart mantra. Whenever I recited the mantra, I found my tongue
sort of twisted and I couldn’t pronounce the mantra correctly. So I chanted the
guru’s heart mantra instead and imagined my root guru sat on my heat. After a
while, I too fell into slumber…”
Tan continued to share his experience: “After I mediated for
a while, I felt the whole of my body became numb. I wanted to chant the
Yamantaka heart mantra loudly but my tongue was numb as well. So, there was
nothing I could do and I subsequently fell into sleep and woke up in the
morning…”
Mr. Chin said: “While I was in meditation while making the
Yamantaka mudra, a force suddenly pulled at the mudra causing me to lose
balance and fell sideways. After I begged the spirits not to disturbed me,
surprisingly I was not disturbed anymore…”
By now, the 4 TB masters looked at me and asked almost
simultaneously: “And what was your experience like?”
I said: “Oh, it was quite boring… Except for those
irritation mosquitoes humming beside my ears, I found nothing around!”
Of course, none of the TB masters believed what I said as
they thought I have fainted or fell into slumber or something like that. The
fact is that when a practitioner of Yamantaka meditated in the wild, he/she
should unite his heart with whatever he/she experiences; it is the union of the
imagination and reality that give rises to the fearlessness and confident in
Dharma.
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