Only righteous religions can truly save TaiwanThere
are many religions established merely to satisfy sentient beings' desires and sensual
needs: If the followers want a lot of money, the founder then teaches them to cultivate in
ingenious ways; if they love to show off, the founder then teaches them ways to obtain
supernatural powers. But when the followers fail to get what they want, then the
explanation for their failure would be, "You are not faithful enough, this is why you
still have not yet obtain the supernatural power you want". Or "You don't make a
lot of money because you still need to donate more to the religion, so good fortunes will
descend upon you," and "You do not need to cultivate as long as you donate a
large sum of money to the religion and join our membership, then you will get the supreme
status you want". There are also cultivators who find the mundane world we live in to
be intolerable, so they give up their families and occupations in the society for
cultivation in the woods or some secretive places. Needless to say, this is of course not
the right way to cultivate.
There are also religions center on the worshiping of their respective founders, which
often lead to turmoil in the society. They are also religions established to suit the
followers' needs, aiming to satisfy their delusions, leading them to the wrong path of
spiritual cultivation and making them to believe imaginative cultivation can get them
somewhere in the spiritual world. Quite unfortunately there are too many people share the
same psychological delusion that is far beyond the reality. And if we ever try to guide
them out of their delusions, sometimes it would mean threatening individual survival to
them. Often times we lead the followers to think meditation is the same as Ling
cultivation, chanting mantras will be responded by the deities, and also the building of
grand temples and statues of Buddhas, these are all for the sake of giving rise to a sense
of belonging and security in the believers temporarily, but not forever. For the problem
with this method is that, people can easily lose themselves if they rely heavily on the
invisible forces. Therefore we should reconstruct ourselves by beginning with
self-examination and repentance in order to give rise to a sense of self-esteem as well as
confidence in ourselves, and then follow with a sense of responsibility to the society.
Only then has our mentality sublimated to a healthy state. Although religion like this
rarely attracts Taiwanese people's attention, but it is truly the first step towards
breaking away from our sense of id on the path of righteous cultivation on which human and
god will become one.
