学佛后当务之急就是忏悔业障,修行者的底线就是惭愧心

After becoming a Buddhist, the most important thing to do first is to repent of negative karma. It will not be possible for one to purify their negative karma if one does not spend four or five years doing this. What is Dharma practice about and how can we see the real Buddha? As the saying goes, “One only needs to purify their negative karma, without deliberately cultivating the truth”.Amitabha is the embodiment of infinite light and infinite longevity; the light illuminating from him shines universally upon everything, including all of us, but why can’t we see it? It is because of enormous negative karma preventing us from doing so. We must purify our negative karma by all means, whether it be worshipping the Buddha, praying to the Buddha, reading sutras or reciting mantras. We must never forget that we are carrying very heavy negative karma.

The Venerable Master Yinguang is an emanation of Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva in human form, but he still called himself ‘a monk who constantly feels ashamed’. Despite the fact that he became a Buddhist monk when he was young and had carried out Dharma practice until he was eighty years old whereupon he entered nirvana, despite the fact that he had been in retreat for nearly half a century, he still said he constantly felt ashamed. This was to set an example for us. If we can feel even a small amount of shame then we can still count ourselves as Buddhists. Feeling shame is foundational for a Dharma practitioner. 

Although we have been living in cyclic existence over many, many lives because of our ignorance and confusion, causing a lot of harm to other sentient beings, some people still refuse to repent of their negative karma and think they are good people.After learning Buddha-dharma,we realise that there is no need to  ndexamples to show we are bad men. We do not need to identify specific misdeeds in order to confess, we need to confess simply because we are ordinary beings. We need to confess as long as we are still living with confusion even for one day, as well as greed and hatred. All the characteristics of an ordinary being – body, words and mind – are evil by nature. They cause harm to others as well as ourselves. This is the reason we have been suffering in the sea of cyclic existence, experiencing countless losses, bleeding and tearing.In particular, highly advanced technology has greatly enhanced the extent and speed of our evil deeds. The negative karma of human beings is getting greater and greater. We must feel shame and practice the Dharma earnestly.