"Whatever
spiritual messages we have today are left over by the ancient masters,
and we owe to them a great deal. Whatever we know, even whatever
little is leftover today, we owe it to all the great masters of
the past. That's why, perhaps, people like to build temples, churches
and mosques in order to remember the great masters, in order to
express their gratitude to these great masters who risked everything
for the sake of the well-being of the world. But, to build temples
and churches is not enough. It's not enough that we are grateful
to the masters, but we must make use of the messages that they left
behind for us; because that was the purpose of their coming to this
world, that is, to remind us of the Buddha nature (God nature),
of the wisdom, of the Kingdom of God within ourselves, and that
we must, by all means, use all our strength to find it.
Because
the masters did not come here to enjoy the reverence, the respect,
the worship of the worldly people, they came to make them also become
masters, to remind them of their greatness within themselves. That's
the purpose of the masters. The Buddha had said: I come to make
you understand your Buddha nature. He said that the Buddha and the
sentient beings are equal, there is no difference. Even if we believe
the Buddhas, we still don't know what the Buddha nature is; because
no one taught us, or maybe we have not tried enough to understand
it ourselves. For the lucky people who have found it themselves,
that is all right. For the majority of the people who have failed
many times over the past, numerous lifetimes, it becomes more and
more and more difficult each time.
Some
of the clairvoyant persons who have their third-eye opened and have
the gift of heavenly sight, they have seen that the world is full
of old souls. That means, the people in this world have come back
again, again and again to the same planet, in same the situations,
same existence. It is because we have failed the first time to go
back home, and we failed the second, the third, the fourth and for
thousands of times, to remember where we came from. Because we have
forgotten our Buddha nature doesn't mean we've lost it. We can still
find it anytime. Hundreds of thousands, and millions of people in
this world have already found their treasures, including myself.
So can you."
From "The Way To Find The Treasure Within"
News 66, Media Reports
Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Pang Suan Kaew Hotel, Chiang Mai, Thailand • December
4, 1994
(originally in English)