YOUR MIGHTY MIND

From small to big, there is nothing your mind can't do. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, all into your mind's capabilities. Fixing a meal to entertain an old friend recently met, your mind plans what delicacy will be cooked, what to buy, when to offer the treat. Building a larger house to accommodate your growing family, your mind looks at the money in the saving account, how much to borrow from the bank, how large the lot should be, the number of rooms, the place to be dedicated as a small Buddha Ha...
Someone says, "I am too busy to go to the Temple. I can as well stay home and cultivate my mind." That's good. It's hoped that the man has enough good roots, has practiced for many lives; therefore, he can now cultivate without a teacher like the Great Knight Tue Trung of the Tran Dynasty, or Bang Cong Uan of the Tang Dynasty. But, if it were only a pretext to drop his wife in front of the temple's gate, then his Excellency The Husband drives around to smoke his cigarettes or visit a pal to do some idle talks, that's another thing.
You come to the Temple. It is called "the empty door." Provisionally understand "empty" here as No Fighting, No Greed, No Seeking, No Selfishness, No Self-Benefiting, No Lying. Do not show off yourself by loud talk, discussing right and wrong, bragging your enormous "self." Do not take anything belonging to the Permanently Dwelling [Triple Jewel] without permission, because of your wrong interpretation of the commonly used phrase "of the pagoda." It's not so. The story goes about a shramanera who stole a cake from the altar: he fell for five hundred lives in the animal realm as a blind crow. That's what the scriptures teach. At the Temple, your mind holds the precepts and is detached from worldly pursuits.
The Temple is the place where you cultivate your blessings. You work for it, like the couple who immanquably comes to the temple every week to do the clean-up, dust the altars, polish the brass urns, regularly, patiently, silently. Like the ladies who cut vegetables; like the big cook... they do work for the temple as for their own homes. But more important, the Temple is a treasure from which you should draw gold, silver and pearls. Those precious jewels are your own peace and happiness, your purity, your rebirth in the Pure Land of Amitaba Buddha, your liberation from recurrent cycles of births and deaths. The temple is the place where you come back to your own eternal bright mind source which is called the Buddha Nature, the True Mind.
Nowadays, science has discovered many wonderful things concerning your mind. It is shouldered by your brain in an extraordinary manner. Each cell in the brain contains from one thousand to five hundred thousand tentacles to transmit and receive information, and the whole brain has numberless tentacles like such. (1) Your mind and your brain can produce approximately 60 different chemicals; each thought of your draws along one of them. (2) Mind is body and body is mind: this is a way to say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. If you were to harbor more restlessness and anxiety, your body and mind secrete more toxins that cause sicknesses. It is said that the death rate caused by cancer and heart diseases, two of the most ravaging illnesses in the West, is higher in people in high sp6schological distress; and lower among those who have a strong sense of purpose and well-being.
If you are at ease and happy, cultivating the way, regularly practicing meditation, you will be surpassed with your ability to communicate with plants and animals. In Hayward, California, a certain person possesses an old orange tree, its sour fruits littering the ground. One day this dharma friend of mine gave rise to the thought of speaking to it. He did it. "O! Orange tree, be kind enough to give me sweet fruits so that I can offer them to the Buddhas!" He did it many times, while putting fertilizers, pulling the weeds, watering the tree. The following year, the tree was blooming profusely, and from then on, its fruits turned sweet. This writer has sampled one of those. At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, someone is capable of talking to the peacock who leads her chicks to the search for food. He watched mother peacock and her four chicks not long after they had hatched until their maturity. The little ones were trained to fly up to a low bough to sleep for the night, then to higher and higher branches. When called, mother and chicks would immediately approach. Your mighty mind can speak to plants and trees and animals.
If you have a sick organ in your body, still your mind, contemplate it, and speak to it. "O! [Cancerous] growth! I know that because my karma is very heavy and that's why thou come I'm paying back my karmic retribution. But with sincerity, I ask thee to go away, in order that I may continue to help the poor and the sick..." Hold the Great Compassion Mantra, and with utmost sincerity, pray Kuan Yin Bodhisattva for quelling disasters and healing your illness. If your mind is sincere, you can evoke a response from Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Heaven and Earth.
In this New Year and with the coming of spring, bring forth a great vow: I shall lean on my mighty mind to cultivate diligently, overcome sicknesses, my heart always looking at the Triple Jewel, nurturing my kindness and compassion, and allowing my wisdom to grow.

Your Maximum Mind, Herbert Benson, M.D., Avon Books, New York, 1987. This book says that the totality of tentacles numbers 25 followed by 30 zeros.
Angeles body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra, M.D., Harmony Books, New York, 1993.