Church, What is a Church? – A holy and sacred place

Student: In the Sutra, building a church and carving holy images, burning incense, scattering flowers, burning everlasting candles, or having a ceremony six times a day; by the virtue and merit of practice, anyone will attain the Enlightenment.

Now you are telling me that ‘one truth of mind-watching’ embraces all activities! It must be a joke!

Bodhidharma: Indigent-beings have dull minds, lack wisdom and do not know the deep and sublime truth. That is the reason uncountable methods help all indigent-beings and expose the formless-doing through the form-of-doing. Without cultivating the inside of your mind, just looking for fortune outside of your mind is not the right thing to do.

Building a church, immaculate zone, means getting rid of the three poisonous minds and always having clean sense roots. By this, body and mind are humble and immaculate on either side.

Everlasting Candle - Church

Everlasting candle means the truly awakened mind; candle refers to the brightness of self-gnostic enlightenment.

Therefore, one who is looking for complete liberation should think of his body as the base of the candleholder, his mind as the candler; faith as the wick, the incense of the precept as wax or oil, and the lighting of wisdom as candlelight.

You should burn this bright candle (destroyer of darkness) all the time, radiating toward unenlightened darkness and prevailing over it.

If you become enlightened by these laws, one by one, it means one candles’ light carries over to ten thousand candles and, finally, to a limitless number.

That is why it is called, the everlasting candle.

Once upon a time there was a Buddha named, Lantern-Lighter; who is like the lighter of the everlasting candle. An indigent-being did not understand the expediency of the method that Buddha used in his speech, so instead, he demonstrated illusory behavior and attached to the form of doing by burning sesame oil, lighting the empty rooms, and sincerely thinking, that he taking refuge in the sutras. What a great mistake! Why? If Buddha radiated light from a hair between two eyebrows, it would enlighten the ten-thousand plus eight-thousand worlds.

And if his whole body radiated the light, then it would enlighten the whole world from ten directions. How can we even talk about benefit from ordinary candlelight?

Watch this meaning carefully; you will know what is wrong and right.