The Boomerang Shield Mantra
■Book 148 - The Power of Mantra
■Written by master Sheng-yen Lu
Maybe I should die! This life is one of pain and sorrow, filled with only emptiness and impermanence. There is no more reason and meaning in living.
Then, it dawned upon me that I had been victimized by the sorcerer's spell!
I felt an aching pain between the joints of my whole body and it seemed that all kinds of illnesses were about to break out. I could not enter into meditation and even if I managed, I had visions of green and red snakes crawling all over and within me.
This Qiang was indeed some ancient being. I could not think of any method to counter it. I began to hallucinate, seeing and hearing things. I felt I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
At that time it was simply:
Of mountains of clouds of water so cold.
Everything seems empty as insanity shows.
I see a tiger growling beneath the cliff.
Then see a clay figurine running among the trees.
As the wind blows and the solar heat dissipates,
The illusionary flowers weather the rain and fall away.
There is no place on earth I can truly stay.
Should any immortal being suffer from this,
He would have snapped and gone mad anyway.
I saw a green snake and a red snake sliding into my urinary system, resulting in an unusual illness which forced me to dash for the washroom every five minutes. Yet, each time it was nothing more than just a few droplets of urine, but the urgency caused by the need to urinate was overpowering and this described excessive urination(polyuria).
There were times when I felt the bladder was full and needed to use the washroom. Yet upon reaching the toilet I could not urinate anything. I had considered seeking help from doctors who could ease my urination.
Yet by the time I could pass urine, I would feel the immediate need to urinate again. Besides urination, excretion was equally tormenting. I felt nauseating and dizzy, losing my sense of balance. No medication and prescription from doctors could cure me of my illness and I felt that this period of eating and sleeping disorders had been a living hell.
Fierce deities and demons appeared before me, trying to host in my body so that they could disrupt the normal function of my internal organs, causing inflammation and malfunction, and eventually ceasing their functions. I thought of death.
I felt that suffering from illness itself is the mother of all sufferings in this world. I felt that once our body and mind was suffering from a chronic disease or a terminal illness, it was better to die than live. Seriously speaking, I would be very willing to embrace euthanasia (mercy death) if given the opportunity.
I thought of committing suicide. Many with long-term illnesses can not take the pain of the suffering and after struggling to leave their beds, they commit suicide. I used to think that these patients who took their own lives were foolish but I had since gained a new perspective. Only those who have experienced the tormenting agony of illness would understand why these patients have chosen to kill themselves. The ordeal of suffering from illness definitely tops all sufferings in the world.
I saw no value in being alive, as I had saved many lives and was persecuted just as many times. Having come to this pathetic stage, I felt no reason to go on.
I was wrestling with myself at the edge of life and death!
As the sun is bound to set in the west,
Soul awaiting judgement lingers in the spirit world.
Enlightenment is certainly within oneself.
One must decide if he would be filial.
Come to think about it. Living Buddha Lian-sheng, Sheng-yen Lu had committed suicide! The Lotus Light Self Mastery Buddha had killed himself! Padmakumara had taken his own life!
This was against my earlier stand that killing oneself meant killing the Buddha. The physical self is the means to attaining Buddhahood, and thus killing this self is as good as killing the Buddha.
Those who have committed suicide cannot enter heaven, and will reincarnate in the Three Lower Realms. They suffer from a lack of wisdom and even if reborn as human beings, they shall be born handicapped.
I am a guru, and if I were to kill myself, it would certainly be one big joke of divine and human proportion! But all the eight kinds of suffering that Buddha Shakyamuni had mentioned converged on me. It was tormenting! Unbearable! I just wanted to end my life!
