The Class that Discussed about A Thousand Buddhas

Fo Guang Shan’s third Sunday Buddhist College winter class was held on the 3rd of July and was lectured by Reverend Juexi with around 30 students attending. The class started with a short movie in “The Story of Fo Guang Shan” where in this short story, meanings and significance of the “Non-Duality Gate” and the “Vulture Peak” was introduced. The Non-duality gate and the Vulture Peak is actually a gate with both names on each side of it. In the short movie, Venerable Master Hsing Yun used these gates to explain the meanings of “existence and non-existence”; Venerable Master Hsing Yun then continued with the explanation of the 500 Arhat statues that tells the story of Buddha’s disciples when Buddha was propagating Dharma at Vulture Peak.

After the short movie, Reverend Juexi continued the class in the subject of “kalpas”. According to the sutras, there are 4 Buddhas that appeared in this ninth small kalpa we are living in now, Maitreya Buddha will be the future Buddha that will appear in the tenth kalpa and on the fifteenth kalpa, over 900 Buddhas will appear. The class had then asked questions: Why Maitreya Buddha could return to the world and become a Buddha? Why are there so many Buddhas appearing? In the kalpa of emptiness, will there still be Hell Realm? The reverend answered all the questions in detail.

At the end of the class, the reverend teaches on how a human being should place their selves in when met with disasters, what are the right manner and attitude to have in treating this life and how do we connect it to humanity; giving the class an understanding of the origins of a human being, the strength of a formation and where does all the bad habits of human beings come from, and encourage the class in being Buddha’s disciple life after life, following Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s footstep in learning the teachings of Buddha.