Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, Hsihu,
Formosa January 1, 1992 (Originally in Chinese) Videotape No. 203

Once, when Mahatma Gandhi was on a fast in India, a Hindu came to him and said, "I will surely go to hell and no one can save me. But I still want to offer you some food because you are fasting for us. I don't want you to starve to death and make myself responsible for yet another crime when I go to hell." The man then offered Gandhi a piece of bread and asked him to eat it, saying, "Please eat it. I won't be ready to go to hell until you've eaten this."

Gandhi asked the man why he thought he was going to hell. The man replied that he was a Hindu, and that his child had been killed by Muslims during a fight between the Muslims and Hindus. So, in revenge, he cruelly killed a Muslim child, but felt very guilty afterwards. Gandhi then said, "I know one way to save yourself from going to hell. Find a Muslim child who has lost his parents, or any child without parents, take him home, bring him up and educate him so that he grows up as a Muslim. Then you won't go to hell."

I don't think Gandhi's suggestion would have immediately erased that man's karma, nor do we know if such a method could really have saved the man from hell. However, this idea is very good. At least his feeling of guilt might have been alleviated while he was alive. What's more, while raising the child, he may have experienced the happy bond between father and son. It would have given him comfort and a sense of personal worth to see a child grow up and learn, and adopting an orphan would have given him more self-confidence and contentment; thus, it was a remedy to assuage his guilty feelings.

Had the man continually complained about his guilty feelings, it would not have helped in any way. Who would it have helped? It would have helped the man even less! No matter how severely we reproach ourselves each day, we cannot erase the guilty feelings in our hearts when we know we have done something bad unless we experience a happier feeling to dilute the previous guilt, and weaken it as if it does not exist. When we achieve something or feel happy, our attainments can dissolve and melt away our guilty feelings.

For instance, when the sunlight is very strong, even if there is a large patch of snow on the ground, it will melt. I once had such an experience in Japan. Sometimes it snowed for three to four days there. It was very cold and the snow was very thick. But when the sun came out, the snow disappeared in a few hours! Originally, the whole area had been covered with white snow due to several days of steady snowfall, but when the sun came out, all the snow gradually melted and disappeared.

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