Master
Says
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Developing
Our Human Quality and Noble Quality |
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Spoken
by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Telephone call to Surrey Center, UK, July 1, 2007
(Originally in English) |
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This is the problem with karma; if we
create violence, then it will return like that. I always say the
same thing: War is never the answer. The thing is, people did the
bad karma with each other a long time ago. If they would forgive
this lifetime, then there would be no problem. It’s just that
they don’t forgive each other; that’s the problem. They
continue because they don’t learn the good teaching. Maybe
they learn but they don’t understand, because the teaching
of every religion says that you don’t make war. Also, it says
you have to love the neighbors and all that, but they don’t
understand it. Even within our group, we have people who have done
not-peaceful things before. But this lifetime, they don’t
do it again.
At the time of initiation, we erase the
karma already. It’s just this lifetime’s karma, and
lifetime karma stays like that. But if in this lifetime you come
back and you’re supposed to do bad things again, yet you follow
good teachings and a good Master, then you won’t do it. That’s
how this lifetime’s circle of karma is broken, and then everyone
will become better. (Speaking to initiates) So, you have no bother
and no trouble?
D:
No, we’re just happy to hear You. I feel quite blessed today.
I recently arrived from Australia, having lived there for five years
with my wife who’s here also. This is our first time at this
Center and we feel very blessed that You’ve actually called.
So, thank You.
M:
You’re welcome. You’re happy there?
D:
Yes, it’s great. We’ve lived here before, but this is
our first time coming back to the country after five years; we were
initiated in Australia, in Brisbane. We saw You in Thailand at the
Thailand retreat; it was wonderful.
M:
Just a far-away seeing, yes? Okay, so you are British?
D:
Yes.
M:
But how come your accent is like “Australian, mate“?
(Laughter)
D:
It’s from hanging around too many Aussies, Master.
M:
You get affected, huh? (D:
Yes.) Can you imagine? Just five years and you’ve changed;
you sound like Australian to me.
D:
It was a wonderful time over there.
M:
Yes, okay. But can you imagine how much we are affected from when
we’re born and we live in this world for so long? We change
also, and so we forget our origin. If we live here too long in this
physical world, or maybe not just in this world but many other physical
worlds for too long, then we become more like identifying with the
physical. Just like the brother who came from Australia - only five
years there and he sounds like an Australian now. And I’m
sure he eats many of the Australian foods, which he cannot forget
and he might continue to eat in England, too. Or, he will acquire
many of the Australian people’s habits or traditions, which
he will continue to exercise in England.
So, this is the thing with us; when we
live too long in the physical world, be it on this planet or another
physical planet, it’s the same. We become too much attached
to physical things and the physical way of life, the physical way
of thinking, and the physical way of attachment. And that’s
how it becomes very difficult for anyone at all to even try to remember
Heaven. You know it very well, that even though you are under my
guidance and you assimilate my teaching, and you understand it partially
and you try your best, yet still you struggle many times because
of the past habits and karma. But I’m telling you, it doesn’t
matter. It
doesn’t matter what bad karma you did in the past, you are
always forgiven by Heaven and by God, if you turn around. This lifetime
is important. This is not about the past karma; it’s about
this lifetime. So this lifetime you must take really
good care of it and then your future lifetime will be in Heaven.
The Importance of Selflessness
Try
to be like a Heaven person then; be selfless, be selfless, be selfless.
Always think of what is good for other people, and then you do it.
I don’t have any other secret except that, Anything that’s
good for everyone else, even animals, I will try to do my best for
it, sometimes even forgetting my own comfort and body. That’s
just the way I was born. This I cannot teach you, as I’ve
told you many times. But you can emulate and you can try and it
will become second nature. Even if you don’t do it for a selfless
or unconditional purpose, at least the person who receives it benefits.
So
just try to do it as unconditionally, as lovingly and as selflessly
as possible. That’s the only way we can get out of the past
karma for this lifetime. Because even if you do something wrong in the past life, and the person
who has been wronged forgives you, but you continue with this kind
of trend and do not check yourself and do not become more noble
-- then it’s useless. Then you carry this residue with you
all the time, and you will attract more of this “like attracts
like” kind of atmosphere or energy; then you will not become
better at all, ever, or maybe become worse.
HQ and NQ Measure Spirituality Much More
than IQ
The problem I have discovered with humankind
is of course the ego, the karma. And there’s another problem,
which is what we call the IQ. IQ is the intelligence quality. But
that is not as important as NQ. Do you know what NQ is? (Audience:
No) It’s Noble Quality. And there’s another thing, called
HQ. Do you know what HQ is?
D:
Heavenly quality.
M:
HQ is Human Quality. Human Quality is the amount of human cells
that you earn. The more noble you are, the more human cells you
have. You’d be surprised how many so-called noble people in
very high offices, or in some of the most powerful positions of
the most powerful religions don’t have enough HQ and NQ. And
I’ll tell you a secret: Animals have very high NQ - not all
of them, of course. For instance, the lion and the tiger have very
low NQ, or Noble Quality. That’s why they are like that. And
some humans, if they don’t have enough HQ and NQ, the ones
with low NQ, they will be degraded again for a while.
The people who in this lifetime sometimes
have not enough NQ or HQ, it’s because they had been doing
very bad karma in their last life: for example, being vicious or
killing people for a low motive, like killing to rob possessions,
or killing just for envy or jealousy. Any kind of low motive like
that of course degrades them into a hellish or animal kind of existence.
Even after they have paid their debt, and they come back as a human
again, they do not have enough NQ and HQ. But once they are in a
human form, they will have a chance to develop their NQ and HQ.
The IQ is the easy part. The IQ you can attain
by learning, worldly knowledge or by being practical. The more
you work in different and various fields of life, the more IQ
you will develop. IQ is similar to natural reaction. If you
have been exposed to many, many different fields of work or
many different situations that force you to think or react fast
for your own survival, then your survival instinct skills will
surface. That’s how you develop IQ. Just by being exposed
to various circumstances, various situations, various jobs or
various ways of life, you develop more IQ. That’s why
people who travel more or who do a lot of different jobs are
just more intelligent. Actually, it’s just a habit. If
you develop different or quick thinking, then the brain will
just get used to that way and it records different data and
just springs it out in the time of need. It’s just like
a good computer with a lot of data in it: the more you download
in it, the more information that comes out. |
So IQ is not really a big deal; we can
develop it easily. But I am surprised in the way life deals with
us that some people don’t even develop IQ. I am surprised.
You should be very intelligent by now, by the way you live in this
life. What I mean is IQ is easy to get, while NQ and HQ, not. HQ
is given by Heaven according to the merit before you were born.
It’s just like karma, more or less. HQ is the human quality
that everyone must have in order to be human. To have a human body,
you have to have at least 16% HQ. So the more HQ, the more you are
benevolent and the more you are like a human. The less HQ, the less
like human and the more and more like a vicious animal.
Many animals have a high HQ. Even my dogs,
for example, they have something like 12% HQ. That is almost like
a human; 4% more and they would look like you, or me. (Laughter)
Even some wild birds and so on, they have a high HQ. But the tiger
and the lion, for example, they don’t have any HQ. All animals
are not alike; I don’t advertise that. The good animals have
more or less some percentage of HQ, the Human Quality. So for the
people who go around bombing and killing others, they have very
low HQ. Or, even if they have enough HQ to be human, maybe they
have been dragged down by the past karma and by the associated karma.
Associated karma means the people that they associate with, the
situations they are in, the places they were born, and the DNA they
inherit from their parents. Many different things contribute to
that. And if they do not somehow try to rise above it, by chance,
by luck or by coming in contact with the good teaching of a Master,
then they will stay like that, or sink lower and then go back to
where they belong again, to a hell-like or vicious animal life.
Some Animals Have More NQ than Humans
But not all animals are lower than humans.
They don’t have the Human Quality to become a human body,
but there’s another factor they do have, which is NQ. The
NQ is even more important than the HQ, because if you have enough
HQ you become a human, but if you don’t have enough NQ, which
is Noble Quality, then we also will degrade again and go back to
a kind of hellish existence, or go back to the vicious or very frightening
kingdom, if you can call that a kingdom. The animals that are born
naturally, for example, by choice or by Heavenly creation, they
have very good HQ and very high NQ. Because of the NQ they have,
they live peacefully with each other and they will go back to where
they belong later on, not necessarily to be a human; they may even
go higher. For example, many people eat the pigs, but they don’t
know anything about them. A pig has a lot of IQ, HQ and NQ. The
NQ of the pig is 30%. Are you surprised? (Audience: Yes.) Some of
our humans have only 2 or 3% NQ!
That is something that people don’t
know. That’s why they continue to eat pigs and chickens. Even
chickens have 4% NQ, for example. The
NQ quality enables you to be more selfless, more protective of your
loved ones and just more unconditional. I guess
the chicken doesn’t need a lot of NQ, so in his own position
or his own world, the NQ is enough for him or her to protect his
or her own kin and his own folk. With that, the chicken does very
well; he or she is very noble. For example, if you see a chicken
with her little chicks, if some big animals come and try to attack
the chicks - even though she is so much smaller in size - she will
try to fight. She will scratch whatever she can and pick and do
whatever to protect her chicks, even if she has to die. I have also
seen the ducks, the “quack, quack” that people eat;
this is very cruel. The ducks have something like 8% quality of
NQ, the noble quality.
And I have seen it for myself that the
ducks’ mother defends for her ducklings with all her might.
If any other animal comes near - big, small or whatever - she just
fights them all off with her little body like that. I saw that with
my own eyes when I fed the ducks and the ducklings; the mother had
just come out from the nest where she had been hatching all these
days and she didn’t even eat much. She let all the chicks
eat first; she didn’t ever eat one morsel while they were
eating.
These are the wild ducks I’m talking
about; I’m not even talking about tame and humanly raised
ducks who have been more so-called civilized. These are wild ducks.
I just happened to live near a wild area where they have ducks and
I feed them. The duck lets her ducklings eat every little thing
that they can. And then even after they eat and they’re scared
or something so they run away, she runs after them. She would not
even eat. She just takes them to safety first. And all the while
she stands guard to let her children eat first. So she has something
like 8% NQ. Most of the ducks are like that, but some are even more
exceptional; they have more NQ than that, even up to 10%.
The
ducks and the chickens would not kill a human to eat, or any other
animals. But we kill anything: We kill bigger, smaller, the fish
in the sea who do no harm to us, the birds in flight who don’t
even go near you or bother you or anything; we shoot them down and
eat them; we feed some up and eat them; we go into the jungle, take
the elephants and eat them; we go into the sea, take the whales
and eat them; we go into anywhere and eat anything. People eat all
the beings that are more noble than us. They are much more noble
than us; that’s why humans are the most scary living beings
on the planet. I’m telling you: They have to change. They
are changing; can you see the trend or not? (Audience: Yes.) There
are more vegetarians and more vegetarianism, which is even encouraged
by governments now.
I’m so glad about that. I’m
so glad; I’m so thankful; I’m so happy, because sometimes
I have to shut my mind off. Otherwise I would be screaming all day:
“Stop it, stop all this cruelty; please stop this!”
It’s not bearable, it’s not acceptable, it’s not
humane at all, all this killing on the planet. Every day millions
of animals suffer - not every day, every minute. And it’s
just for people to eat, when they have so many choices already.
Maybe tigers and lions don’t have any choice. But humans,
we have choices; we are intelligent and we can find anything to
eat. We can cultivate, and we can do agriculture. We have enough
food for everyone - but no, we have to go and eat the more intelligent,
the more noble beings than us, just because they’re more noble
and they don’t defend themselves. That is why they don’t
defend, because they are noble.
A Story of the Duck’s NQ
I’ll tell you another duck story,
just the ducks and chickens, so you know what it is that the human
is doing. There are two ducks, a couple, who always come to my house
because they’re used to me now. Whenever they’re hungry
or whenever they feel like it they come to my house and I give them
food. But there are some other low-quality ducks, like one that
just comes and chases after the wife. So he always stands on guard,
and whenever she’s eating, he is not eating. If they come
to my house in the yard and I give out the food, he will let her
eat first. So she eats, eats and eats until she doesn’t want
to eat any more, and only then maybe he will eat: maybe.
Mostly I feed them on the water because
it’s easier for them to swallow. The bread goes into the water
and it’s softer and easier so they don’t choke. But
if they come to my house on land, I also give it to them; I don’t
want to shoo them out or make them wait. So I chop small, small
pieces of soft bread, whole wheat and soft sliced bread. And then
they eat it, but sometimes because it’s too dry on the land,
they have to run down into the water and drink. I know that he loves
the bread because sometimes if she’s sleeping nearby or something,
then he comes and eats, eats, eats, like he’s so hungry. But
normally if she eats, then he just stands on guard; he looks around
him, and he doesn’t even take an interest in food at all.
So this is the duck, the very common wild
duck that people hunt and eat or look down upon. These are the ducks
that are much more noble than many human beings. Some have double
the Noble Quality of many human beings. But you know what? There’s
good news. Even though some humans have less Noble Quality, because
they’re not trained to be noble, if they study a noble teaching
they also can avoid a lot of bad karma and can themselves become
more noble in time. At least they will not do any harm.
The Essential Quality of a Living Master’s
Teachings
So, the good teaching of a living Master
is really important, because I’ll tell you what: In some schools
where people teach a good thing like the Quan Yin Method or non-violence,
even in our group, some people have only very low quality, like
2 or 3% Noble Quality. Yet they’re still doing a good job
for the world and still living a noble life. Well at least they’re
vegetarian, with no killing, no doing bad things, no harming anyone.
But these people still have some residues in them such that maybe
they do things without unconditional love. Maybe they do it because
of loving to do it or being workaholic, or just wanting to be a
big shot or just wanting to do something, or it sounds like a good
thing. But sometimes these kinds of people, when they do something,
they still have residues of the lower quality of ego. Or, maybe
they do some harm also, by the way; at the price of doing good they
also create some harm. But at least they are not doing it intentionally.
And they are not doing anything bad to anyone at all, as long as
they can help it. So this is a very good sign of a teaching of any
good school of spirituality. Even in our school also, some people
don’t have enough NQ, but they are trying and they are developing
and they’re getting a few more points into their NQ store.
And this is a very good thing; I’m very glad I discovered
these things and I have thought that it’s very good I’m
doing my job, like reminding people to keep adding more NQ and HQ
into their treasure instead of euros or dollars or rupees. (Audience:
Thank You, Master.)
The
good teaching of a Master is really very important and very helpful.
Even if the whole world or most people on average don’t have
enough NQ but they believe in the teachings of Jesus or Buddha,
maybe at least they don’t do any harm. It’s still better
than the people who don’t believe. In Au Lac if we’re
angry with someone we say that person is an atheist. It means that
being non-religious is the worst thing you can call a person in
Au Lac. They say “ĐỒ VÔ ĐẠO” -
that’s the worst name you can call someone, that they are
non- religious, an atheist, a non-believer. So even if the teachings
of Jesus and Buddha have not been implemented for enlightenment
nowadays, then at least the moral teaching is still useful to many
people.
Some people are doing bad things that
constrain them somewhat in their behavior and their moral standards.
I don’t mean all. You can see this already in previous past
times, that even religious people go against each other. But it’s
very less often now, and as it becomes less and less, hopefully,
prayerfully it’ll become none, or even that
all
religions or non-religions can live together in peace and harmony.
That’s the way it should be. That’s the way God intended
us to live in this world. We should live here in richness,
in peace, in love and in abundance. That’s the way God intended
us to live, but because of all our wrongdoings and our lack of soul
or moral thinking and our lack of striving for a nobler, more Heavenly
kind of life, we’re sinking and we are drowning. So the teaching
of the Master is always good. It will bring us to shore, to safety,
and keep us there. It will keep us even in a better kind of protection,
and then we can grow in that protection, further and further, and
we will go higher and higher, away from danger and away from temptation.
Please
enjoy the continuation of “Developing Our Human Quality and
Noble Quality” in the next issue of News Magazine, News #190.
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