Chapter 2: Reborn from a Lotus Flower, Dharma Name: Liansheng It was already late at night when we left the Horii's house. Pinggong Qianye walked alone on the deserted street, put his hand into his right trouser pocket, gently stroked the stack of brand new banknotes with his fingers, and a satisfied smile appeared on his face. On Saturday, we will go to Mr. Horii's hometown in the countryside to investigate and exorcise ghosts, which will bring in a considerable amount of income. Thinking that he is still just a 16-year-old freshman in high school, he couldn't help but sigh. He is not a native of this world, but a time traveler. At birth, there were visions. When his mother was pregnant and about to give birth, she said that she had a dream at night in which a lotus platform carried a soul across the Forgotten River. It just so happened that the Pinggong family had an ancestral family temple, the Weilian Ancient Temple. So he was given the Buddhist name Liansheng before he was born, which means being born from a lotus. When he first came here, he heard that there was a temple at home that he could inherit? I thought I had chosen a good family this time.
In a place like Japan, temples are a great place to go. The landlord class has been here since ancient times, and they don't have to pay various taxes. The Ikko Ikki of the late Muromachi Warring States Period left a resounding reputation in history. When he grew up, he found out that the ancestral temple of the Pinggong family was just a small temple that could barely make ends meet and it did not have any real estate that he could collect rent from. Weilian Ancient Temple, a 100-square-meter red and white wooden hall. There is a two-story small house next to it which is used as a daily residence, and only a cemetery of about 1500 square meters behind the temple remains. There are only seven or eight people who come to worship Buddha every day, most of whom are elderly grandmothers and grandfathers from the neighborhood who have difficulty walking. Nowadays, as society falls into a state of low desire and wages have not increased for many years, young people have greatly reduced their interest in places like temples, let alone any devout beliefs. The common people have no more money to make and have become poor! Pinggong Qianye thought of this, sighed, and bought a bottle of cantaloupe-flavored soda from a nearby self-service beverage machine. The total annual income of their temple is about 400 million yen. After deducting the annual temple maintenance costs and daily operations, there is only about 200 million yen left. In a place like Tokyo where every inch of land is valuable, this income is only enough to tighten one's belt and make ends meet. It is far inferior to those big temples. The few monks he knew whose families also inherited temples were comparable to the young masters and young ladies of big entrepreneurs. He has a lot of sports cars at home and is busy traveling and shopping abroad all day long, under the pretext of spreading Buddhism abroad. Those who stay in the country often hang out in nightclubs, play with female celebrities, and engage in all kinds of ridiculous and indulgent behaviors. But there is a saying that goes like this: Although I drink, smoke, and perm my hair, I am a good monk. The demon king Mara once said to the Buddha: "When your Dharma ends, I will ask my disciples to sneak into your temples, wear your robes, and destroy your Dharma. They will misinterpret your scriptures and destroy your precepts in order to achieve the goals that I cannot achieve with force today." This is almost the situation right now, not to mention the strange phenomena that occurred twenty years ago, when the aura of evil spirits and monsters rose rapidly. In the end, Tokyo and even the whole of Japan will probably be destroyed.
This is a bit off topic. There are some things that a 16-year-old high school student like him doesn't need to worry about. It would be more practical for him to think about how to make more money. Born in a poor temple, he had no choice but to do some work such as exorcism, exorcism, and rituals when he was still in school to earn some money to supplement his family income. Fortunately, he was gifted in the path of Buddhist practice. In the three years since he started expanding his business, he has not encountered any troublesome evil spirits or ghosts. Most of the time, just one mantra, or a passage from the "Mahavairocana Mantra" and the "Great Light Mantra" can easily get rid of the evil spirits and complete the commission. Maybe the evil spirits in Tokyo are weaker. At two or three o'clock in the morning, there were no trams to go back to the streets. Hiramiya Chiye stayed on a bench inside the station to rest, waiting for the first train home at 6:30 in the morning. The night is long and lonely, and I can only count money to pass the time. When I returned home, all the lights inside Weilian Ancient Temple were already on. It was the habit of Chiya Hiramiya's mother to get up at 4:30 every day and start cleaning the temple. As for his father, he had been dead for many years, and he and his mother were the only ones in the family who supported the temple. Pinggong Qianye entered the temple from the entrance reserved for temple staff, bowed to the Vairocana Tathagata who was sitting in the main hall, and lit a stick of incense. Compared with the Vairocana Buddha enshrined in Toji Temple, which wears a crown and many gorgeous jewelry, the Vairocana Buddha in his home looks particularly simple. Back to basics. After passing the main hall, Pinggong Qianye came to the side hall and saw his mother who was cleaning diligently and devoutly. There were no extra small talk, just one or two bland greetings. She didn't seem to care at all that her child hadn't returned home late at night. His mother was probably stuck in the time when his father passed away and couldn't get over it. Pinggong Chiye had thought about this more than once. Leave the temple and return to the house next door. Second floor bedroom. Hiramiya Chiye divided the 20 yen he earned last night into half, putting half into his own private piggy bank and giving the other half to his mother as usual to subsidize the temple expenses. In order to prevent thieves from stealing his own treasury, Pinggong Qianye deliberately covered the outside of his money box with a Vajra Realm Mandala that he had drawn himself. 140 million yen, this is his current personal property. He was thinking whether he should use the money to renovate the temple inside and out, or to gild the statue of Vairocana in the temple. Magnificent and golden temples always attract the attention of believers and the secular world. I heard that some temples, in order to keep up with the times, have integrated electronic music, light shows, and comic exhibitions into the temples, and even introduced two-dimensional Buddhist maidens, calling it the religious culture of the new era.
Although he personally does not care about the number of believers who come to worship every day, he is still willing to do anything to increase the popularity of his own temple. After counting the money several times, putting the cash box back in place and locking it triple-locked, Pinggong Qianye came to sit at the desk. Although he didn't get much rest last night, he didn't feel tired at all, but full of energy. I looked at the time and there was still some time before the 7: breakfast. Pinggong Qianye took the "Mahavairocana Sutra" from the bookshelf. Its full name is "The Great Vairocana Buddha's Miraculous Transformation and Blessing Sutra". This is the method he practices. Weilian Ancient Temple belongs to the lineage of Kukai, the great master of the Shingon sect, and has a long history. The fundamental scriptures of Shingon Buddhism are the Mahavairocana Sutra and the Vajrasekhara Sutra. Pinggong Qianye's main practice is the "Mahavairocana Sutra" and his secondary practice is the "Vajrasekhara Sutra". As for what level he has reached, he himself is not very clear. Only when he was very young did he hear his father, who was not yet deceased, talk about something like the Chapter on Abiding the Mind, the Chapter on the True Words, and the Chapter on the Dharma. He probably developed magical powers when he was twelve years old and truly possessed the power to exorcise demons and evil spirits. Simply practicing hard to gain magical powers is an extremely long journey. When he first began to exorcise spirits and demons, he was surprised to find that every time he converted them, his own magical powers would always increase. The more powerful the evil spirit, the more magic power it can provide. This may be the dedication of merit and vows. So he assigned a danger value to the evil spirits he encountered based on their strength, starting from 0. The strongest evil spirit he has encountered so far has a danger value of about 5. It's still quite weak. There's nothing we can do about it. The evil spirits in Tokyo don't seem to be strong. As for his current specific strength... he estimated that among the younger generation of monks, he should be considered relatively powerful, right? At least, the heirs of family temples that he knew were all quite weak, and their strength fluctuated between 0 and 1. The truly powerful monks and eminent monks should practice in seclusion in those famous mountains and ancient temples. Open the Mahavairocana Sutra. The Buddha said: "All-knowing wisdom has the bodhicitta as its cause, great compassion as its root, and skillful means as its ultimate goal." This is the fundamental purpose of the Mahavairocana Sutra. Bodhicitta is the cause, compassion is the root, and expedient means is the ultimate. It is called the three sentences of cause and root, or the three sentences of cause, action and result. The "convenience is the ultimate" mentioned here refers to the method and purpose of practice. It refers specifically to the three secret conveniences, namely the seal of the secret of body, the mantra of the secret of speech, and the yoga visualization of the secret of mind.
The Shingon sect believes that if practitioners can use the seal of equality of body, the mantra of equality of speech, and the visualization of equality of mind as the method and way to advance in practice, they can attain the blessing and enjoyment body, achieve the equal wisdom body, and become a Buddha accordingly. To put it simply, it means to make seals with your hands, recite the mantra of Vairocana Tathagata, and visualize the true form of Vairocana Tathagata. This is the way of practice of Hiramiya Chiye. Make money, build temples, expand fame, and make your family's Weilian Ancient Temple the most precious temple in Japan. This is the direction that Hiramiya Chiye will work towards next. (End of this chapter)