Good morning everyone and good afternoon for some people. Here it is Canada.
Let's continue to share about the Guanyin Six Syllables Mantra: Om Mani Padme Hum
As we already had a brief introduction last time, the six syllables of the Guan Yin Mantra
represent and bless the six realms of suffering. The highest realms is HEAVEN, coloured in
white; the second-highest realm is ASHURA. coloured in green; the third realm is where
is we are right now. The HUMAN realm is coloured in yellow. Lower than the human realm, is the animal realm.
The color is in blue; and then lower than that is the Hungry Ghost realm, which
is coloured in red, and as we know the lowest realm is the HELL realm. The color is in black.
So some people must be very curious why these six realms have different colours
to represent them, and the why the Guan Yin Six Syllable Mantra can release and
bless the six realms and the sentient beings' suffering. Let's discuss and
let us find out today. As the highest realm we known is the heaven realm.
Why is the colour white? As we know, in the higher realms, the sentient beings are
not so much attached to their physical conditions, and that when they want to
have some food, they just need to visualize it, and the food will come to them.
And when they feel they fall in love with a female, they do not need
physical contact. They just need to use their mind to feel love with this person.
This is in higher realm, so as we can see the colour is much lighter.
It represents our attachment, our self-attachment, our desires as being much less [than in the other realms].
So let's take take a look the second highest realm: the Ashura realm. According to
Buddha's Sutras, the highest realm from the heaven goddess with the Ashura realm, they
are always fighting. They had good karma and good deeds in order to be reborn in
the higher realm, like to heaven, but because in the Ashura realm there
is a much stronger sense of jealousy, Ashura realm sentient beings
are always jealous, fighting, and arguing with heaven realm's sentient beings all the time
So as you can see, the colour became green. It is like when we get very
angry or we get mad about something. Our face will become greenish.
So the Ashura realm has a lot of anger and dissatisfaction, and jealousy. So that is called
one of our Five Poisons in Buddhist terms.
The Five Poisons are: desire, anger, ignorance, pride, and doubt.
So, obviously we can see the highest realms of sentient beings in heaven
have less of the Five Poisons But the Ashura realm has a very strong element
of these Five Poisons, which is jealousy. Now we will talk about our human realm,
where we are right now is in yellow. A lot of Buddhist statues are in
golden yellow because in the human realm, it is very easy for us to cultivate and to meditate
and to enter a self-realization path to get rid of our bad karma, bad thoughts
bad behaviours, bad speech. We can see that Sakyamuni Buddha also
enlightened in the human form of body. So there are many Bodhisattvas that practice in
the human realm and become enlightened in human form of body. So you can see that the human realm
is coloured in yellow. This means it is more neutral; you can become an extremely good
enlightened one like a Buddha; you also can have conduct that is extremely
bad which can cause us to go to a lower realms. Okay that's human realm. Now we
will look at the colour of animal realm; it is blue. We know the mantra goes "Om Ma
Ni Pad Me Hum" Pad represents the animal realm in blue colouring, as you can see.
The colour becomes darker because if we do lots of bad deeds, bad karma,
Our rebirth in next term of life can be rebirth into a lower realms, which is
the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm, or hell realm.
Lower than the animal realm is the hungry ghost realm.
The hungry ghost realm represents a lot of desires, and attachments. For
those beings who are very greedy they never want to share their good parts with others
people; it doesn't matter if it is material, money, or food we say less
generosity represents the greediness of the hungry ghost realm. So it is in
red colouring. In the lowest hell realm, the colour is in black. In black, as we can see,
all the energy of the colors suddenly darkens. Why do some sentient beings
go to the hell realm? I think I do not need to explain that. So when we recite
the Six Syllable Guan Yin Mantra, obviously the six realms of sentient beings
can be liberated from their suffering. Their suffering from hell,
suffering from being a hungry ghost, suffering from being in the animal realm, suffering as
a human, suffering from the Ashura realm, suffering from the heaven realm.
So every time we recite Om Mani Padme Hum
immediately we receive the
blessing of Guan Yin Bodhisattva Guan Yin Bodhisattva represents great
compassion, infinity of kindness, unconditional compassion.
Thank you for watching today and I'm looking forward to the next section, and to having you join us.
Thank you.