(Book 223 Stories of Supreme Spiritual Responses《無上殊勝的感應》「烏鴉同時大叫」)
‧Ｗritten by Sheng-yen Lu‧
Translated by Janny Chow
A US Daden Culture Publication
(continued from pg A7 , TBN issue # 1140)
On June 1, 2011, I returned to the Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple in the Washington state of United States. The fellow students there shouted loudly, “We invite Grand Master Lu to reside permanently in Seattle!”
Their voices reverberated. I was greatly moved.
I responded, “When the crows in Seattle all caw simultaneously.”
On June 2, 2011, at eight o’clock in the morning, I was standing leisurely outside the True Buddha Quarter. Suddenly a flock of crows flew over from the right side of Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple. When they flew above my head, they started cawing loudly in unison:
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!”
They then flew in circles three times above me.
This was a yogic response to the statement I had made the day before.
Master Lianwang witnessed the episode and said, “How wonderful, how wonderful! Grand Master Lu only said it yesterday, and today the crows are indeed cawing loudly together.”
I myself also found it strange. What was happening? Could it be that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas wanted me to reside permanently in the Seattle area?
I could benefit many sentient beings by staying in Taiwan. Students from mainland China, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan all could travel to Taiwan easily.
In Taiwan, every Saturday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, ten thousand people attended the dharma teaching and the numbers of students taking refuge were in the hundreds, sometimes up to a thousand. By my approximation, during my last year in Taiwan, multiplying the attendance at each teaching by the number of dharma teachings held yielded a number in the four hundred thousands, with at least seventy thousand people having taken refuge.
***
Should I stay in Seattle?
Should I stay in Taiwan?
Or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Australia?
I can feel that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas at Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple here in Redmond want me to stay in the Seattle area.
I said, “Let the crows caw together!”
And indeed, the crows cawed loudly at the same time! They also flew in spirals three times above my head.
I wrote a poem:
With the passing of light clouds and shower,
The blazing heat is gone,
Rosy clouds line the Seattle sky.
A windy path leads up to quietude,
A small slanting gate stands guard,
My home is at the edge of the lake.
Evening twilight calls out to the crows,
A wind from the bamboos flutters the pine needles.
What a clear and transparent window gauze.
(The End)
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