Royal Academic Institute

My Feng Shui researches 14 - White Horse Temple 白馬寺

What I know in the western culture, there are 3 topics easily ending with the argument in the past. The first thing is the religious, second is the politic, and third is the sports.

Nowadays, all kinds of topic will easily ending with arguments. It is because everyone wants to be the leader of that topic. Everyone fight for their benefits or believes. What they can see are the short term benefits, they don’t care the long term benefits or social ethic.

Our universe is like a circle, everything you do will come back to you. It started from the merchant wanted to earn more money, they focus to increase the productivity. They used some chemicals to increase the productivity of foods. Those foods are immature in nature; the people eat those foods which will affect their ways of thinking. More and more immature quality of people is coming out to affect the market. Part of the honest people either hiding themselves or out of the business, the rest of them want to survive, they become dishonest. The ending is everyone suffers. As Chinese old saying, “A small fire will become a big fire.” We need something to stop this fire.

Religious is a good solution to solve that unethical behaviour, if everyone has the religious and they following their religious rules as a daily guideline, then most of the above situation will solve.

When I was in Belgium, my student told me that many church closed down because fewer and fewer of young people would go to the church for last 20 years.

In my generation, I growth up with Confucianism, Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, after my serious comparison, I chose Buddhism as my religious. Although I am not a perfect and complete Buddhist, more or less I know the way to be.

To trace the root of the knowledge is my favour; I knew Buddhism was not the Chinese original religious; it first came from India in AC 65, which was a Wing Ping永平 8th year in Chinese calendar. The King Ming明帝 of East Hon dynasty東漢 ordered his 18 ambassadors, Choi Yam蔡愔 and Wong Jun王遵 as the leaders, to invite the Buddhism to China. The India monks followed Mr Choi and carried the Buddha’s Bible by a white horse to China.

The King Ming明帝 wanted to show his respects to the monks, he built a temple called “White horse temple白馬寺” for the monk and also recognized that white horse contribution. This temple gave a good environment for the monks to translate the Buddha’s Bible into Chinese.




The finished Buddha’s Bible translation was called, “42 Chapters of Buddha’s Bible四十二章經”, which was the name of Buddha’s Bible that was using in one of the famous story writer, Kam Yung’s金庸 story book.

After Buddha became as the religious of China, there were 3 major invitations of the Buddha’s Bibles back to China doing the translation work. Following the huge amounts of translation, Buddhism diversified into different lineages. One of the famous lineages is Zen禪.

Zen’s禪 practice is focus on the self enlightens, after the enlightenment you need your master to certify you.

One of the famous enlightenment stories is the discussion of Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡and Monk Fut Yan佛印 after the meditation, Monk Fut Yan told Scholar So Tung Bo’s蘇東坡meditating look like a Budda but Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡told Monk Fut Yan’s 佛印meditating like a bull-shit. Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡though he was the winner of this discussion and told his sister the whole story, but his sister told him that he was a looser in this discussion. It is because Monk Fut Yan佛印 had a Buddha in his heart, he saw Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡is Buddha. Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡 did not have a Buddha in his heart, that’s why he saw Monk Fut Yan佛印 was a bull-shit.



The main theme for this story is the “Buddha”, but my friend changed it to “Scholar” which will twist the whole meaning of the story. It also will create different version for the same story which will misleading the readers that is the original version of the story and miss the main theme of the story.

A Zen story has a several layers of understanding; it depends on how deep you understand the Buddhism.

For the beginning level, you will realize that the bias is coming from our perspective.

For the second level, there is nothing wrong with Scholar So Tung Bo 蘇東坡 because we call ourselves is “Bull-shit pocket 臭皮囊”, fertilizer is its ending. Scholar So Tung Bo蘇東坡still in the material world. Monk Fut Yan佛印 saw the Buddha; he was in the spiritual world.

For the third level, we talk about nonentity in the Buddhism; most of the people think it is empty. Such our body at the end will dissolve like a bull-shit, nothing is existed. In fact, Buddhism talk about nonentity is not really empty, inside of that empty has something existing. We call it, “Chun Yue真如” which is our Buddha nature. So in the discussion Scholar So Tung Bo only saw the empty but Monk Fut Yan佛印 saw the non-empty真空妙有.

If we change the Fut Yan’s佛印 “Buddha” to “Scholar”, then the readers only can see the first layer but not the other layers. If we are not deep in that religious and change its original theme, it will happen as what I said, “It will negatively affect the authenticity of the story!”

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