My Controversial Religion - The Name
When I do a search on google or any other search engine, I came across sites, including forums that speak negatively of True Buddha School (TBS), targeting mainly at its founder Lu Sheng Yen. The most common complaints are that it is a cult, its name "True Buddha" denotes that other Buddhist schools of thought is fake, the sex scandal and the infamous killing speech. Honestly, I am appalled by the extend of ignorance of some people and am genuinely concerned about the intentions of such sites.
I know that most students of TBS has chosen to remain silent in the wake of such verbal attacks, knowing that there are people out there who distort facts or take information out of context to serve their own selfish and even perhaps evil intentions. Who are these people? I have no idea. One thing I am sure is that their inaccurate views are misleading others to develop a veiled opinion of what TBS is. Really, it is a case of the blind leading the blind. How sad!
Despite the explanation of why TBS is named as such, many people still insist on ignoring it and going on about their senseless interpretation on its name. So, let me clarify to the best of my understanding : TRUE Buddha School (TBS) using the word TRUE does not mean that only TBS is TRUE and others are all FAKE. I seriously doubt a peanut can pass through the size of the mental passageway of these people (who actually said such a thing). The Founder, Lu Sheng Yen has mentioned before that all Buddha dharma are equally precious and can lead sentient beings to salvation and hence all dharma that orginates from the Buddha (including all Enlightened Ones) is True - furthermore, in Buddhism, it is understood that all sentient beings has the Buddha nature and thus possess true-ness. The usage of the word True in TBS connotes a deeper universal meaning of dharma, compassion and salvation.
Now, before you Christians, Muslims and believers of other faiths shoot me by mistaking me to say that your religion is fake, hear me out first. In the real spirit of the what the word "true" means in TBS :- Your religion is TRUE as long as your religious teaching encompasses compassion and can genuinely lead you to your desired spiritual liberation/salvation.
On a more serious note, there has been massive discussion on a quote taken from Lu Sheng Yen’s speech. In this quote, it seems as if Lu Sheng Yen is saying that it is alright to kill so as to save someone who is beyond redemption. What bullshit is that? Lu Sheng Yen did not condone killing of lives! He was merely explaining a portion of Padmasambhava’s life, the part where Padmasambhava with the use of magical means killed an entire village of black magic practitioners and then with the use of his deep compassionate powers, cleansed and liberate the souls of these evildoers. Lu Sheng Yen was narrating this very famous story and commenting on the intentions of Padmasambhava. But someone took a particular sentence from Lu Sheng Yen’s speech and made it seem like Lu Sheng Yen is encouraging the act of killing. Worse is there are actually people who believed in such rumours, such distortions of truth. Where has common sense gone to???
So is TBS a cult? What is the definition of cult? If a self proclaimed enlightened man goes about his work of spreading what he believes as the way to the light at the end of tunnel, and in the process encourages his believers to be hardworking in practicing the dharma, be kind to others and shows by example by devoting his life to help others and not demanding any sort of monetary repayment can be defined as a cult leader, then perhaps TBS is a cult and definitely in the same sense, many other so called orthodox religions are also cults.
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