The New Pneumonia

On August 14,1992, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua lectured at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas on the terminal disease which has tied doctors' hands and caused people to pale at its mention---AIDS, and an alarming new illness---the "new pneumonia. " On August 16, the Venerable Master again addressed this topic at Golden Wheel Monastery in Los Angeles, crying out to wake up the people of the world to this great ctisis which threatens all of humanity, and exhorting everone to recite the Great Compassion Mnatra and the Shurangama Mantra to avert the crisis and preserve world peace.

We should follow the saying, "If you can renew yourself one day, then renew yourself everyday. " Each day we should go forward a step; everyday we should advance some. Otherwise we will waste our life in vain. We should recite the Great Compassion Mantra and the Shurangama Mantra. The Great Compassion Mantra can cure all illnesses.

It's said, "The Great Compassion penetrates haeven and earth." When you recite the Great Compassion Mantra,the heavens and hells will all take note of it. The more you recite, the more efficacious the response will be. However, you have to recite with constancy; you should not choose "lotuses today, and peonies tomorrow," and be unable to concentrate on one. It's said, "Concentration results in efficacy; scatteredness results in nothing."

I remember when a village in northeastern China suffered an epidemic after the Japanese had surrendered. Several tens of people died every day, so several hundreds would be dead after ten days. In one household of eleven, there were thirteen deaths in three days. How could there be thirteen deaths in a household of eleven people? It was because there were also a relative and friend who had come to visit the sick family, not knowing that when they got there they would die along with the others. This was a really severe epidemic.

At that time, I took four eleven or twelve-year-old boys with me to this village to recite teh Great Compassion Mantra for the sake of villagers. After we had walked all around the village reciting the Great Compassion Mnatra one hundred and eight times, the epidemic mysteriously disappeared. From this, I knew that the response from reciting the Great Compassion Mantra is inconceivable.

Now we have come to the Dharma Ending Age. What is "Dharma Ending"? It means the Dharma is about to fade away and trail off. Few people have real faith in Buddha, and the Buddhists are sladering the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. How can this be called believing in Buddha? This is called believing in demons. Believing in demons, they come to destroy the Buddhadharma.

And so all kinds of evil phenomena in this world, be they natural disasters, man-made calamities, or the spread of epidemics. Natural disasters include swarms of locusts, droughts, and floods. Man-made calamities include plane crashes, derailed trains, and car collisions, all apparent reason, and resulting in a multitude of human crises. Then there are the earthquakes which have been occuring everywhere, frightening people.

But people only know to how to become scared when the catastrophes occur. They don't know to look for the root of it. Nature has no disasters. It is the human species which suffers disasters. Man-made disasters are disaster which we bring upon ourselves .Earthquakes occur because people are fond of war, have big tempers, and kill countless people. "Do you want to die? Do you like to kill people? Fine, we can all die together!" and so the earth quakes. These are all various kinds of evil phenomena.

We people! Why do we fail to investigate and find out where the roots is at? Let me tell you all, that these natural disasters, man-made calamities, and earthquakes, all the various accidents of planes crashing, train derailing, ships sinking, and cars colliding, are all created by the minds of people. People's minds are not as they used to be, and virtue and morality have deteriorated, and so these unusual phenomena have appeared.

The most frightening thing in the human world now is homosexuality. Homosexuality is a practice which opposes the life principle of the universe, which goes against the creative energies of Yin and Yang, and which violates the laws of the nation.

This kind of behavior will cause the country to perish and the human race to become extinct. If the country perishes, then it's no longer a country, and the human race is also cut off. Although homosexuality are so infatuated with one another, they cannot reproduce, so the seeds of the human race will be lost. To plant corn, seed-corns are required. To plant melons, melon seeds are needed. To plant beans, bean seeds are needed. Not only do corn and beans have seeds, everything has seeds. Humans also have human seeds. If the human will all perish, and humanity will come to an end.

Now, homosexual conduct has already incurred punishment from the heavens, yet the homosexuals aren't even aware of it. What kind of heavenly punishment have they provoked? Well, as soon as they engage in homosexual behavior, there are problems. This is because Yang (the male or positive principle) mutually overcomes Yang, and Yin (the femaleor negative principle) mutually overcomes Yin.

Just take a look at a magnet, which has a negative (Yin) side and a positive side (Yang) side. There has to be one negative and one positive for the two to be sucked together. If both sides are positive they cannot be drawn together. If both sides are negative, it's not easy for them to be attracted to each other. From the study of matter, we can deduce the principle of Yin and Yang, which cannot favor one and neglect the other.

The Book Of Change says, "One Yin and one Yang is called the Way; extreme Yin or extreme Yang is called illness." When Yin and Yang harmonize together, this is the Way. When Yin and Yang do not harmonize, illness results. The practice of homosexuality has produced AIDS. Some say AIDS originated in Africa, but Africa is not the source of AIDS. The origin of AIDS is homosexuality. When homosexuals catch this disease, they have no medicine to treat it, and no way to cure it. The doctors all have their hands tied, with no strategy for dealing with it.

What kind of disease is AIDS? It's an epidemic which cannot be cired by any medicine. There are still people studying AIDS right now, trying to find a way to cureit. Alas! This is called knowing something cannot be done, yet insisting on doing it anyway. Attempting to cure it by force, they not only fail to cure AIDS, but what happened is that from AIDS came another "AIDS", which is pneumonia.

This pneumonia is even more vicious than AIDS, once you catch it. This illness can be transmitted through the mere shaking of hands. If the sick person merely opens his mouth to speak, he can pass the disease to you. Not only ordinary people have no way to treat this disease; even among the doctors and nurses, in the last year alone in U.S., nearly twenty thousand have died from the new variety of pneumonia. There's no way to avoid it---even face masks don't work. When there is body contact, the infection is transmitted. It can even be passed through the air.

This kind of illness is more devastating than the atomic bomb. It's more devastating than the hydrogen bomb. That's why this is catastrophe of epidemic proportions. Now that this epidemic has struck, not only do men have this disease, a great number women have also been infected. And not only do women have it, even babies are getting born with this kind of pneumonia and with AIDS. Just look! How terrifying this is!

Throughout the world now, if we count it up, we find that that the number of people with AIDS and this pneumonia is not small, for some are infected with the germs of pneumonia while still in the womb. That's why all over the world, the final days of human race have arrived. The so-called final days means that all will be annihilated, all will disappear.

Among the human population in the entire world, more that half are infected with germs of this disease, so when this disease breaks out, it will be like an over-whelming deluge which cannot be stopped by anyone.

So what should the human race do when it encounter this kind of calamity? We should recite the Great Compassion Mantra with the utmost sincerity and earnestness. The Buddha said that the Great Compassion Mantra can cure the eighty-four thousand illnesses of the world. All the eighty-four thousand kinds of diseases are covered, including AIDS and pneumonia.

We should bring forth a mind of utmost sincerity, and be as earnest as we are eating, as earnestness as when we are dressing, and as dedicated as we are to sleeping, so much that we cannot miss any sleep. We have to merge the Great Compassion Mantra into our daily activities, so that it be comes an integral part of our everyday life.If we can do this, then AIDS will be afraid and pneumonia will also be afraid. But this requires our utmost sincerity.

Over half of the human population in the world is going to perish, and those who will be left will be people who cultivate the Way, who cultivate truely, those who recite the Buddha's name, those who recite Sutras, those who are vegetarian-these people will be able to remain.

I'm not saying this to terrify you. It's just that the time has come when I can no longer refrain from shouting and crying out, to tell all of you that this current age is not a time of peace. It is very dangerous, and each morning we have no guarantee that we will see the evening, for the danger can come at any moment.