The "Four Integration Project" of the Sangha's Self-Construction——Speech at the Third Student Graduation Ceremony of Hebei Buddhist College (2005July 1, 2019 ) Today is the day of the third graduation ceremony of our Hebei Provincial Buddhist College. Just now, the Dean of the Provost made a report on the teaching work of the Buddhist College and the students' study status in the past two years. The teacher representatives and classmates representatives all spoke. Deputy Director Zhang Xingtang of the Provincial Department of Ethnic Affairs and Religious Affairs gave us an important speech with great sincerity and hope.I hope that every student of us will keep Director Zhang’s speech in mind so that our learning has a direction, our life has a direction, and our faith in religion has a direction.Because Director Zhang's speech not only talked about issues in religious policies, but also about the situation in our society today, and also about the Party and the government's policy on running religious schools.Every student studying in the Buddhist Academy must have a clear understanding of the major policies and directions of our Buddhist Academy, which is to cultivate qualified religious clergy who are patriotic and religious, who have a firm political stance, profound religious knowledge and religious cultivation, and are deeply supported by the majority of religious believers.This is a general direction, and we must implement this general direction without fail.After we graduate from study, we should still use this direction as our lifelong requirement for spreading the Dharma and benefiting sentient beings, and we must not deviate from this general direction at any time.We have been in charge of the Hebei Buddhist College for seven or eight years. We have studied here for more than 200 students, and only 112 students have graduated from the third class.This reality and this contrast seem cruel to me.Why?There are many people entering the school, and there are also many people who cannot persist in learning. This raises us a very sharp question, why does this phenomenon occur?As the dean of this Buddhist college, I need to reflect deeply on this.How we should think about and solve this problem may take some time, go through some repetition, and accumulate more positive and negative experiences in order to have a realistic understanding of the current common phenomenon of students' instability in the study of Buddhist colleges.However, I think in general, the managers and teachers have a unclear understanding of the goals of the Buddhist college, have insufficient understanding of the urgency and responsibility of cultivating monks, have insufficient concern for students' lives, learning, cultivation, and thoughts, have not solved problems in teaching, management, and life in a timely manner, and are not sound in the management, teaching, and service mechanisms. This is the fundamental reason for the problems.In this regard, I think the actual difficulties faced by our Hebei Buddhist College are: weak strength, weak strength, and unscrupulous strength.The government has clear regulations on the overall goals and directions of our school. We must cultivate qualified religious clergy who loves the country and religion. Based on the specific situation and specific training goals of Buddhist colleges, I have proposed the "Four and Eight" policy.Four are four words: faith, precepts, learning, and practicing;Eight means eight words: develop the monk's character and integrate into the monk's community.I feel that this "Four and Eight" policy has not been truly implemented in our Buddhist college. The spirit of the Three Studies and the principles of Six Convergence are not fully preached and implemented effectively.If such subjective efforts are not achieved, it will naturally affect students' learning emotions and learning effects.Of course, some problems come from Buddhist colleges, some from classmates and social influence.From the perspective of students, there are many specific and practical problems.First of all, due to insufficient students, Buddhist colleges have forced to lower their requirements to absorb students, making it difficult for students' political, religious and cultural qualities to be worthy of their reputation.Secondly, due to some negative impacts of the social environment, the difficulty of management of Buddhist colleges has increased to a certain extent, such as unhealthy information on the Internet and pornography, martial arts and other content that is not suitable for monks to understand. Most people regard it as idle, but it is a huge obstacle to monks' cultivation.Third, because the situation of the monastic community is relatively complicated, the mutual influence between monks is great, which makes it difficult to grasp management.Some problems like this have long troubled the management of Buddhist colleges.Of course, there are far more problems in management and learning, but it is very difficult to solve these problems in a short period of time.In this case, what is the way out for running a Buddhist college?To run Hebei Buddhist College well, we must work hard to implement the four-character outline of faith, precepts, learning and practice, and the eight-character policy of developing the monk's character and integrating into the monk's community on the premise of implementing the general direction of religious schools stipulated by the government.These principles are the guiding ideology for realizing the Sangha education from beginning to end, and these principles are valuable experiences summarized through practice.In order to fundamentally increase the efforts to implement the "Four and Eight" policy and create a good internal learning environment for monk education, I think our monastery should earnestly grasp the "Four Innovative Project" of the self-construction of the Sangha community.These "Four Modernizations" are projects in ideological construction, projects in spiritual construction, and are major issues related to what our Buddhism, especially the monastic community should carry forward and adhere to.These "four modernizations" are: the Taoist style of the monastery should adhere to the traditionalization, the management of the monastery should adhere to the legal system, the spread of the Dharma should adhere to the popularization, and the life of the monastery should adhere to the popularization.Below I will give a few opinions on the specific implementation of these "Four Modernizations".The Taoist style of the monastery should be adhered to intra-tradition, which means that the main task of building Taoist style of the monastery should not deviate from the general direction of the traditional jungle.The functions of the traditional jungle such as morning and evening homework, second-hour vegetarian offerings, half-month busa reciting precepts, summer residence, Zen seven-day purity, preaching and preaching precepts should be fully paid attention to, and institutionalize, standardize and regularize, and play an important role in accepting the masses, uniting people's hearts, inheriting culture, implementing practice, and establishing an image, so as to prevent the continued breeding and spread of negative phenomena such as the dilution of beliefs of the Sangha and the absence of practice.The management of the monastic community should adhere to the law system, which means that the monasteries and monastic community should adhere to the principle of taking precepts as teachers in every link in the implementation of the teaching system, and unswervingly capture monks according to the law and capture the masses with the Dharma.The rules and regulations formulated by the monastery according to time and place must follow the law. Every detail of the monastery's life must reflect the spirit of stopping evil and doing good, preventing non-disorders, and implementing the goal of developing the monk's character and integrating into the monastery in the specific management and operation process.The traditional management method of Chinese Chinese Buddhist temples is a dual-track mechanism that combines precepts and clean rules. This is also the direction of the regulation of management laws, and we must be serious and unwavering.The monastic community should adhere to popularization in spreading the Dharma, which means that the concept of spreading the Dharma and benefiting sentient beings in temples should always pay attention to ordinary believers, ordinary people, the people around the temple, and everyone who visits the temple.People in these four aspects are endless treasures of the temple, resource advantages of the entire Buddhism, and a profound foundation for the existence and development of Buddhism.When facing these people and everyone we come into contact with every day, don’t forget that our philosophy is: gratitude, sharing, and making connections.Monks cannot become scholars who are noble and arrogant, nor can they become wealthy people like wealthy, and of course they cannot have the spirit of an official.Monks should learn the spirit of Bodhisattva, be uninvited friends of sentient beings, and be servants of sentient beings.Adhering to popularization is to think about problems, do everything for the public, and make contributions to the public, and put the Bodhisattva spirit of enlightenment and dedication to life into practice.The life of the monastic community should adhere to popularization, which means that the monastic community or monastery should not forget the spirit of the "Four Restraints" at any time. The "Four Restraints" are the lifestyle of monks. The precepts stipulate that monks live according to the "Four Restraints".The "Four Reliefs" are: wearing feces and sweeping clothes, often walking and begging for food, living under a tree, and discarding medicine.This way of life is the way of life for practitioners. Monks can live in the path of saints based on these four methods. Therefore, these four methods are also called the "Four Holy Seeds". The importance of the four seeds that achieve the sages born in the world can be imagined.Of course, China and India have different national conditions and folk customs, and their lifestyles are different in ancient and modern times, but the spirit of the "Four Reliefs" cannot be lost.Before taking the precepts of monks, every monk must first receive the "Four Dependences". The purpose is to tell every monk who has received the precepts that living according to the "Four Dependences" is the true nature of monks.Although our temples today cannot copy the lifestyles of ancient Indian monks, we must advocate a frugal lifestyle, a poor lifestyle, a lifestyle that emphasizes both labor and study, and a lifestyle that advocates the "no work for one day and no food for one day" by Zen Master Baizhang.We must strive to avoid the trend of frivolity and luxury, the style of being pompous and showing off our broad style, the style of being gold and jade outside and the style of being weak and fragile, and the style of not cultivating virtue and not talking about learning.In short, monks are practitioners and preachers. They must get rid of all pursuit of enjoyment and secular lifestyle that hinder the construction of the Taoist style, and prevent the decline of the learning of the monastic community from the decline of morality, the decline of quality, and the degradation of image.The popularization of monks' lives is a big problem. All our facilities are prepared for the public and should be shared with the public and do not have the desire to possess them.Buddhism is the masses, Buddhism is the masses, and temples are the masses.Without public participation and achievements, we have nothing.This is the law of cause and condition. We must know how to stay with the circumstances, do with the circumstances, come with the circumstances, go with the circumstances, everything will follow the circumstances, be light and at ease.The proposal of these "four persistences" and the proposal of the "four modernization projects" are indeed inspired.Since last year, I have traveled to some places from north to south, participated in many activities, and contacted many people, and had many useful experiences.Sitting in the mountain temple, I always think about it.At present, our Buddhism has good opportunities and there are quite serious crises lurking.As an old man, he has walked many roads and experienced many things, and is determined to be dangerous in times of peace and has an unshirkable responsibility.Historical experience tells us that the era when monks silently adhere to poverty and cultivate virtue and lecture prevailed is the era when Buddhism flourished;Whenever monks are out of control, monks’ quality is low, monks’ lives are corrupt, they are not doing their jobs, their precepts are relaxed, and their management is weak, which is the era when Buddhism is on a downward trend, and the era when "difficult to Dharma" is coming.A history of Chinese Buddhism and a history of world Buddhism are quite a lot of historical lessons describing the rise and fall of Buddhism.I hope that our generation of monks will become Buddhist dragon statues that continue the Buddha's wisdom and magnify the Dharma, and will not become a sinner who defiles the Dharma and burys Buddhism.Today is the festive day of the third graduation ceremony of Hebei Buddhist College. Director Zhang told us a lot of encouragement words, which are a spur to us. I am very grateful.But I saw that there is a serious crisis behind the prosperity of Buddhism and faced serious challenges from inside and outside the teachings, so I expressed some of the above opinions, one encourages oneself and the other encourages oneself.We must always keep a clear mind, always have a sense of crisis, always have the awareness of walking in depth, and work hard to implement the concept of Zen in life and building civilian Buddhism in order to turn danger into a bargain and make the monastic community invincible.The above words I said are some of the issues I have thought about the most recently.Therefore, I brought it up at such a solemn and grand gathering today. I hope to encourage you with the monks, teachers and classmates here, and hope to receive advice from all leaders. If there is something worthwhile, please remember it.good!Thank you everyone, Amitabha!
