Life is like a Dream series

1^st Dream - Amitabha Rulai samdarsana

In English, Amitabha is one and only name of the Amitabha Buddha. Yet in Chinese, there are Amitabha Fo and Amitabha Rulai two names. I didn’t know that there are two names when I started learning Buddhism. Possibly because I knew nothing about this, Amitabha Buddha samdarsana in my dream taught me this with Rulai “phase.”

It was more than twenty years ago, one night in dream I heard a voice talked to me: “Otherwise you could just do…….” “Who are you?” asked I. A visual without shape or form but it felt like five Chinese words: “Amitabha Rulai” showed in the dream. Awakened I, then shocked and touched, “Was that Amitabha Buddha came to me talked in my dream?”

But I didn’t know who is Amitabha Rulai at that time. So, I went to library to find out who is Amitabha Rulai. Finally, I found that Amitabha Rulai is no others but Amitabha Buddha. They are two names of one Buddha. What a surprise! How could I possibly know that Amitabha Buddha has two different Chinese names?

As to what - “Otherwise you could just do …….?” - Amitabha Buddha taught me in the dream, it is not good to talk about, Buddha said. Briefly speaking, what Amitabha Buddha talked to me was to answer my questions I asked in the dream, yet I cannot release the content Buddha said to me.

The only thing I can say is that I learnt a lesson from Buddha’s words. It’s like a lesson I learnt in another dream, in which I saw a green lotus, but it is not so big as I read in sutra. I then asked a dharma master why the lotus was so small in my dream. He smiled and replied, “Study harder, study more.” Oh, my Goodness! So that is why the lotus was so small, it is because I knew Buddhism not “big” enough yet.

Amitabha Rulai talk to me about similar lesson in the dream. What I can say is that I would like to know more about Buddhism after the dream. That dream made me so touched. Later, I went to India to pay my devotional visit to the homeland of Buddha.

Coincidentally, the day I arrived at the Jetavana Grove was Lunar 17^th, November, the birthday of Amitabha Rulai. After two thousand years, a dream led me to the same place Amitabha Rulai listened to the expounding of sutra by Sakyamuni Buddha. And the day I arrived was his birthday.

Namo Amitabha Buddha!

Namo Amitabha Buddha!

Namo Amitabha Buddha!