The Law Varies from Dimension to Dimension
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        In the past many qigong masters stated that qigong was divided into what was elementary, intermediate and advanced. They all belong to qi, something staying in the phase of exercising qi, which was also divided into the elementary, intermediate and advanced. As for what is really advanced, the broad masses of qigong practitioners are quite ignorant of it, and do not know it at all. What I am going to lecture about from now on is all about the Law in the high dimension. Besides, I would like to rehabilitate the reputation of cultivation. In my lectures, I am going to speak of the unhealthy phenomena in the world of cultivation, and how to look at and deal with them. I also intend to make clear such things as those quite big and even very serious issues involved in lecturing on the Law and teaching the practice exercise of the high order. I also want to disclose the interference in our ordinary human society from other spaces, especially the interference in the world of cultivation. At the same time we'll solve the problems for our students. Otherwise, you will not be able to practise. In order to resolve the problems once and for all, we must regard you as genuine cultivators, and we can do all of this for you. Of course, it will not be easy to change your mind all at once, but in the following lectures, you will change gradually, and I hope you will listen attentively. I am different from others in teaching gong. When doing so, some people simply said something about their principles of qigong, then asked the students to receive messages, and ended up by teaching them a set of hand movements. People are already used to this way of teaching qigong.

        To teach qigong indeed, one must preach the Law and expound the Tao. In my ten lectures, I'll expound the Law at the advanced level so that you can cultivate yourself; otherwise, you simply cannot do it. What the others teach all belongs to the stage of healing diseases and keeping fit, and you will not be able to reach high dimensional cultivation without the guidance of the Law of the high dimension even if you want to. This is also true of your going to school. You are still a schoolboy if you attend the college learning the textbooks of a schoolboy's. Some people think they have learned many kinds of qigong, from which they have received a pile of certificates, but their cultivation energy has not gone up yet. They mistake these for the true essence and all of qigong. They are wrong because these are only the superficial knowledge of qigong at the lowest level. Qigong covers far more than these. It is cultivation. It has extensive knowledge and profound scholarship; and the Law varies from dimension to dimension, so qigong does not seem to be what we now know about the exercise of qi, for it is all the same for you to learn it even more. Let me illustrate it with an example. You have learned the textbooks for British primary schools; you have learned the textbooks for American primary schools; you have learned the textbooks for Japanese primary schools; you also have learned the textbooks for Chinese primary schools. You are still a schoolboy. The more lessons about what is elementary of qigong you have learned, and the more full of it you are, the more harm it will do you because you have made a muddle of your body.

        I'd like to stress another point. In cultivation, we must expound the Law and teach the practice exercise. From this point of view, monks from some temples, especially those from the school of Zen Buddhism, may have some different ideas. They do not feel like hearing people say anything about preaching the Law. Why? Zen Buddhism believes that the Dharma cannot be preached. Once it is done, it will no longer be the Dharma. It can only be understood tacitly because there is no Dharma to preach. Therefore, all through the evolution of Zen Buddhism up till today, they have been unable to preach any Dharma at all. Patriarch Dharmer taught Zen Buddhism according to a statement made by Sakyamuni, who once said, "There is no Dharma without change". Based on this statement, Dharmer founded the school of Zen Buddhism. So far as we understand, this school is getting into a bull's horn (a dead end). Then, what do we mean by getting into a bull's horn? When Dharmer began to dig into it, he felt it spacious; the Second Patriarch felt it not so comfortable; the Third felt it not too bad; and when it came to the Fourth, it became quite narrow; the Fifth found there was not much space left; and when it came to the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, there was no room left, and he could no longer get into it. If you go to a Zen master to learn the Dharma today, do not ask questions. If you do, you will get a stick-hit on the head, which is called "stick-warning". It means that you cannot ask questions, but that you should make yourself understood by yourself. You may say, "I have come here to learn just because I do not know. What on earth can I understand by a stick-hit on the head?" That is to say, they have reached the tip of the bull's horn, and there is nothing for them to say any more. Even Dharmer himself said that he could only pass down his teaching to the Sixth Patriarch, and that thereafter there would be no more teaching of Zen Buddhism. Now several hundred years have passed. However, there are still some people who cling to the principles of Zen Buddhism. Then, what exactly did Sakyamuni mean by saying that "There is no Dharma without change"? Sakyamuni was in the status of Tathagata. People, including many monks after him, did not awake to that status in which Sakyamuni was, nor the mental state of his realm of awareness, the true sense of the Dharma he had preached, and the real meaning of his words. So, people thereafter explained his words this way or that way, causing much confusion. They believe that "There is no Dharma without change" means that you cannot preach the Dharma, or it would no longer be the Dharma. It is not so. Sakyamuni did not reach so high a status as Tathagata immediately after he became enlightened and opened his cultivation energy under the Bodhi Tree. In all his 49 years of teaching the Dharma, he also kept on improving himself. Whenever he reached a higher dimension, looking back, he would find that all the Dharma he had just taught was not right. Then, after reaching an even higher dimension, again he found the Dharma he had preached was wrong. After that, the same thing happened again. For the whole 49 years, he kept going up in such a way that every time he reached a higher dimension, he would realize that the Dharma he had preached before had a poor understanding, and he also found that the Dharma in each dimension was the embodiment of the Dharma in that dimension with no exception. Every dimension had its own Dharma, but no one was the absolute truth of the universe. The Dharma in a higher dimension came closer to the cosmic qualities than that in a lower dimension. This is the reason why he said, "There is no Dharma without change."

        At last, Sakyamuni also said, "I have preached no Dharma at all in my whole life." This is again interpreted by Zen Buddhism as there is no Dharma to be preached. In his later years, Sakyamuni had reached the status of Tathagata. Then why did he say that he had preached no Dharma at all? What exactly did he mean by this? What he meant was, "Even if I've reached the status of Tathagata, I still fail to see what the ultimate truth and the Dharma of the universe are." In this way he told people after him not to accept his words as the absolute truth, the unchanging truth; otherwise they might be confined to or go below the status of Tathagata without being able to make a high dimension breakthrough. The people after him could not grasp the true sense of these words, and misinterpreted them as "If spoken out, the Dharma will not be the Dharma." Actually, what he meant is: The Dharma varies from dimension to dimension, but the Dharma in each dimension is not at all the absolute truth of the universe. However, the Dharma in a dimension does serve as a guiding principle for that dimension. This is exactly the truth he referred to.

        Many people in the past, especially those of Zen Buddhism, kept such a prejudice and an entirely wrong view all the time. Without being taught and instructed how to cultivate, how can you practise and cultivate yourself? Maybe some of you have read some Buddhist stories in Buddhism, which said: Someone went up to the heaven, and after he had got there, he found that the Diamond Sutra above was different from the one below both in the writing of each word and in its meaning. Why was this Diamond Sutra so different from the one found in the ordinary people? Another one also said: The scriptures in the Paradise of Ultimate Bliss were completely disfigured and no longer recognizable as compared with the ones below. Such was the change that they differed not only in writing but in connotation and denotation of the words as well. This is because the same Law varies and differs in manifestations from dimension to dimension, and it can serve as a different guiding principle for cultivators in a different dimension.

        We all know about a booklet in Buddhism entitled "Travel Notes to the Western Paradise". It says that a monk was sitting in meditation practice when his Yuanshen ( True Spirit) arrived in the Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss and saw some scenes. After a day's visit, he returned to the earth where six years had passed. Did he see anything? Yes, he did. But what he saw was not the truth. Why? Because he had reached a dimension not high enough, and he could only be shown, in his own dimension, the manifestations of the Buddha Law that he should see. He could not see the truth because such a world is exactly the embodiment of a component part of the Law. This is what I mean by "There is no Dharma without change."