Practice of the Ancients and the Errors of Modern People

Practice in ancient times was much simpler and easier than in modern times.Modern people are busy and tense, surrounded by lies, with religions everywhere, noise pollution and complicated thoughts; how could they calm the mind and settle the nature!The ancients stressed that a practitioner must first have a mind free of stray thoughts, a pure heart and few desires, with coarse clothing and simple food.Modern people want a grand, magnificent, gilded shrine hall, a fast method of becoming a buddha, a fast way to bring wealth and change fortune, and if possible, convenient parking, and best of all, one that fits their working hours and days off.How can one practice like that?Clever tycoons, gentlemen and ladies alike, saw this at once and immediately invested huge sums to build temple after temple, with tourist attractions next door and lodging available inside the temple; a single Dharma assembly raises tens of millions.This is the modern way of practice.Meanwhile the masters in temples and monasteries who truly want to practice in purity must clean the vast temple grounds, shrine halls, meditation rooms, trees and flowers every day, so that those who supposedly want to practice have a good place to do so, and from time to time must also go out to chant for the dying and help the deceased, and in daily life keep hundreds of precepts...How hard it is!Yet those tycoons behind the scenes earn a great deal of donations without any hardship at all.This is one of the current phenomena of practice.Why go so far from home to practice?Don't modern people understand the saying that practice is up to the individual?Who can practice for you?Others can only tell you the method and the direction; the rest depends on your own experience and realization.When you truly want to approach a religion and understand it, first ask yourself: what do you want?What can it give you?And do you know what you are doing!?