Living Buddha Lian-sheng
Root Lineage Guru of the True Buddha School.
01 — The Sacred Title
Root Lineage Guru of the True Buddha School, the Holy Venerable Living Buddha Lian-sheng.
Of the Western Lotus-Pond Ocean Assembly, the Maha Twin Lotus Ponds, the Eighteen Great Padmakumaras; the White-Robed Holy Venerable; the Red-Crowned Holy-Mitred Vajra Guru; Lord of the Vajra Mantra Realm, the Secret Lord; the First-Life Great Vidyadhara of the Lingxian True Buddha School, the Venerable Tantric Adept Sheng-yen Lu.
02 — Life
Living Buddha Lian-sheng, whose secular name is Sheng-yen Lu, was born in 1945 in Chiayi, Taiwan, and graduated from the Department of Land Surveying at Chung Cheng Institute of Technology. He propagates the True Buddha Tantric Dharma through writing, painting and discourse. His refuge-disciples worldwide number more than five million, including many renowned Tibetan rinpoches.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng was originally a Christian, then entered Daoism, then the exoteric gate of Buddhism, and finally cultivated the esoteric path in depth. After settling in Seattle, USA in 1982, he formally began to turn the great Dharma-wheel of the esoteric teaching to deliver beings, distilling a profound and difficult millennia-old tantra into a new-age, supreme teaching that is easy to learn, easy to understand and easy to practise.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng has taught: “I practise according to the True Buddha Tantric Dharma — the Four Preliminaries, Guru Yoga, the Personal Deity practice, Vase Breathing, Inner Fire (Tummo), the Central Channel, the opening of the Five Chakras, the Five Vajra practices, the Highest Tantra, the Great Perfection — cultivated in sequence, attaining unsurpassed perfect awakening and accomplishing the Radiant-Light Self-Mastery Buddha.”
He is revered as a “Living Buddha” for two reasons: first, his five million disciples worldwide all honour him as such; second, the State of Washington, USA, conferred upon him a distinguished-person award honouring him as a Living Buddha.
03 — Religious Path (Christian, Daoist, Exoteric, Esoteric) and Attainment
In high school Living Buddha Lian-sheng was a devout Christian and a Sunday-school teacher. His celestial eye was later opened by the Golden Mother of the Jade Pond; he then studied the Daoist arts — alchemy, talismans, the great geomancy of heaven and earth, the esoteric path, and the five sciences — under Master Three-Mountains-Nine-Marquises and under the Qingcheng-school Daoist Master Qingzhen (the monk Liaoming).
He took refuge successively under Master Yin-shun, Dharma Master Le-guo, and Dharma Master Dao-an. He received the Bodhisattva precepts at Bishan-yan Temple in Nantou, his precept-masters being Dharma Masters Xian-dun, Hui-san and Jue-guang, with Dharma Masters Shan-ci and Shang-lin as instructors of ritual.
In the esoteric path he took refuge under the Kagyu (White) Karmapa and Tai Situpa; the Gelug (Yellow) Master Thubten Dargye; the Sakya (Flower) Master Sakya Zhengkong; and the Nyingma (Red) monk Liaoming, with direct transmission from the patriarch Padmasambhava himself (in meditative absorption). (Note: Tai Situpa gave only refuge-empowerment, not the full transmission of every tantra.)
Through later moves, as far as Seattle, USA, he cultivated the esoteric Dharma in seclusion. In samadhi he received the crown-anointing prophecy from Shakyamuni Buddha in person, the red crown from Maitreya Bodhisattva, the charge to deliver beings widely from Amitabha Buddha, and the transmission of the tantra from Padmasambhava — who bestowed on him the title “Great Vidyadhara Vajra Acharya,” conferred the holy red-crown mitre, and granted the Dharma-name “Red-Crowned Holy-Mitred Vajra Guru, the Venerable Lian-sheng.” He also beheld Vajrasattva in person, who charged him as “Secret Lord of the Vajra Mantra Realm.”
Living Buddha Lian-sheng long knew himself to be the descent of the Great White Lotus Child of the “Maha Twin Lotus Ponds” of the Western Pure Land — come again, by Amitabha’s charge, riding his vow.
04 — Philosophy of Life
Punctual, trustworthy, diligent and constant. Each day he writes one essay and performs one Dharma session, recites mantras and the Buddha’s name — for decades, as on a single day.
He esteems “the natural and the effortless.” In all things he is active and striving, yet without contrivance. He loves stillness, yet amid activity remains equally composed. He follows conditions and follows his nature.
His whole life: treasuring conditions and blessings, compassionate and giving, neither proud nor greedy, plain and without contention, withdrawing once the work is done and the name made.
05 — His Teaching, and All for Beings
He constantly charges True Buddha practitioners to treat others with sincerity, to support one another, and forever to keep the true nature of a person of practice. He admonishes disciples that the worth of cultivation lies in “cultivating the heart,” and that cultivating the heart means to “give rise to bodhicitta and depart from all marks.” Each is responsible for their own cause and effect.
An awakened Living Buddha — his heart embraces all of space, his mind one with the universe. The consciousness of the cosmos is his consciousness, so that a single thought gives rise to Dharma-power, forming inconceivable spiritual abilities to aid beings, increasing their merit and wisdom.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng firmly says: only by cultivating the True Buddha Tantric Dharma with eternal, unceasing diligence will one day awakening come, and the state of free liberation be reached. Across countless aeons he has vowed, in every life, to deliver beings: “to deliver beings though body be ground to dust,” and “until the hells are empty, I vow not to attain buddhahood.”
His life in America is almost unchanging: writing in the morning, answering letters in the afternoon, practising the Dharma in the evening (praying and dissolving calamity for beings), entering meditative absorption (blessing and saving beings). A true accomplished practitioner alone has such power; beings should know how to cherish it.