True Buddha School
Modernising Buddhist thought while upholding the Buddha’s spirit.
01 — Origins
The founding of the True Buddha School accords with several factors set out in “The Torch of Definitive Meaning” by Khenpo Jamgön Kongtrul, one of the greatest scholar-masters in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.
Its founder is Living Buddha Lian-sheng. He is a great accomplished master of this present age who, through meditative absorption and extraordinary means, came to understand all things.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng attained great accomplishment only after enduring long hardship and trial. Taking “actual practice” as his tradition, he realised Mahamudra and the Great Perfection through the Christian, Daoist, exoteric and esoteric paths. The True Buddha Tantric Dharma is the crystallised essence of his lifelong realisation; through its written teachings, texts, practice liturgies and oral instruction, the True Buddha practitioner is given a complete system and goal of cultivation.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng has propagated the True Buddha Tantric Dharma throughout the world and established a worldwide network of Dharma centres (the main temple is at the Maha Twin Lotus Ponds).
Living Buddha Lian-sheng is the highest spiritual authority of the True Buddha School. Among those who take refuge are people from every religious background — this lineage is a most honoured one.
02 — Aims
To modernise Buddhist thought while upholding the spirit of the Buddha: purifying the world with the Buddha’s Dharma, beautifying life with Buddhist learning, and transforming hearts with Buddhist principle. Applying the cultivation methods of the Daoist, exoteric and esoteric paths to release beings from affliction, helping the multitude to be free of suffering, so that all may see their own nature, become masters of birth and death, and — through wise and right faith — awaken together to the true reality.
03 — Characteristics
It emphasises “respecting the guru, cherishing the Dharma, and actual practice,” proving through real cultivation and real attainment that the Dharma is rational and not superstition.
The practice liturgies of the True Buddha Tantric Dharma gather the strengths of every tradition into one furnace and present their essential heart — the cultivation school best suited to dissolving the karmic obstacles of modern people.
It is integrative, treating all other schools as equals.
In spirit, it teaches the removal of “ignorance, affliction, and the delusion of life.”
04 — In Conduct
Outward goodness — refrain from all evil, practise all good.
Inward reflection — through the cultivation methods of the esoteric path, reach the ideal of buddhahood in which body, speech and mind are purified.
It advocates free and democratic governance, so the community is lively and full of vitality.
05 — Flexible in Practice
The True Buddha School values the altar (mandala), for the True Buddha Tantric Dharma holds a secret meaning.
Where circumstances do not permit one, a single offering image or porcelain image will do, or the mandala may be visualised for practice.
Away from home, the Dharma may be practised in any place — everything cultivated through “visualisation.”
Blended into daily life, the flavour of the Dharma is layer upon layer.
06 — Distinctive Method
The True Buddha School insists on one word — “true.” Everything must be actual practice and actual realisation, so “actual practice” is foremost. In method it adopts the esoteric approach, yet it also employs the Daoist arts to aid the world and teaches the precepts and principles of the exoteric path. Through unified, concentrated cultivation one reaches the empty state of no-self, then merges into the consciousness of the universe, unites with the personal deity, and enters the highest and most ultimate state.
Whatever one’s religious faith, all may take refuge and cultivate; monastic or lay, vegetarian or not, all may practise. It carries the features of both the “worldly” and the “transcendent” Dharma — this is the supreme and skilful convenience of the True Buddha Tantric Dharma.
07 — Following Conditions, Rejoicing Freely
Living Buddha Lian-sheng upholds the parting instruction of the late Daoist Master Qingzhen: “follow conditions” and “rejoice freely.” In his whole life he never once opened his mouth to ask anyone for money, and never set a fixed amount for any Dharma service — this has been the master’s lifelong principle, his compassionate convenience for beings.
Lamp offerings, the year-deity, blessing, deliverance of the departed, geomancy, repentance rites, stupas, taking refuge, learning the Dharma, guru empowerment — all are as one wishes.
Living Buddha Lian-sheng not only rejoices in everything; for those in difficulty, so long as the heart is sincere, “even without money it is permitted.”