❖ Build the sect by the supernatural efficacy, brilliancy, and supernatural power of the deity.
❖ Create the principles by admiration and faithful mind.
❖ Set the essence by regular practice of meditative sitting and pure still mind.
❖ Establish the use by the purity of the deity’s shrine and drum-castanets.
This subject is associated with meditating in the deity-saint’s sect, which focuses mainly on supernatural efficacy and power. Therefore, followers have to pray heartily and expect deity-saints to patronize them and give them blessings. Believers often organize offering ceremonies, in which the presents can include buffaloes and cows. They also build sacred temples of great size, conforming to each country, locality, and level of worship.
This sect has existed since the Ancient Superior Period. In that time, civilians lacked knowledge and were very superstitious. They could not explain natural phenomena such as wind, rain, fire, and mountains, and falsely believed that Heaven ordered the rain deity, wind deity, thunder deity, lightning deity, and saints to give blessings and salvation to countries. Nowadays, these deities’ names still exist, but science later discovered the natural phenomena to be earth, water, wind, and fire. Consequently, superstition about the supernatural powers of these deities has gradually decreased and disappeared.
When the Supreme One of the World (The Shakyamuni Buddha) was incarnated, it was a popular time for the deities’ power. Every year the king and civilians killed hundreds of thousands of sheep as gifts for offering ceremonies. Innumerable cattle also became victims in ceremonies for deities every year. People in some localities brought virgin boys and girls as gifts to offer the deity. The sect of the deity’s power is a sect that could be described with endless words about superstitions in offering ceremonies. Since the Buddha was incarnated, He dissolved superstition and promulgated a law strictly prohibiting the killing of living beings as offerings in ceremonies, utilized spirit—the essential nature of self-enlightenment— and helped others become enlightened. This Buddha’s path has saved countless animals and human beings, reformed evil and promoted goodness many times, and consequently, superstition has been gradually reduced.
