慈悲道場懺法 4.12

4.12

Today, assembly sharing this karmic endeavor in the bodhimaṇḍa! Hearing these words of the Buddha is greatly terrifying. Now the two paths of good and evil are as clear as day, and the retributions of sin and merit are understood beyond doubt; we must only exert our utmost efforts to diligently practice repentance. Together, we have opened the scriptures and seen these matters in full. If we do not make earnest efforts and instead slacken and regress even slightly, how can what we are doing today be accomplished? It is like a starving person who fixes his mind on a hundred delicacies; in the end it brings no relief to his hunger and distress. Thus we know that those who wish to seek the supreme, wondrous Dharma and wish to deliver sentient beings cannot remain merely within their thoughts. Since the matter is in one's mind, one should exert oneself to diligently put it into practice. Together, with utmost sincerity and singular, profound sorrow, prostrating with the five limbs touching the ground, let us seek mercy and prostrate in repentance on behalf of all sentient beings in the hells, hungry ghost realm, animal realm, and human realm; and also on behalf of parents, teachers, elders, good and bad spiritual friends, as well as all of our own kin, let us seek mercy and prostrate in repentance. May the sins already committed be eliminated, and may we not dare to commit again the sins not yet done. We look up and pray to the great, compassionate Father of the world: