Actually, we’ve all heard that. We all know about collective karma and the karma of our ancestors even. Because we have this DNA connection. If our parents do something bad, we also inherit some karma.
“At that time, Moses, the greatest Master at that time, prayed to God, ‘Dear God, how come You killed all Your children up to this extent?’ So, the Holy God, the God who has all Grace and Blessing, answered Moses, ‘I did that because they sinned.’ So, Moses asked again, ‘But how many people sinned among them? You should think of all the innocent who also died with them.’” Like, collectively died with them without doing anything bad, without sinning. “So, after a while, after praying to God and saying God should consider others who are innocent and also had to die together with the sinners, when God made a plague and they died together. Sinners and not sinners together.
But after the conversation with God, Moses felt very sleepy. And then when He was asleep, there were some ants that crawled onto His legs and bit His legs. Moses, half asleep, half awake, just killed them, used the hand to slap them and they died.” You know when you are half asleep, (Yes, Master.) if some mosquito is kind of in love with you, has a crush on you, and comes too near, then you just don’t understand. It’s just itching and you just… like that. (Yes.)
“So, Moses did that with the many ants who crawled on His legs, and some bit His legs. So, they died. And then God asked Moses, ‘Moses, why did you kill this group of ants?’ Moses said, ‘Yeah, because they bit me.’ Bite. (Yes.) And then God asked Him again, ‘How many ants bit you? Just some, one ant, two ants, or three, four ants, and then you killed many of them, many tens of them! As if you could not discriminate between the one who bit you and the one who did not bite you. So, the same, I also cannot differentiate who sinned and who did not.’ Therefore, there was an idiom saying that when the fire ignites in the forest, it will burn all the dry wood and the fresh living trees. It will burn all the rotten trees, dry trees, as well as the living trees.”
So, do you understand this story? (Yes, Master.) What then? What does He want to say? I relax now. I sit back, put my feet on the table. I wear trousers. It’s the proof. OK. Tell me. What does the story want to say? You knew this before. (It’s the collective karma if he kills so many?) (Yes.) Bravo, very good. Collective karma. Yes.
So, even if you are with the wine drinkers and meat eaters, you will have also collective karma from them. You got that? (Yes, Master.) Whoever sits next to you, you share some karma with that person, like it or not. It’s just like when we are with the pandemic infected people, we get infected, even though we don’t see anything. We don’t see the virus. (Yes, Master.) We don’t see the sickness with that person, but we get it. So, imagine.
The karma is the same. You don’t have to see it, you don’t have to feel it, you will get it all the same. That’s why the Chinese sage said that our society is a big, big dyeing tub. You know, dye color? (Yes, Master.) He means polluted. “Dyeing” is just like you rub off color onto each other. You dye the colors together, like in a tub. You put everything in it, it will be the same color. (Yes.) People dye clothes with color. From the white cotton, they put in there, and it all becomes the same color. Like that. So, it just means pollution: polluting each other by energy, by bad magnetic fields, by bad thoughts, by bad examples. And invisibly, the bad energy, the vibe of the next person pollutes you and makes you slowly become like them, or at least half like them. That’s why we in the West also say, “Tell me who your friends are, then I can tell you who you are.” (Yes.) I can describe who you are, what kind of person you are. Like that.
In Âu Lạc (Vietnam), we say, “You have to select friends to be together.” It’s similar. In many countries, they say the same. In China, they also say, “If you are near the light, then you’ll feel bright.” You can see things in a bright manner. “If you play with the ink, you will get black.” Black dot or black effect on your body or your clothes. So, this is a simple story and it’s not explaining anything, but you should know that it is like telling people about the collective karma. (Yes, Master.) All right then. So, any other idea or question coming from that story? Yes? Or no? Yes or no, no or yes? (No.) No? Oh, sit there, just like waiting for Mama to tell you everything. Spoon-feeding. “Open your mouth. Open your mouth. Wider! Yum, yum!” OK! So.
Actually, we’ve all heard that. We all know about collective karma and the karma of our ancestors even. Because we have this DNA connection. If our parents do something bad, we also inherit some karma. And in the national law, if one of the family members do some bad things, that affects the family too. Sometimes the family also has to go to jail. It depends. In former centuries’ older feudal systems, like you have a king and queen and royalty. I mean the old times, not these times, but the old times. If you committed some offense to the king or the royal family or to the nation, like maybe (become) betrayers or traitors of the nation, then not just you were chopped-head, but the three generations also together died with you, chopped heads also. (Wow.) They killed three generations, so nothing was left of your name, of your family, of your power. Nothing left, so that nobody could revenge. You understand that? (Yes, Master.) So, this is some kind of collective karma also. Lucky we don’t have this kind of system anymore. So, nowadays, whoever commits a crime, that person is responsible alone. Mostly like that, it depends. If you don’t cooperate with that criminal in your family, then maybe you’re free. Lucky we have a better law nowadays, mostly, mostly. (Yes, Master.) All right, my love.
(Master, in this story, because they worshipped the calf like some deity, so God punished them. But in Taiwan [Formosa], they also have many different religions, they also worship like this. They will cause some karma because of that?)
You want me to offend 23 million people? I apologize for my truthfulness. Yes, they do, because they don’t worship the real God. They worship some statues of some… But at least they worship some statues, some Saints, and some deities. But those Israelis before, Jewish before, they worshipped the calf, the baby cow, in the statues even. Not even a human, not even a Saint.
But mind you, Taiwan (Formosa) is not the only country. Many Taiwanese (Formosan) people are Buddhist, or I-Kuan Tao, or Taojiao (Taoist), or Christians, they don’t worship animals, do they? No. (No.) OK. So that’s the difference. That’s the difference. The people at that time, they were just too ignorant, that they even worshipped just a baby cow statue. Even though a cow is very sweet and gentle. It’s good also.
But to worship a cow above God and neglecting God to worship a cow instead, that is not correct, because God gives you everything that you have in life, even your life. Without God, we don’t exist. Without the cows, we can exist. The cows maybe give you some milk. In the old times, we relied on that. To make cheese, to make butter, and to plow your field, maybe the cow was a very beneficial one. But to worship that instead of God, is a sin. You understand now? (Yes, Master.) It’s too ignorant. Besides, God already said, “I am a jealous God.”
Taiwan (Formosa) is not the only country that worships many different beliefs, different deities. They worship God, yes, in Christianity, they worship the Buddha, they worship Lao Tzu, Confucius, and all the good Saints in the past. Mostly like that. And they have statues of the local earth god, the local god who takes care of their village or their province. Actually, they don’t really worship them. Just like respect. Just like you have a president, and he or she is the one and only top. But, by the way, you see the police, you salute. (Yes, Master.) If the police stops you, you’d be nice to the police. You call him “officer,” you call her “officer.” That’s what I do. And that makes their job, their day better, because they deal with negative events all the time in their life. They work very hard, the police. So, that doesn’t mean if I salute the police and I talk nice to him and respect him, doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the president of the country or the king of the country. You got that? (Yes, Master.)
In the case of the story that we have just read, Moses helped them with the blessing of God, to bring them out of slavery. And God declared that, “I am the One who took you out of Egypt and freed you from slavery.” And they did not believe that. Even Moses said that. They knew Moses made a couple of miracles during the journey from Egypt. Even the seawater split in the middle, so that the Israeli people could walk through without being drowned. And after that, the water closed back again and drowned many of the Egyptian soldiers, the ones who were after them, wanted to kill them, because the king changed his mind. First, he promised to free them, and then let them free.
But then after they left, somebody said something to the king, or the king was feeling unsure, and then he sent soldiers after them. And then the sea closed. It just split in two for the Israelis to walk through. After that, the soldiers came, they all drowned and died, because the water closed again, (Yes, Master.) like normal. And they all drowned there. Moses also found water for them by striking a rock to find water for them in the desert. So, even if they did not believe in God, they should have believed in Moses. Moses is an upright man. Why would He lie to them, that He has seen God, that God had told them to keep these Ten Commandments, and to worship the God that Moses had been in contact with?
So, these people, a group of them are bad. (Yes, Master.) A group of them are bad because one of the bad persons in there became a leader and brainwashed them to not believe in Moses but to believe in the calf, a golden calf. Of course, a gold calf, everybody likes gold. So, “Oh, gold! Of course, gold! God we don’t see, but gold we see!” So, they were just ignorant. And a bad leader always makes people fall into the wrong way.
Just takes one person, one bad person who talks sure-footedly and talks loud and talks confidently and has some little eloquence, then people believe him and follow him a lot like that. So, God punished them. But the Formosan (Taiwanese) people, they worship past Masters. Like in Taoism and in Confucianism and in Buddhism, like that. I-Kuan Tao is also from Buddhists.
