oh, then can chanting buddha's name help us in our suffering in
hell ?
EDIT: found this...
Ti Tsang P'usa is an extremely popular Bodhisattva among the
Chinese and Japanese Buddhists. 'Ti Tsang', meaning 'Earth-Store'
is a direct translation of the Bodhisattva's name KSITIGARBHA in
Sanskrit. Among the countless Bodhisattvas in the universe, he and
three others have firmly captured the hearts of the Mahayanists.
These four main P'usas or Bodhisattvas are depicted in the Chinese
Buddhist Pantheon and they represent four basic great
qualities:
KUAN SHIH YIN as Great Compassion;
WEN SHU as Great Wisdom;
PU HSIEN as Great Love and Perfect Activity;
TI TSANG as Great Vow to help and to deliver all beings.
His greatest compassionate Vow being: "If I do not go to the hell
to help the suffering beings there, who else will go? ... if the
hells are not empty I will not become a Buddha. Only when all
living beings have been saved, will I attain Bodhi."
The Sutra of the PAST VOWS OF THE EARTH STORE BODHISATTYA, one of
the most popular Chinese Buddhist Sutras, tells of the great filial
piety, which the Bodhisattva practised that led to his illimitable
vows to save all living beings. This Sutra was spoken by the Buddha
towards the end of his life to the beings of the Trayastrimsa
Heaven as a mark of gratitude and remembrance for his beloved
mother.
In this Sutra the Buddha revealed that in the distant past aeons,
Ti Tsang P'usa, then a Brahman maiden by the name of 'Sacred Girl',
was deeply troubled when her mother died, as she had often been
slanderous towards the Three Jewels: the Buddha, Dharma and
Sangha.
To save her from the great tortures of hell, the young girl sold
whatever she had and used the money to buy offerings which she
offered daily to the Buddha of her time, known as The Buddha of
Flower of Meditation and Enlightenment. She made fervent prayers
that her mother be spared of the pains of hell and requested the
Buddha for help.
One day at the temple, while she was thus pleading for help, she
heard the voice of the Buddha advising her to go home immediately
and there to sit down and practise meditation on His name if she
wanted to know where her mother was. She did as she was told and
while doing so, her consciousness was transported to the Hell Realm
where she met a hell-guardian who informed her that through her
fervent prayers and pious offerings, her mother had accumulated
much merits and therefore shel had already been released from hell
and ascended to heaven. She was greatly relieved and should have
been extremely happy, but the sights of the great sufferings in
Hell that she had witnessed so touched her tender heart that she
made an immediate vow: "I shall do my very best to relieve beings
of their sufferings forever in my future lives of kalpas to
come".
The young maiden has since then become an accomplished Bodhisattva
through her great acts of merits and is now known as Ti Tsang
P'usa.
Ti Tsang P'usa has often been mistaken by uninformed Buddhists to
be Mogallana who was a disciple of Sakyamuni Buddha, because he too
had a similar experience of descending to the Hell Realm to seek
and save his mother. The stories may sound similar but they
happened at different times and adopted quite different methods to
save their mothers.
Many others also tend to mistake Ti Tsang as Hsuan Tsang, the
famous Tripitaka master of the Tang Dynasty who made the harzadous
journey to the West to seek the Buddhist scriptures. This is mainly
due to the Sangha robe and the five-leave crown which both are seen
to wear.
Ti Tsang P'usa is again taken by many to be "Yen-Lo-Wang" or Yama,
the "Over-Lord of Hell." It must be mentioned that Ti Tsang is a
Bodhisattva and not a mere King of the Fifth Hell. He does not
judge the dead but seeks to save them from
their suffering.
