20131117淨化煩惱成菩提Dharma as Our Guide to Attain Enlightenment
Every day, I am very grateful to all Tzu Chi volunteers for being bodhisattvas who spread the Buddha’s wisdom to benefit all living beings. We hope this wisdom can be spread far and wide across our world. But for this to happen, we need to make time to listen to the teachings and sincerely take them in, so the Dharma enters our hearts.
If you have been listening to my recent Dharma talks via videoconferencing with the Abode, you should have heard me spend many days talking about the same parable of the house on fire. But do you know, that house is actually a metaphor for life in this world.
Desires play a big part in it. Human beings’ desires have alone already created so much misery and suffering in the world. All suffering comes from desire. Desires are by mature, endless and insatiable. For food, we aren’t satisfied with having enough to eat, but want to indulge our taste buds. So, we eat more than is needed.
Actually, all food should be eaten in moderation, no matter how nutritious it may be. Too much will result in too high a caloric intake, right? Don’t eat food that has too much oil or is too salty. If we take in too much sodium, our body can’t process it. But, we’re choosy. We want good-tasting, beautiful food. We want luxuries for our home. For all that we have, we want more and better. Such is our greed.
So, besides our craving for comforts and enjoyment in everyday life when it comes to our food, where we live, what our eyes meet, etc., we furthermore want everything to be in our possession. There is a limit to how much we can eat and wear, and how many houses we can live in. But this drive to possess what we want has no limits. More is never enough.
Is having one enough? No. What about two? No. Nine?Still not enough. If one more zero is added to your bank balance figure, would that satisfy you? No. What about four zeroes? How about seven zeroes? Just think, in life, we keep wanting more wealth, more zeroes in our bank balance figure. But at our life’s end, no matter if we have millions or billions, we can’t take any of it with us.
Why for the sake of something so hollow and empty, do we create so much misery for ourselves and our world? With our greed to possess all we desire, we’ll aim to be a superpower and use our military strength to get what we want. That’s how wars destroy everything.
Such a mentality truly makes no sense. When we humans have this desire for possession, then we will stop at nothing to get what we want, destroying everything. But what can we get in the end? The land we claim is ravaged, destroyed.
We do this because the material things of this world tempted us to give rise to greed and desire. But even when we obtain all the things that we want for ourselves and get all that we want, are we satisfied? No. So, our pursuit continues and we end up full of afflictions. Can afflictions be seen with our eyes? No. Can we feel it? Yes. We can feel it. We experience a lot of misery, because of it.
Our afflictions aren’t tangible things the eye can see. It’s a feeling in our heart. But for such feelings that are experienced but can’t be seen, there are principles in them. These principles are unseen laws at work. Given this principle, if we can instead give rise to good thoughts and do good deeds to benefit people and go into the community to contribute to the good of others by using material things to fulfill people’s shortages it’s like the situation in the Philippines now.
What typhoon survivors really need right now are material supplies. They need shelters to stay in. They need food to eat. They need clothes to wear.
So, we have a group of Tzu Chi volunteers going to the disaster area now to carry out relief work. Material things are needed to meet urgent needs. So, with our compassion, if we can use the material objects in the right way, we can help the typhoon survivors to get what they need for life. It takes us turning our minds around turning our afflictions into wisdom which is the bodhisattva heart.
It’s about turning around that grasping, possessive mind which brings us a lot of afflictions and causes us to create bad karma. Let us turn it around. Turn afflicted mind into enlighten mind. Change your possessive mind and be a bodhisattva. Think like a bodhisattva in order to inspire all living beings.
If we have any intention to harm anyone, let’s change our mind and think about how we can care for others, how we can inspire the good in them, bring peace back to them, and help them to learn the Dharma and have it in their hearts so that in times of alarming disasters, they can awaken to profound truth in life. We should quickly share the Dharma with people there.
Alfredo Li, CEO of Tzu Chi Philippines, called back and said “People here do not know about Tzu Chi. We’ve never been here and don’t know anyone here. I asked him, “Do we have people to help distribute our relief goods?” He replied, “Yes, we have a lot of people.
Many local people are willing to help. He said after this phase of disaster relief, he hopes Tzu Chi can be established there from now on to carry out Tzu Chi’s missions locally. Where there are people suffering there, bodhisattvas are needed.
Everyone, we need to guide people to become bodhisattvas. So, I said, ”We’re doing good deeds now so we form good affinities with all the people we benefit. Having these good affinities with many people if you don’t learn the Dharma, in a future life, when all these people want to follow you and you don’t have Dharma to share, then you all just become drinking buddies.
They’ll heed your call when you seek a gambling partner they’ll go with you.On your sightseeing trips, they’ll all go with you to do whatever you want. But if that’s what you do, that’s wasting all your efforts in this lifetime to guide them. When we lack the Dharma, we won’t be able to guide people toward what’s right.
So, you have to learn the Dharma in this life, I keep saying to form good affinities with living beings through doing good deeds. Yes, that’s correct. That’s the way it is. But the key is to guide people in the right direction.
Having good affinities with you, they’ll take in whatever you say. So, if you don’t learn the Dharma now, really, in your next life, how will you be able to guide others with Dharma? Life in this world is transient while the Dharma is eternal. It’s timeless truth for all lifetimes. So we ought to make great vows to apply the Dharma to life in this world.
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