20170303法入心行人間渡Practice the Dharma in Life to Inspire Others and Protect the Earth
Right now in this world, the imbalance in nature has caused a severe earthquake in Turkey yesterday. Another disaster that greatly impacts people’s lives is drought.
In India, due to a long drought, farmers cannot grow crops on their land. In this situation, where there is no rain and people are struggling to survive, some people have gotten angry and vented their anger toward soft drink plants.
They said that to make one bottle of coke takes 1.9 liters of water and a large quantity of cane sugar. They said that many resources are needed to make a small bottle of coke. Thus, they started to vent their anger toward the soft drink plants.
Come to think of it, water is essential to human life. However, to satisfy their cravings, many people drink processed beverages, which are not healthy and take a lot of resources to make.
Speaking of cravings, the vegetables, fruits, and grains in nature provide enough nutrients to keep us healthy. However, to satisfy their cravings, people use large amounts of grain to raise large numbers of livestock.
How many resources does this take? How much water is needed to raise cattle and pigs? How much grain or feed is needed to feed these livestock? How much time is needed to raise them? In the end, the livestock are killed to satisfy our cravings for meat.
Besides using a lot of resources, immense negative karma is also created due to killing animals. Raising livestock has also caused alarming outbreaks of diseases, leading to large numbers of livestock being killed.
People’s deluded thoughts have caused lots of problems and crises. However, many people are still not awakened to this situation.
Water is a vital resource. Water rationing has already begun in northern Taiwan.
In fact, when it rains, we can collect the rainwater to use for later. By doing this, we can use less groundwater and tap water. We should encourage more people to collect rainwater and to conserve as much water as we can. We should cherish everything that nature provides us for sustenance.
If we pump groundwater and crude oil excessively, these resources will run out one day. We must not deplete our resources. Such consequences have already begun to affect us. This is not just a problem for future generations, but it is already impacting our life now. So we must conserve resources.
We can see that even children are able to do this, so why can’t adults do so as well? We also saw that Tzu Chi kindergartens in Malaysia teach life’s principles to children. The children in these kindergartens are able to understand the profound principles taught by their teachers.
The teachers express these principles in simple terms so that the children are able to understand them and also put them into practice. They use their small hands to clean their surrounding environment.
“Sweep the ground, sweep the ground and clean our mind. If we don’t clean our mind, there’s no use sweeping.”
“The bucket of water used to be clean, right? Why is the water dirty now?” “Because our rags are very dirty.”
“ Why are your rags very dirty?” “Because we use them to wipe things.”
“Is it because the things you wipe are dirty?” “We put the rags in the water, so the water became dirty after you put the rags in. Can this happen to your mind?”
“Our minds can become dirty.” “What do you do if your mind becomes dirty? “We clean it.” “After we wipe away the dust, we don’t want it anymore, right?
“Through cleaning, the children can see that the clean water became dirty after they cleaned the dust from the floor. This is akin to how their minds, which starts out pure and clean, can become tainted due to bad habits.
Thus, how do we change that? We give each student a worksheet on bad habits, and have them reflect on their bad habits and draw them.” The teachers teach the children life’s principle through daily activities. Thus, these children all learned to clean their minds of impurities.
“I’m very happy when we do clean-up because it helps other people.” “Besides cleaning the surrounding environment, what else do you clean?” “My mind.” “Because our minds are not clean, so it can make us cry.” “What will you do after you clean you mind?” “I will not cry anymore.”
“The trash I want to throw away from my mind is not doing good deeds.” “The trash I want to throw away from my mind is having to be reminded to do things.” “I would like Shuyun to share her bad habits with us. Shuyun, please loudly tell the class what is the bad habit that you want to get rid of?
“My temper” “Have you accomplished that?” “I have.” “Okay” “Everyone, we see that Shuyan has not lost her temper during the past several days except the one day, so she needs to work harder at it. Did she manage to keep calm after that?
“Yes. She did, right?” “Yes” “Shuyun, did you lose your temper recently? “No” “What do you do now when you feel like losing your temper?” “I control it.” “How do you do that?” “I hold my anger in and take a deep breath.”
“Show the class how you take a deep breath.” “What do you do afterwards? “I smile.” “Everyone, what kind of face is most beautiful? “A smiling face.” “And what is getting angry? “Getting angry is to punish yourself with others’ mistakes.”
“Everyone, did she do a good job?” “Yes” These children all understand how to cherish the beauty of the environment and protect their minds. They learned to love, and aspire to love animals and everything else on Earth.”
We see that what these children said are truly in line with life’s principles. Thus, every person is a living sutra for us to learn.
The Dharma can be found everywhere, at any time and in everyone. Thus, we can practice the Dharma at all times, and everywhere can be a place for us to learn the Dharma and cultivate ourselves. Every adult, child or elderly person is someone we can inspire to do good.
All in all, the Dharma is everywhere, always present and in everyone. All in all, we need to always be mindful in learning and practicing the Dharma. We need to be sincere in interacting with everyone every day.
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