Life Wisdom: Curbing Our Desires and Doing Good Every Day
Life is impermanent and the land is fragile. As life's impermanence can strike at any time, the length of our life is not guaranteed. Life is just a breath away from death. When life's impermanence strikes and we draw our last breath, our life comes to an end. So, what is there to take issues with?
We must learn to let go. As we keep giving rise to afflictions and creating bad karma, we suffer from karmic retributions life after life. We are truly entangled in bad karma. With a growing world population, more and more bad karma will be created. Some people go against their conscience and always seek to satisfy their desires. Their desires are insatiable.
People also have an insatiable desire for meat. Of course, those of us who are vegetarians do not consume animals. We love and cherish all life, so we do not kill animals. Yet, many who eat meat have yet to hear this. They feel at ease about eating meat without knowing that this is wrong. This is how bad karma is created collectively.
Led by their desire for meat, many people create bad karma constantly. The Buddha said that this world would be filled with many impurities due to the Five Mental Poisons: greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance, and doubt. People give rise to greed and anger and kill animals for food just to satisfy their desire for the transient taste of meat. Out of ignorance, they gave rise to greed. In addition to greed, anger, and ignorance, there are also arrogance and doubt.
Nowadays, people let these five mental poisons run rampant. With greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance, and doubt, people have created a lot of bad karma. Everyone, let us stop, look, and listen. To stop means to calm our mind and curb our desires. If we give rise to desires, they can grow larger and larger. We must curb our desires and nurture faith. Indeed, only when we do so can we practice repentance and harbor gratitude within.
Only when we practice repentance can we eliminate the impurities and create a pure land in this world. This is how repentance can bring about purity. We must quickly curb our desires and create more ways to guide people towards goodness. See how our Tzu Chi members do all they can to guide more people to do good.
The Buddha guided people with expedient teachings according to their aptitudes. As people give rise to afflictions, ignorance, and desires constantly, we must seize time to guide others towards goodness. What is the remedy for the COVID-19 pandemic? To ease the pandemic, we must curb our desires, calm our mind, and think about what we should do.
So, recently, I often tell our Tzu Chi members to go out less often and instead listen to the Dharma mindfully. This can set my mind at ease and bring joy to me. To ease the pandemic, we truly need to inspire goodness in all and pool everyone's goodness together. I'd still like to call on you all to do so as the pandemic is still raging. I always hope that everyone can follow preventive measures and give with love.
For the pandemic this time, I'm very grateful that many are concerned about those affected and have shown support to our relief work. With many people saving money bit by bit, we've accomplished many good things. So, we must not underestimate any bit of money. It doesn't matter how much money we can raise. What's most important is to keep inspiring love in others and guide everyone to be a good person and do good. This is how we can sow blessings.
With blessings, disasters can be mitigated. When we hear a call to do good, we should take part quickly. This is what it means to be a good person. We don't have to make a large donation. We can just donate what we can. Everyone, we must keep guiding others to give with love and we should especially love all animals. We must all cherish the lives of animals.
Let us protect animals, express our sincere piety and love by going vegetarian, and do good. When we do so, we are also sowing blessings. If we can sow more blessings, there will be less disasters. Let us guide everyone to cultivate wisdom, for with wisdom, one will strive to sow blessings. If we give rise to greed, anger, and ignorance, and always seek self-interest and are unwilling to give, we will create more and more bad karma. Then, the bad karma will predominate over blessings.
In all, I truly hope we can strive to sow blessings. I've also said to our staff: "Every day, when you drop coins into your coin banks, please also pray for safety and peace." This is how we can nurture goodness daily. This is how we can nurture goodness daily. Through the coin bank practice, we can do a good deed every day, and when each person does one good deed, disasters can be dispelled.
When we all have the heart to do good every day, goodness can accumulate considerably. If we can encourage one another to do good daily, we truly can create countless merits.
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