This morning I walked to the door of Tsz Yun Temple, and saw a big monk sweeping the floor at the door, so I said a good New Year to him, and the big monk smiled heartily and replied to me a happy new year.
I was wondering, is the life of the great monk very comfortable, and there is really no trouble and unhappiness of the general public?
I don't think so, but in my opinion, the purpose of practice itself is not to make everything smooth for you, but to let you figure out why you are not going well, and only then can you avoid it.
Shang Ze is not a monk or a Taoist, just a numerologist who studies traditional culture, and does not understand the professional things of Buddhism and Taoism, but the master told me that the real practice is to cultivate the mind, and when the heart is smooth, the things encountered can be smooth, and the heart is not smooth, even if the current things are solved, there will still be new unpleasant things.
So don't put the cart before the horse, thinking that only when things go well on the outside can our hearts go well, and take practice as an escape from things that don't go well, so that things will always go wrong in your life.
When your heart is obsessed with the external environment, rather than inner peace, there will always be disobedience and frustration, just like Lu Zhishen, even if you escape into the empty door and cut your hair to become a monk, you will still have troubles.
This world is never absolute, and many things cannot be judged to be absolutely good or bad, including the gains and losses that we are very concerned about, are all relative, opposites and unity, and the final result depends on your cognition.
Everyone has heard the story of the loss of the horse, the old man's horse was lost at the beginning, it must not be a good thing, but after a few days, the lost horse ran back, not only came back, but also brought a BMW back, you see, this lost horse turned into a good thing.
But this is not over, bringing back a BMW, the old man's son is naturally very happy, and wants to ride it to have a good time, but the result is sad, he fell off the horse and broke his leg, the old man is naturally very sad.
But because he broke his leg and accidentally avoided the conscription, avoiding the tragic outcome of nine deaths, the old man was happy again.
You see, the same lost horse, the same son broken leg, look at the problem from different angles, the gains and losses are completely different, as the so-called Saiong lost the horse and knows whether it is a blessing, under different conditions, the cognition has changed, and the mood is different.
In daily life, impermanence is the norm, and if we get one, we will inevitably lose the other, and we are all clinging to these impermanences, so we will be troubled and miserable.
The ultimate goal of our practice is to stop being drawn by the external environment, to stop following those impermanences and to return to the nature of immobility.