|
16 – FEELING THE SAME FEELINGS, BUT GETTING DIFFERENT EFFECTS Any one thing may bring disaster to one person, but the same thing may not be harmful to another person. It depends on his/her threshold. If we put poison onto a hand with an open wound, the poison will infiltrate the body through blood vessels and cause damage to life. If we put the same amount of poison onto an unwounded healthy hand, it finds no way to permeate into the body and thus cause no damage to life. Likewise, the same feelings may be experienced by different people and produce different effects.
A person is affluent in anger because he has a wounded mind of hot-temper. Even a little word from others that gets into his ears causes the pus [or the power of anger] to run out through his hands, legs, behavior, facial expression and speech. It spreads a foul smell that blows down and against the wind to warn other people of his wrongful actions. For those who have stable, clean and healthy minds, no matter how bad feelings touch them, these bad feelings are unable to permeate into their bodies to distress their healthy wholesome mind, just as water cannot permeate through lotus leaves or unbroken diamonds.
No matter how high an education of external knowledge and external subjects a person has obtained, his thinking process and consciousness can never be clean and brilliant unless he also studies and practices spiritual values and aspects. The study of external knowledge alone does not help us reduce our egocentric thoughts. Social differences lead to stabbings and killings. All evils originate from egocentrism, thinking about one's own life and not caring about the life of others.
In our current materialistic world, there is much competition, much demand, much greed and need, and much violence. People currently cannot tell what they truly want. Happiness which is easily found has become difficult to find. This is because of mankind's error: Mankind ignores spiritual education and does not see the value of cleansing and purifying the mind.
The suffering of mankind cannot be eliminated by physical assistance alone. As long as bad behavior of mankind remains unchanged, man is still affected by suffering. The best way to solve this problem is to help inspire mankind to have knowledge and develop purification. Ignorance is the main root of evil deeds and all suffering. Therefore, let those who wish to deal with suffering in the world help mankind acquire good knowledge, obtain brightness and develop purification in their mind.
|