... Chapter 18 ....... Contents ...
 |
| 17. To you who say you don't get along with others |
Everyone talks about their own point of view, but who really cares? It'd be better if you just kept your mouth shut!
Some say, "Who do you think I am anyway?" An ordinary person, what else? "Some are proud of their wealth, others of their name and position, still others of their satori. In this way they're just showing off how ordinary they are - people these days are so stupid!"
People always have something they can't forget. If they're rich, they can't forget their money. If their intelligent, they can't forget their brains. If they're talented, they always think about how good they are at this or that. But whatever it is, it always gets in the way.
It's only because we're so concerned about this sack of flesh that we think of ourselves as rich or beautiful or whatever. But when we die, everything is one. Nothing is yours anymore.
We're always trying to promote our ego. The only question is: How many years can we keep it up? When we're dead our body is just a piece of meat.
The same moon sometimes seems to smile, and sometimes seems to cry. Sometimes we simply admire it over a glass of sake. But whichever moon people look at, they only see what corresponds to their karmic perception. None of that is real.
Everybody reads the newspaper differently. One person looks at the stock prices first, another reads the sports section first. One dives into the serialized novel, while another is mainly interested in politics. They're all different: their human thinking varies so much. They differ so much because they're all lost in their own various consciousnesses. Only outside of these varying consciousnesses does the world that everyone shares reveal itself. For this world hasn't been thought up by humans. It doesn't fit their personal viewpoints. The more humans consider something, the more they're fooling themselves.
You say, "I saw it with my own eyes!" Nothing is as unreliable as your own eyes. They are just the eyes of an ordinary person.
You're fooling yourself if you think that the world as you see it is reality. Everyone only sees what corresponds to their personal karmic perception. A cat sees differently than I do; and what does a bacillus, who weighs only a thousandth of a toilet-fly, think about? Certainly not the same things as I do. The bacillus and I have different perspectives on the world and on life. The true world only appears when we have finished once and for all with all of these karmic views.
People's heads are all rigid. Every 'ism' is a form of rigidity. This rigidity is the reason we don't recognize the buddha-dharma - no matter how close we are.
You cry out, "Peace, peace!", but if you would only be quiet, it would be so much more peaceful. You say, "In my opinion...", but it's precisely when opinions and theories come into the picture that the bickering starts.
People let themselves be manipulated by the laws of their time when they believe that good and bad exist. In the past, blood feuds were legal, today they are illegal. In the past, adultery was illegal, today it's legal.
We believe that good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, right and wrong all exist, that there are always two sides. But are there really two sides? No. Reality is only one. And even that 'one' is empty.
There are no two things in the universe. So when we see pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad, right and wrong, that's simply because of our personal karmic perception. And everyone differs from everyone else according to their points of view.
Everyone differs in their karmic perception. Happiness and unhappiness, joy and sorrow - it's all nothing more than karmic perception, and it varies from person to person. The problem is that everyone only considers what they themselves see to be real. A grandmother preaches to her grandchildren what she considers to be real, but there's absolutely nothing real about it.
When you open your mouth, you're only putting your illusions on display. You are speaking out of your karma and your illusions. The mind of an idiot is in his mouth; the mouth of a wise man is in his mind.
People just need to be natural, but they try to squeeze even this naturalness into a framework. And because everyone has their own framework, they can never agree.
Everyone has their own consciousness. No one's consciousness is like anyone else's. It's completely individual and different.
The 'self' is nothing fixed. You say, "In my mind..." But there is no such 'my mind'. If I hadn't by chance become a monk, then I probably wouldn't be talking about the buddha-dharma now. I'd probably be a gangster boss who wouldn't have anything more to say than, "And now I'll rip out your guts, you stinking dog!"
Since the beginning of human history this bickering has never stopped. The greatest wars have their origin in bickering mind. War is simply the most exaggerated way of killing people.
In the same way a fly carries bacteria, war carries epidemics and culture.
"Both you and me are just ordinary people." [Prince Shôtoku's 17-Article Constitution]
Since, in any case, it's just ordinary people who wage war on each other, everybody is wrong, friend as much as foe. The winner and the loser are in any case just ordinary people.
It's so sad to watch the world's conflicts. There's such a lack of common sense. One hothead swings a sword, another fires a rifle.
The world is whirled around by karma. Karma arises because we act out of ignorance.
In the middle of a fight about irrigation it suddenly rains - since the fight was only about the irrigation of their rice fields, the rain solves all problems.
A beautiful woman and an ugly woman: what's the difference when they're eighty?
Originally everything is empty and clear.
... Chapter 18 ....... Contents ...