... Chapter 8 ....... Contents ...
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| 7. To you who would like to leave your rivals in the dust. |
We often wonder who here is really better? But aren't we all made out of the same lump of clay?
Everyone should sit firmly anchored in the place where there is no better and worse.
Your whole life long you're completely out of your mind because you think it's obvious that there is a 'you' and 'the others'. You put on an act to stand out in a crowd, but in reality there's neither 'you' nor 'the others'.
When you die, you'll understand.
Buddha-dharma means seamlessness. What seam runs between you and me? Sooner or later we all end up acting as if a seam separates friend and foe. When we get too used to this, we believe that this seam really exists.
Poor and rich, important and unimportant - none of that exists. It's only glitter on the waves. Still there are some who curse buddha because they're stuck in unhappiness or because someone else is happier than they are.
Happiness and unhappiness, important and unimportant, love and hate - the whole world makes a big deal out of these things. The world where all of this doesn't exist: that's the world of hishiryô.
There's nothing in the world we need to rack our brains over once it's clear that our deluded thoughts and discriminations are absolutely useless.
When the department head was sick, a subordinate jumped past him on the career ladder. He had been recovering, but with this news his fever broke out again. You really don't need to get a fever over something like that.
You say, "I'll show you!" Yet you don't even know how long you'll live. Don't you have anything else to do?
In the West they say, "Man is the wolf of man." The first step in religion must be that the wolves stop biting each other.
What we've learned since our childhood days is nothing more than how to pretend we're important. The world calls this education. And what do we try to do later in life? We fight like demons, have sex like animals and feed like the hungry ghosts. That's it.
The whole world sways on wobbly legs: like pushing others aside just to get ahead. In the buddha-dharma you shouldn't be so unfair.
The buddha-dharma means having success in failure. The mind of the buddha-dharma is "sitting in zazen for aeons without achieving the way of buddha." [Lotus Sutra]
People make a sleepy face if there isn't a fight or competition taking place. They're always wanting to gallop to the finish line. But is this a horse race? Or they swim like otters, wanting to be a nose ahead. In the end, they'll fight each other, like little kittens over a ball of wool.
When it isn't about winning or losing, love or hate, wealth or poverty, people put on a sleepy face.
In the buddha-dharma it isn't about winning or losing, love or hate.
Some want to show off with their 'satori'. Yet it's clear that something which you can use to show off has nothing to do with satori.
... Chapter 8 ....... Contents ...