... Chapter 20 ....... Contents ...
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| 19. To you who are tumbling down the career ladder |
When you're dead and you look back at your life, you'll see that none of this mattered in the least.
None of this matters at all. Stop blubbering! What a waste of tears. Grow up a little and open your eyes: You'll see that you're making a great fuss over nothing. All living beings are just like crybabies making a great fuss over nothing.
The whole world makes a big deal over nothing. What's it all for? Is there really anything in the world that merits making such a weepy face?
Sometimes you hear actors in the theatre saying, "But what should I do? What should I do?" This question has never occurred to me, because I just say to myself, "None of this really matters at all!"
Fortune and misfortune, good and bad - not everything is how it looks to your eyes. It's not how you think it is either. We've got to go beyond fortune and misfortune, good and bad.
The whole world is spinning in karma.
The world that human beings know is only the world which they can glimpse through the peep-hole of their karmic delusions. The real world appears before our eyes, once we stop staring at the world of our karmic delusions.
We have to break out of the world of delusion, rather than working our asses off in it.
You talk about your troubles and worries, but what do your troubles and worries really consist of? Isn't it like someone who catches his own fart with his hand, smells it and bursts out saying, "Pee-yoo, that really stinks!" The more time you have, the more time you spend with your farts. At some point, you should get to know real suffering. You want to hang or drown yourself in desperation? Come back down to earth and wake up to reality!"
Suffering is nothing more than the suffering we create for ourselves. Some even take great pains to meticulously piece together their own suffering.
The human mind is constantly stirred by wind and waves. Capturing wind and waves in writing and then selling them is the strange trade called 'literature'.
Because you relate everything to yourself, everything looks like a huge problem. Where there is no mind [mushin], there are no problems.
You suffer because you don't want to accept what has to be accepted.
Faith means the same thing as being beyond thinking [hishiryo]: it means acceptance. Accepting what? Acceptance here doesn't always mean yielding to the stronger.
Quietly accepting what's has to be is what's meant by satori. Great satori means seeing necessity as necessity, for necessity is an integral part of the universe.
You're worried about death? Don't worry - you'll die for sure.
... Chapter 20 ....... Contents ...