Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s quote is from Cheng Yen, the great Taiwanese Buddhist nun, socially engaged Buddhist icon, and founder of the philanthropic Tzu Chi Foundation.  This is it:

Before we learn Buddhism, most of us have wandering minds which lead us to evil thoughts. As soon as we start cultivating our Buddha nature, we need to work diligently to develop appropriate attitudes and methods within ourselves. Our attitudes are of utmost importance; evil thoughts should be eradicated completely as soon as their ugly faces come to mind.

In our daily lives, we cannot get away from all manner of people, places and things. We need to deal with these daily encounters with a steady heart that treats even extraordinary events as if they were commonplace and that loves everyone as equals. Human beings interact with each other through both verbal and body language. In this manner, our words and our attitudes communicate our thoughts. The standard we want to set for ourselves is to be gentle and kind in our words and to always embody a congenial and generous attitude. Of course, we often meet people who speak to us rudely and treat us with little or no respect. Nevertheless, we still need to maintain our own self-dignity and not lower our behavioral standards under any circumstances.

Our goal is not to ask others to change themselves; likewise, our goal is not to inventory their weaknesses. It is wrong to take the words other people let slip out unintentionally and use them to build self-justified resentment and hatred inside ourselves. It is also not worthwhile to feel hurt or angry when others speak rudely to us, because they may just have bad habits of communicating and may not really mean any harm whatsoever. There are also people who look cold and uncaring on the surface, and yet have loving hearts buried inside. We need to avoid stereotyping and judging others by their outward apperances.

It is important to be constantly mindful of our own attitudes and behaviors. Among the ever-changing people, places and things in our daily lives, we need to focus our minds on our own cultivation instead of on ego-based emotions of self-interest, such as resentment, hatred, affection and anger. If we find ourselves feeling resentful, we must eradicate the resentment as quickly as possible. No negligence or laziness can be allowed in this constant process of self-monitoring and correction. This, then, is what is meant by putting an end to existing evil.