April 03, 2021

Chapter 32: The ego-emptiness eliminates the fear.

(Chapter 32) A Brief Talk about The Scripture of Forty-Two Chapters Said by Buddha 

Co-translators in the time of Eastern Han Dynasty, China(A.D. 25 - 200) : 
Kasyapa Matanga and Zhu Falan (Who translated the said Scripture from Sanskrit into Chinese. )
Translator in modern time (A.D.2018: Tao Qing Hsu (Who translated the said Scripture from Chinese into English.)
Teacher and writer for explaining the said Scripture: Tao Qing Hsu


Chapter 32: The ego-emptiness eliminates the fear.        

The Buddha said,” People follow the desire of love and thus to occur the worry and follow the worry so as to occur the fear. If they leave the desire of love, what would be worried and what would be feared?” 

 

The ego-emptiness is also the self-emptiness. It means that the self is in the status of emptiness. Most people do not understand such state, even to mistakenly understand it and thus fear it. That is because they do not understand the profoundly meaning of ego-emptiness.

 

A little story of Zen

 

There is a story to help us to understand it easily. There is a little learner who always doesn’t realize the meaning of Zen. One day, there is an empty cup on the table before a Zen-master. The Zen-master asks his little learner to pour the tea into the cup for him. The little learner obeys the order and pours the tea.

 

Then, the cup is full of tea and the little learner stops pouring the tea. The Zen-master orders the little learner to keep pouring the tea. The little learner thus hesitates and says to the Zen-master, ”Master, the cup is full of tea. Should I keep pouring the tea? ”   

 

The Zen-master says to him, “There are two choices for you. One is to keep pouring the tea. The other is to empty the cup and keep pouring the tea.”  

 

Suddenly, the little learner seems to realize the meaning of emptiness. Think about it, if our hearts are filled with things, how can we be able to fill in new things? Only by emptying our hearts can we fill in new things, for example, new ideas.

 

The desire of love

 

Have you ever quietly thinking of the desire of love inside the self-body? When I am beginning to practice the meditation, I have to question myself about it and to aware the inner desire of love which is existed inside of my body. It is very important to me for doing such meditation every day. Such training is the basic learning to learn Buddhism and to release the self-worry in life.  

 

The Buddha said, “The desire of love is the root of distress.” Only when we know the desire of love inside our body, we would know what kind of thing would attract us, affect us, turn us, and thus give us the distress. When the desire of love is gradually eliminated in our body, any distress caused by the inner desire of love which would touch us is rest naturally. 

 

Secondly, when we do any insight into our inner desire of love, we would astutely do the insight into the desire of love existed in everyone. It is also very important to us to do such observing. We cannot live without any one person. The existed desire of love in their body would appear to become any negative motive, thought, language and behavior to hurt us. When we know it clearly, we would know how to face and deal with it correctly.  

 

Of course, do we have ever thought that we would hurt others people because of our inner desire of love? I think that it is very few people to have such thought. If we broadly observe the society and world, we would find that the original cause to incur the turmoil of society and the un-peace of world is arisen from the desire of love existed in the powerful men and women.

 

Why people follow the desire of love would thus give them the worry? I take a simple example. Do you have ever observed the behavior of the children? We know that the children love toys. When the children play the toys, they are so happy and laugh so happily. However, when we take their toys away, their instinct makes them begin to cry loudly. When they calm down and aware that they lose their toys, they begin trying and doing something to take their toys back. When the other children take away the toys, they are even angry to fight each other for grabbing the toys.    

 

Such behavior of the children can be tracked back to the behavior of sucking the pacifier. When a baby is crying, we take the pacifier to the baby's mouth for the baby to suck. Then, the baby stops crying. This would be track back to the source of desire of love for human beings. Such desire of love for pacifier is the instinct of an infant. However, with the growing of the infants and what they have contacted in their life and in their environment, what they want by following their desire of love is different and changing with their age and experience. At the same time, what they worry about and what they fear are also different and changing with their age and experience.

 

The original desire of love for the pacifier and toys caused by the infants’ instinct cannot be deprived, restricted and changed, because it is the necessary for the growing of babies. However, with their growing, it may not be necessary for them to obtain what they want according to their desires of love, and some of them even have to be restricted or eliminated, so as to avoid any troubles to themselves or to others.

 

For example, some of the young boy loves the car and desires to have it. However, we know that it is not the necessity for the young boy. Even though some of the young boy loves the car and desires to have it, they know they cannot afford it and thus to eliminate such desire of love. However, some of them neither eliminate their desire of love for a car but to steal a car. They drive the car without license and make the car collision. And thus a lot of troubles are happened. They even must pay for life and car damage.

 

Therefore, for the inner desire of love, it is very important to us to distinguish the difference between what is the necessity and what is not. For example, to eat nutritious and natural food is very important to us. If we have any desire of love about it and obtain the food with justice action, it is a normal behavior. However, if we want to get such food and thus do anything to hurt others, it is an improper behavior and would bring any troubles to us.

 

The Buddha said,” People follow the desire of love and thus to occur the worry and follow the worry so as to occur the fear.

 

For the adult, their desire of love and what they want according to it is more complicate. And such desire of love is more related to the desire of greed. That is, such desire of love is no longer for the necessary in life but is more for the requirement through greedy desire. Meanwhile, the method and the behavior to get what they want are more improper. In a word, such desire of love is affected by the surrounding environment, more coming from and pushed by the anxiety of the pressure of life, and thus to form the badly circle in life.

 

Men love women. Women love money. Men love power in career. Women love to have a comfortable house. Men love cars. Women love designer clothing and handbags. No matter what they love, they are willing to do anything to get it, even using the mean method or to violate their good nature. 

 

Unfortunately, they do not distinguish whether what they want is the necessity or the vanity. Mostly, what they want is more than what they need. When they have what they want, it seems not contenting them. They want more and have the strong worry for it. Unfortunately, for getting the more, people become slavers under their inner desire of love, and some of them are not willing to work hard through their labor and energy.

 

Therefore, their mind and motive are no longer pure and thus to truly lead to their evil behavior. They do not know that such desire of love and thereafter mind, motive, and behavior would thus bring them many troubles and distress. They even have to live under the evil person’s threatening, controlling and humiliating, because they are afraid of losing everything. Therefore, they live in the fear. Because of the fear, they are even forced to commit the crime.  

 

If they leave the love, what would be worried and what would be feared?” 

 

In other words, why people have so many troubles and distress caused by their desire of love? That is because that they cannot drop their desire of love. When they stubbornly stick on their desire of love, they cannot put down anything what they hold. For holding anything, they are even willing to argue or fight with the other persons, even to lie or hurt them. It is their troubles and distress. Unfortunately, they may not have such self-perceiving and self-alerting. 

 

Therefore, if people are willing to leave the desire of love, their mind is thus cleaned to be empty. And within it, there is nothing which you want it and thus there is nothing which can be losing. In the emptiness of mind, where you can find the worry and the fear?


Supplementary note: Dao is transliterated from Chinese, meaning way and method, deeper meaning as a system of learning or religion. Dao is Tao, which is transliterated from Chinese. The original meaning of Dao is the way and path, and it is extended to be the truth of life that we can learn and practice in our lives.

 

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