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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