It is possible for us to experience the impermanent friendship.

 

Author: Tao Qing Hsu (Hsu, Tao-qing) 

 

For the teenage, friendship is the very important in their life. Maybe you are experiencing the wonderful friendship or the worst relationship with friends. Whatever it is, it is the experience in life. As we work after graduating from school, any friendship seems to be diluted gradually. We have found that many friends are disappeared from our life, and we don’t contact to each other for a long time.

 

Then, we establish the new relationship with new friends in work. However, we have found that such friendship is no longer pure like what we owned in the time of school. The worst is that we may meet the villain. Don’t worry. The best is that we may meet the noble friends who support and help us a lot in many ways by his sincerely heart and ability.

 

Sometimes, we may do many things for our friends, but to receive the complaining from them. If we are cheated or betrayed by our friends, it may cause us angry and distrust them. Whatever it is, we find that the friendship is temporary. It seems hardly to keep the long term friendship, unless we cherish it very much.

 

So, the friendship is also impermanent. When it comes in life, we welcome it. When it goes away, we don’t keep it. At the moment, there will be no burden in our heart.

Chapter 3: Cut off the love and remove the greed

(Chapter 3) 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 3: Cut off the love and remove the greed

The Buddha said, “Those who shave their hair and beard to become the Sramana and accept the Dao-law should renounce worldly possessions, be content to beg for alms, and take only what is needed. Eat one meal before noon a day, pass the night beneath trees, and be cautious not to desire more, for love and desire are what makes people foolish and concealing.”

The said rules are set by Buddha for his disciples, Sramanas. Such rules inspire and remind us, to be content what we have, and not to greedy more, because love and desire are what makes people foolish and concealing.

As we have mentioned in the aforesaid chapter, the definition of love and desire here is narrower, which motive is based on the personal-ego and selfishness. That is why the love and desire makes people foolish and concealing.

There is a saying,” To love would cause the dying tragically.” Why? It is involved the personal factor and the factor of the other side. Someone could not accept to be betrayed or broken up in love, and its hatred heart and its mind of revenge would thus be arisen to become the factual action. When they are in such state, their mind would lose reason and their action would be out of control, and thus to do the harmful thing. We call such person as horrifying lover. In generally, such person is lack of confidence and self-esteem. Even though this, they still want to control their lover. In the viewpoint of Buddha, such person is foolish and pitiful.

Someone use the love or sexual desire as excuses and means to have the fortune, especially, the young woman with beautiful appearance and good shape of body to attract the elder-rich man. Then, they would have the fortune by the means of divorce or of broken up. Sometimes we call such person as love-liar. The rich man attaches the lust of love and he is thus concealed by the infatuation.

Most people are following their own hormone of body and their visual sense, but, not following their mind of reason, to find their love. When the second person is shown up, they would be interested in such person by following their own sexual desire and visual sense. We call such thing as illusion and infatuation. In such state, the fact would not be found. So, there is a saying,” The lovers are falling in love because they do not understand each other. The lovers break up because they finally understand each other.”    

In the fiction or drama, the love is always created as romantic story. But, in fact, it is not true in our daily life. In the relationship of love, it is more related to the responsibility, tolerance, respecting to each other, sweet burden and honesty. Unfortunately, most people do not understand it, especially, the young male and female.

When people love and desire someone, something or to do something, they might conceal others for some reasons. Or they might be concealed by others. Then, to lie is happened. The evil karma is formed. The evil future might be waiting there.

The love and desire as mentioned here is the evil cause. Having cut it off, the evil result would not be happened certainly.

Extending the meaning of love and desire, human can love or desire the fame, power, fortune, food, and career. No matter love or desire, fame or power, fortune, food or career, their essence are not sin. Why? If we understand the deep meaning of Buddhism, we would know that those essences are emptiness. Since those essences are emptiness, they are not related to the sin or non-sin. Then, we might have a question. What is the problem or the trouble about the love or desire in such thing? 

As we know, there are two viewpoints in one thing. That is positive viewpoint and negative viewpoint. When we misuse our love and desire for such things, those would cause the bad result in our life. For example, there is a saying,” Human is afraid of fame; Pig is afraid of fat.” Why? When a person attaches the fame, jealous and attack in speech is followed. When a pig is fat, it would be killed to be as food. 

However, good fame would be helpful for the people of world. Such person is aim to benefit the people of world, and good fame therefore follows him (or her). Other things can be deduced by analogy.