(Clearwisdom.net)

The reason why people cannot calm down is because their minds are not clear and clean. The root cause is too many strong human desires and attachments. All types of desires and attachments can develop into a wide variety of postnatally formed notions and thought karma. This produces interference that manifests itself in the form of being unable to calm one's mind. Therefore, I feel that we cannot fundamentally resolve these issues by simply eliminating and resisting our own bad thoughts and thought karma. We must also let go of all kinds of conflicts and discard various desires and attachments. By doing so, we can keep our minds genuinely clear, clean and in a state of wuwei (non-action). If desires and attachments are not removed, we will develop new thought karma and bad thoughts.

For a few days now, I have felt that various human attachments originate from "self." When one is truly selfless and altruistic, nothing can move one's heart. He or she can tolerate anything and consider others first when faced with any issue. This is a feeling of weightlessness, the freedom of selflessness and altruism. In this state, one experiences a sense of joy and contentment, the state of a noble being.

The process of constantly removing one's attachments during cultivation is also the process of continually breaking free of the concept of self. Our capacity to tolerate also keeps expanding accordingly. Beings at different levels have attachments characteristic of those levels, so the state of being clear and clean exists on different levels. Strictly speaking, attachments are relative from a certain perspective, and so are the degree of mental clarity and depth of tranquility. The higher one's state of mind is, the larger one's capacity will be, as will be his wisdom and capacity. As one reaches higher levels, he will think about and do things on a larger scale. Meanwhile, the particles of his being become more microscopic, and his thinking becomes clearer and calmer. Beings on different levels and in different realms find joy in different things, and they think and act accordingly.

There are no shortcuts in cultivation. During our cultivation, it would be great if we could let go of the sense of self all at once, but oftentimes we cannot . We can only keep making progress in letting it go and broadening our hearts.

Written on April 22, 2002