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We See What We Are
- Alex Chen
- 24 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Master Foyin was a renowned Zen monk of high cultivation during the Song dynasty of China's history (about a thousand years ago). One time, he was teaching his friend Su Dongpo, who was a famous author and poet at the time, how to do Zen meditation, which involves sitting in silence and emptying the mind of all wandering thoughts. Su Dongpo happily sat across from Master Foyin and started to do Zen meditation.
After a while, Su Dongpo asked Master Foyin, “What do you think I looked like while I was meditating?”
Master Foyin calmly replied, “You looked like a Buddha.”
Su Dongpo felt quite pleased with this answer, and noticing that Master Foyin was a bit overweight, he decided to make a joke. “Do you know what you looked like to me?"
Master Foyin quietly asked, “What?”
Su Dongpo chuckled and teasingly replied, “Like a pile of cow dung!”
After saying this, Su Dongpo looked at Master Foyin, but saw that the master remained unmoved, sitting calmly with his eyes closed. As a result, Su Dongpo felt a bit unsettled.
When Su Dongpo returned home, he proudly told his younger sister about the incident. To his surprise, his sister replied, "How could someone of your abilities practice Zen? Don't you know that the essence of Zen is to cultivate the mind? What's in your mind will be what you see. Master Foyin said you look like a Buddha, which means his mind has the Buddha in it. You said Master Foyin looks like cow dung, just think about what your mind has in it!"
After hearing this, Su Dongpo suddenly realized his fault and felt deeply ashamed.
Commentary
This story reminds me of another story about Venerable Jing Kong, who is a contemporary renowned monk. One time, Venerable Jing Kong's secretary brought a pile of letters and said, "These are all letters full of criticism and slander towards you."
Venerable Jing Kong replied, "That's fine. I don't need to read to them. You can throw them away."
The secretary replied, "What? You're not going to read them? Why?"
Venerable Jing Kong replied, "Why should I read them? One of the dumbest things we can do is to take other people's garbage and put it in our pristine mind. I only put other people's goodness in my mind."
Both these stories remind me of a quote by Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius:
"The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."
Our thoughts and what we put in our mind determine how we feel, what we do, and ultimately our actions and results. When we hold negative thoughts and emotions in our minds, we immediately suffer direct damage, and those around us suffer collateral damage. The longer we let these negative thoughts continue, the greater their impact.
Moreover, if we hold negative thoughts about others, that will lead to a negative loop cycle. Because we think negatively about them, we'll treat them in a more negative way, which then makes them respond to us in a more negative manner, and that reinforces our negative beliefs about them. Thus, we see how insidious negative thoughts and beliefs are, as well as why Venerable Jing Kong refused to taint his mind with other people's faults. This doesn't mean he isn't aware of other people's faults, but rather he refuses to let those thoughts stay in his mind when they don't need to be there, and he chooses to focus on other people's good points instead, which would create a positive reinforcement cycle.
Ultimately, the importance of cultivating our mind and thoughts cannot be stressed enough. Unfortunately, so many people neglect this and instead seek happiness from external circumstances or people, which leads to frustration and disappointment.
My Experience
Recently, I've been teaching some students English as they prepare for the IELTS test (an English proficiency test). Some students are quite frustrated with learning English because they feel it is too difficult to get their target score in a short time frame. While it's certainly understandable that most people would feel frustrated in such a situation, a true philosopher and self-cultivator wouldn't blame their feelings on external circumstances. If we ourselves do not have impatience and unreasonable expectations, then we wouldn't feel frustrated. Thus, we see and experience what we hold in our mind.
Of course, this is much easier said than done, and I'm certainly not looking down on people who blame their negative emotions on external circumstances. Rather, I hope to encourage everyone to overcome this troublesome habit. I am working towards this goal as well.
For example, I recently caught myself criticizing a student because she kept complaining about how it's so hard and frustrating to remember English vocabulary. After hearing her complain many times, I finally told her, "OK, I really don't understand why it's so hard for you to remember vocabulary. How about I observe you do your vocabulary study and see if I can find any issues?"
I then observed her, and I found many issues. Moreover, I told all the students before to not do those things and to do other things instead, but she didn't follow my instructions. However, it isn't that she doesn't want to listen, it's that she encountered difficulties and didn't know how to overcome them, so she just continued using her own way. I then blamed her and said, "I said before that if I give you guys a method and you try it but don't get a good result, you should tell me, and then we can troubleshoot. Why didn't you ask me to come observe you earlier? You need to be more proactive." She said sorry.
Later, I reflected on my attitude and realized it's not right for me to feel annoyed and blame her. If I had more kindness and humility in my mind, as opposed to impatience and defensiveness, then I wouldn't have viewed her as the problem.
Instead, I would've blamed myself and said, "I'm sorry I didn't communicate better before and didn't check on you earlier." That would've been much more comforting and motivating, which would lead to better results and a better relationship than blaming and criticizing.
Conclusion
We see what we are. What we hold in our mind influences how we see external circumstances and other people. If we truly want to solve our problems from the root, we have to reflect on our thoughts and what we hold in our mind.
Weekly Wisdom #339
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