Keep Your Mind Free

There was a general who had been fighting on the battlefield for a long time. Tired of fighting for years, he made a special trip to the Zen master to ask for a monk. He said to the Zen master: "Master! I have seen through the world now, please be merciful to accept me as a monk, let me be your disciple!"

The Zen master said: "You have a family and social habits are too heavy. You still can't become a monk. Let's talk about it slowly!"

The general insisted: "The Zen master! I can put everything down now, my wife, children, and family are not a problem, please shave for me now!"

The Zen master still refused to agree: "Let's talk about it later!"

The general was helpless, so he had to give up temporarily and attend the Buddha on his own.

After a few days, he came to the temple to worship the Buddha early in the morning. The Zen master saw him and said, "Why does the general come to worship Buddha so early?"

The general learned to use Zen poems and said: "In order to get rid of the irritation, get up in the morning and give honor to Master."

The Zen master also jokingly replied with a verse: "I wake up so early, are you afraid of your wife stealing someone?"

When the general heard this, he was very angry and cursed: "You old monster, your speech is too hurtful!"

The Zen master smiled and said: "With a light fan, the sex fire burns again, so irritable, how can you become a monk?"

The general lowered his head in shame.

In daily life, why don’t sentient beings be like this general who gets angry easily? Although everyone knows that the bite of a few mosquitoes can never detain a galloping horse; the fetters of a few rubbles cannot block the rushing river, but when you are in it, you still can’t help feeling Annoyed and resentful. In addition, we often hear other people complain about bad work, high academic pressure, or our hard work is not understood by others, and so on.

But in the same predicament, why can some people still live freely and optimistically, but they are always full of complaints, anxious and irritable? In fact, just as the Buddha taught us, sometimes, what we urgently need to change is not the environment, not the troubles, but our own state of mind, and the way we deal with them.

In this busy and noisy modern society, we must correctly resolve the nuisances that often appear in our lives.

The first step is to learn to accept bothers. Annoyance mostly comes from unsatisfactory life in life, such as family status, lack of relationship, not being appreciated by leaders, and so on. Most of these things are beyond our control. We can control emotions, mood, and footsteps. If you want to let go of the annoyance, you must first learn to accept the unchangeable parts, and then settle down to solve the changeable links. In this way, those unchangeable annoyances will become less powerful. If you are practical and talented, how would you care about your family situation?

The second step is to find the source of the trouble. After accepting the annoyance, everyone has to observe it carefully. Although each kind of disturbance is the product of different causes and conditions, the reason why they can bother us and provoke us can be attributed to one thing, that is, we don't understand things clearly and stubbornly pursue fleeting things. Knowing this, everyone will find that the original annoyance is caused by ourselves, it is caused by our restless mind and excessive greed, and these greeds are insatiable by the annoyance itself. Therefore, it is a logical choice to awaken inwardly and decisively abandon these disturbances.

The third step is to calmly deal with the annoyance. Now everyone can be quiet, because you already know what the nature of annoyance is and where the annoyance comes from. Then, why should we blame all the unhappiness in our hearts on others and our destiny? You just need to calm down and think about how to deal with it. If the interpersonal relationship is not good, then reflect on your own life; if the family is not harmonious, then spend more time communicating with family members; if there are always problems at work, then consult others...every annoyance, It can be solved slowly by calming down.

Therefore, when all beings are practicing, they must learn to be open-minded to deal with others, not to get angry with others, and to face all things and all people with a peaceful and compassionate attitude, so that they can be like running water in front of the world. Be round, go with the flow, and live a happy life. Everyone will encounter all kinds of disturbances on the way of life, but their influence on us is not as great as we imagined. We should maintain a gentle and calm attitude and calmly face them. Even if someone really offends us, we should deal with them calmly, otherwise, it will be our own feelings that will be punished.