What is the mind? Where is it? How can anyone describe it? And so the Chinese has preferred to call it the ‘Heart’ because it is there that all feelings can be felt with the result that a person is often accused of having a good or a bad heart! To understand this more explicitly you must contemplate on it and you will get a better understanding of it if you can do your contemplation in Chinese.

With the understanding of what is a pure heart and the necessity to possess one, you will then be able to recognise the similarities between the various great faiths. Their goal is the same but their methods of attaining the result need not be the same because of the different conditions, environments and cultural practices of the different races in the world. You need not look to the world to grasp this point, just look at the various members of each family and see how they differ in their outlooks and behaviours. The home is the world and it can quite easily represent the various kinds of people with different dispositions. Or you may look at the neighbourhood to take note of the characteristics of each family... and then the community and so on. Look at life from what is around you and learn to understand the nature of the world in this manner. Life is not as complicated as it seems to be - if you have the heart to learn and a mind which is calm. But how can one calm the mind with so much distractions of life? Here you can see how restless the world is, how even with all scientific creations, the people are still not satisfied and, instead, are becoming more restless and discontent. Life is certainly filled with all kinds of dissatisfactions so that those who fail to recognise this Truth easily become intoxicated with the desire to gain more and more, in terms of wealth, power and fame! What then is the result? There is no need to describe the troubled world which is filled with the terrible energies of greed, hate, distrust, selfishness and violence! Materialism is the main cause of all these problems which lead to all kinds of sensual cravings! Mind then is not happy, is filled with cravings, is far from calmness! The spiritual path leads one away from all these problems and brings about peace and happiness!

The Buddha’s Path leads to complete freedom from all kinds of worldly pains, to perfect bliss, but how many will accept it? Even amongst those who have accepted it, most have done so only superficially, with wrong views and impure motivations, so that they are Buddhists only in name and convenience!

Wednesday, 22nd January 1986 (12th Moon 13th Day)