The world of Tzu Chi August 2020 (Vol.125)

2020 • 08 50 make good use of our body and we deviate even the slightest, we may descend into the Three Lower Destinies of hell, hungry ghosts and animals. Because of this, we must be extremely careful in all our bodily actions to avoid making even the slightest mistake. There was an article in the newspaper about a brother who strangled his sister. Did this brother and sister harbour deep hatred and resentment for one another? No. They just had different opinions and often argued. When the brother found out that the sister was working but did not contribute a portion of her salary to the family’s living expenses, he became resentful. After keeping this resentment for a long time, this tragic incident happened. His parents were very distressed because of this. Not only was their daughter murdered, but it was their own son who murdered her. How could the parents not be heartbroken? Though the parents wished to protect their son, at the morgue, the brother was terrified and did not dare view his sister’s body. This and other unusual behaviours were observed by the investigators, and eventually they solved the criminal case. Because of a single thought gone astray, this youth killed his sister with his own hands and caused heartbreak for his parents—this is truly an immense misfortune. This is why, in our daily living, we must always maintain proper thoughts in our minds, for just as the mind can take us from the realm of an ordinary person to that of a noble being, it can also cause us to descend into hell, bringing us regret for the rest of our life. For this reason, we must take good care of our bodies and minds and carefully follow the rules. “Discipline your body” refers to eliminating all desires. Greed, anger and delusion are born of ignorance. Greed is the craving for all kinds of pleasure. Anger can easily make us commit the transgressions of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct. Delusion makes it easy for us to hurt others with our words. Therefore, we must pay attention to our own behaviour, be righteous, and uphold proper etiquette. This is “protecting one’s body”; doing this will remove the obstruction of “excessive desires and self-indulgence”. The reason that ordinary people cannot attain Buddhahood or saintliness is because of hindrances. Hindrances arise due to excessive desires and self-indulgence, when we do not make good use of our bodies, and we waste away our time in our daily life. Self-indulgence, laughing and playing around, and engaging in pointless discussions are all forms of wantonness. To attain a harmonious and purified society, even though the problems involve the entire society, we must begin with the individual. For example, those adhering to a religion form a large group, each spiritual training ground is a small group, and each small group is formed by individuals. At a spiritual training ground, if members keep laughing and playing around, engage in pointless discussion, and are lazy and self-indulgent, they will damage the entire community of spiritual practitioners. So, everyone in a group must have self-discipline for the group as a whole to be beautiful. If each spiritual training ground is like this, then together they will make up a robust harma