Servants, samurai, husbands and wives:
. . . When you observe the world at large, if there's someone with a certain skill in which he excels, no matter what it is, everyone will praise him: 'He's really talented!' they'll declare. But the bigoted person, on hearing this, will say: 'Well, he may be good at this particular thing, but he's also got such-and-such bad points. . .' thus managing to denigrate even his abilities. There's no two ways about it: that's the bigotry of the arrogant evildoer, isn't it? With people like this, if someone they're partial to has a little talent, even if it's talent no one else has ever heard of, they'll stand up alone and praise him to the skies. 'Bravo!' they exclaim, 'Well done! A real virtuoso!'
You find lots of people like this. Isn't that sort of thing terribly wrong? We should join gladly in praising those whom others praise, and, hearing of another's happiness, we should rejoice just as if the happiness were our own. This is the way things ought to be. Such a person is an illumined man who doesn't obscure the Buddha Mind. But if, in response to what you see and hear, there's any arrogance or bigotry, you change the Buddha Mind with which you're endowed for a hell-dweller. . . .
. . . Till now, you didn't understand the principle behind this, so you just went along thoughtlessly, believing that anger and rage were the natural way of things in the human world. But now that you've heard about the Unborn Buddha Mind each of you has innately, from here on you'd better keep from doing it any harm. It may seem to you somehow that I'm speaking like this at the request of the servants—but it really isn't so! Even when it comes to a rude servant, no matter how bad he is, what I'm telling you all is not to lose your temper senselessly and harm the Buddha Mind. . . .
. . . So make up your minds that you're going to become buddhas now! "Everyone is probably thinking: 'Here he is just telling us, "Watch out all the time—don't lose your temper! don't be greedy!" But if we were doing this and someone came along and remarked, "Why, what big fools these people are!" we surely couldn't bring ourselves to tell him, "Certainly, we are fools!" ' Of course, such things do happen; but a person who calls another a fool, even when he's not, is a fool himself. So with people like this, just let it go and don't bother about it any further.
However, if a samurai were being addressed with such disrespectful talk, there'd be no question of his tolerating it. Let me give you an example. Nowadays there are lots of people who own high-priced ceramics—flower vases and Korean teabowls. I don't own anything of this sort myself, but when I see the people who do, they take the ceramics and wrap them round and round with soft cotton and crepe and stick them in a box, which makes good sense. If a costly ceramic strikes against something hard, it's sure to break, so to keep these ceramics from breaking by wrapping them in cotton and crepe is surely a judicious measure. The samurai's mind is just like this. To begin with, samurai always place honor above all else. If there's even a single word of disagreement between them, they can't let it pass without calling it to account—such is the way of the samurai. Once a single word is challenged, there's no going back. So a samurai always keeps the 'hard' parts of his mind under wraps, swathed in cotton and crepe, and from the start takes the greatest care to avoid 'striking against' abrasive people. Everyone would do well always to be careful about this. Once anyone has challenged his words, the samurai is bound to kill him. You'd better grasp this clearly.
Then there's the sort of killing that occurs when a samurai throws himself before his lord and cuts down an attacker. This serves to destroy evildoers and pacify the realm and constitutes the regular vocation of the samurai, so for a warrior this sort of thing is not considered to be murder. But to kill another simply scheming for your own personal ends, stirring up selfish desires as a result of selfcenteredness—this is murder indeed. It shows disloyalty to your lord, unfiliality to your parents, and changes the Buddha Mind for a fighting demon. On the other hand, in circumstances when one must die for one's lord, to fail to die, to run away and behave like a coward, is switching the Buddha Mind for an animal. Birds and beasts don't have the sort of intelligence people do, so they can't understand the proper way to act; they don't know the meaning of honor and simply flee from place to place trying to stay alive. But when a samurai, similarly, fails to understand the meaning of honor and runs away, not even showing shame before his fellow warriors, that's just like being an animal.
(Haskel)
Submitted August 30, 2019 at 10:01PM by GreenSage45 https://ift.tt/2HypctW
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