Pearls Of Wisdom

Freedom doesn't mean that you fly in the sky, stay there, open your mouth, and wait for the berries to come. Freedom means that you have great responsibilities. It means that no one should have to tell you what to do, but you should know what to do. You have freedom of choice if you know everything; what to do and how to take care of your life and your work. But if you still let people tell you what to do because you don't know what to do yourself, then you're not free. It doesn't matter how much you want to be free, you're not, because you're bound within your own ignorance. You let your mind cheat you into thinking that you're free and you're okay. But you're not. So there's much work for you to do and your level is up to you.

We can understand by feeling and by seeing. You don't have to understand by language or by your own experience even. Wait until you have your own experience, and it's too late. So if we live our lives very inconsiderately, very unlovingly, unkindly, then God must make us understand through a very difficult way. Like one time or another lifetime we must go through hunger, lack and be short of everything ourselves in order to understand what it means to be hungry. Then this impression will always be in our minds, and we will never forget it again for many life times. But to learn the hard way is difficult, so we should always consider. That's practicing, that's meditating, not only sitting here seven days, or sitting at home two and a half hours and feeling pretty.

There are only two choices, the positive and the negative. If the positive doesn't act, then the negative will come. So if we don't use our positive thinking and power, then there's only one other choice. When the time comes, we use the negative, because the chance has passed. Then the more we use the negative, the more we get used to it, and we never do anything else, except keep using it again, again and again. We never get out of it. That's what we call the wheel of transmigration, because we keep running inside that circle again, again, and again.

So as practitioners, I think we should understand the flexibility of the precepts, of life standards, of God's will and God's blessing. We have to know, we have to be very attentive to everything that happens around us in order to detect what God's will is.

So the important thing is to improve ourselves, practice for ourselves. If we can't change anyone, then we should change ourselves. When we change ourselves, it will influence others. It will spontaneously influence them and then they themselves will influence others. It naturally has to change. No need to pray, criticize any government or any regime that it is bad, that it must be put down. For example, this tree is short. We don't need to cut it down, just put a taller tree next to it and we will see that it is short. When we make our life better, then automatically the bad aspects of it will leave; because they cannot be together.