PureInsight | May 23, 2006
[PureInsight.org] "Then how
many paths are there in the cosmos that can enable a life to ascend, to
return to a higher realm? There are countless ways. However many
sentient beings there are, that's how many paths there are." (from
Master Li's "Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005")
In today's commercial world, ordinary people are all chasing profit, as
if commerce is all about profit. I, too, had never thought that
commerce had anything to do with cultivation, and I could not
understand why it can be one of the ways of the universe to elevate
living beings. Lately something happened and changed my view on this.
One day I happened to see a customer buying a jade ring from a jewelry
store. The owner of the store then told me that the jade ring had been
in his store for 7 or 8 years. A deal often takes a lot of waiting.
Many things have to happen before a deal is made: someone has to come
to the store and notice the ring, he/she has to like the ring, and
his/her finger has to fit it. Without good patience, one can't wait
till the chance comes.
At that moment it suddenly dawned on me that this is about cultivating
patience. I saw in my mind a cultivator, who was told by his master to
hold a piece of stone and wait by the road side for someone to take it.
The cultivator waited and waited, in rain and in wind, in coldness and
in hunger. His hair grew long before he cut it again and again, and his
clothes got shabby. People came and went, but no one wanted the stone.
They just coldly glanced at him and sneered, "Look at the cultivator...
..." Finally, after 7 or 8 years, a passerby took the stone from the
cultivator's hands.
That moment is perhaps when I first started to really understand
commerce. It's all about cultivation, not profit. Profit and wealth to
us are just like what brush and paper to painters: they are just tools.
A painter's level of cultivation can be reflected in his painting, just
like that of a business person is reflected in his waiting. People in
modern society can not see commerce as a way of cultivation and
elevation, because they are wallowing in and blinded by profit and
wealth. They cling to wealth as a way to survive. They just can not see
all this is just a tool and mechanism, which operates smoothly only
when people's morality elevates. As a painter said, "I don't know how I
make a living. I just feed myself when I have money." A business person
should also maintain such lightness and peace in the heart.
Translated from:
http://zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2006/5/3/37318.html
