Everything that you do you must do with clarity and awareness.
When you see clearly, you’ll no longer feel the need to force yourself to do and complete everything. Now you are burdened with difficulties because you miss the point: whatever you do, you should just do with your body and mind completely. This will bring you peace.
If you think you have to do and complete everything, then whenever you leave something undone or incomplete, you’ll feel discontented and never stop worrying about it. You want to complete everything, but it’s really impossible to do so.
Take the case of the merchants who regularly come here to see me. They say, “Oh, when my debts are all paid and property in order, I’ll come to get ordained.” They talk like that, but will they ever finish and get it all in order? There’s no end to it.
They pay off their debts with another loan; they pay off that one, and do it again. A merchant thinks that when he gets rid of all of his debts, he will be happy, but there’s no end to paying things off.
That’s the way worldliness fools us.
We go around and around like that never realizing our predicament.
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