Concentrate on Affairs of Primary Importance

Publish Date:2024-10-10

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(13) In everyday life, people would usually adhere to the principle of “concentrating on prudently dealing with affairs that are of primary importance and at the same time leaving matters of secondary importance to run their own courses”. In pursuing self-cultivation, a practitioner of Buddhist Chan must also adhere to such a principle. By “leaving matters of secondary importance to run their own course” is actually meant that leaving matters of secondary importance utterly out of a practitioner’s mind. A practitioner should rip from his consciousness such trivial concerns in his everyday life as “whether my gains are being pilfered”, “whether my ‘infallibility’ is crushed”, “whether my fond idea is flouted”, etc. By “concentrating on prudently dealing with affairs that are of primary importance” is meant—for a Buddhist-Chan practitioner—that the question of incessant rebirth is a momentous one. Moreover a practitioner needs to concentrate on striving to fully understand what the essence of mind is, so that he can free himself from the bitter sea of life and death until he attains Buddhahood. We fervently admire the hierarchs in the history of the Buddhist Chan Order. What distinguishes them from the rank and file of the order consists in both the hierarchs’ penetrating insight into the problem of incessant rebirth and their irreversible transcendence over all mundanities of the worldly life.(Form My Heart My Buddha)


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