Finding The Miracles In Life's Struggles
informative
Broaden Your Horizons
02 months
If you don’t have height, all you see is problems. If you don’t broaden your horizons, all you see is trifles.
If you are an ant mentality, then small stones are obstacles. If you are an eagle mentality, then the high mountain will dare to try!
People with high altitude are not free from difficulties. They walk at different heights and conduct themselves in different ways. What we should do every day is to improve our height and depth, instead of telling about our obstacles and troubles every day.
Little heart, everything is a big thing. Big heart, everything is a small thing!
Life is a self-challenge, and broaden your horizons can bring life to life.
The sunset scene at Maui.
Note: The original article is in Chinese, and the author is unknown. I like the concept of it, so I translate into English to share with you here.
We Only Meet to Pay What We Owe
04 months
Without owing something to one another, there is no way to meet.
Sakyamuni’s words:
It takes a moment to reach out.
Holding hands take years.
No matter who you meet,
They are the one who is supposed to be in your life.
It is no accident.
Buddha said:
Life is also a journey with pleasure.
The body is the inn where the soul lives,
For boundless, infinite time,
This life is just a passing visit.
Deep and deep destiny,
To walk the same way again and again,
To go to the same place again and again,
See the same person again and again.
Always believe,
There is a meeting in this world,
Not on the road, but in the heart;
There is a feeling,
It is not about being together day and night,
But being a silent companion.
Buddha says:
Looking back 500 times,
Fate only grants us a passing glance.
It is fate to meet each other in this life.
Why bother to hate and to have ill feelings?
Together or separate is destiny.
It is the will of heaven,
We should cherish it.
The following online article goes well with the above teachings, so I included it here as well.
01. No matter who you meet, they are the one who should appear in your life.
This means that no one accidentally enters our lives. Everyone who is around us and interacts with us represents something. Maybe it teaches us something. Maybe it helps us improve a situation. Maybe it offers us a turning point.
02. No matter what happens, this is the only thing that will happen.
What we have experienced is impossible to recreate, and it can never happen in other ways, even the least important details. It is not worth it to say, “If I did something different, it would have turned out different.” No matter what happens, this is the only thing that will happen, and it must happen this way so that we can learn from the experience and move on. In life, every situation we experience is perfect, even if we do not understand why.
03. No matter when things start, it’s the right time.
Everything starts at the right time, not early or late. When we are ready to experience the new moments of life, it is there, ready to begin.
04. It is over, and it is over.
It’s so simple. When something ends in life, it helps us grow. To enjoy what has happened thoroughly, it is best to let go and keep moving forward.
Look Up At the Stars
05 months
by Alice Lin
in informative
In an age when most people are rushing to their next destination, be a person who occasionally looks up at the stars.
In “The Moon and Sixpence” by W. Somerset Maugham, the main character says that he has tried his best to live an ordinary life, which was probably the fate of the majority.
Some people look down at the ground for sixpence, while some people look up to see the moon in the sky.
As for a boring life, some people choose to accept fate and muddle along. But the inwardly rich man has drawn a flower in dull life and painted suffering into a poem.
More important than life is attitude and lifestyle, and the man who loves life, regardless of what fate has sent him, always tries to play it well.
There is no such thing as a truly rich life, but you can still try to take a good afternoon nap. You can’t sit and make footprints under a wave of maple trees, but you can make time for playing chess to enjoy a brief break.
Take life seriously, and you will find that a meal and vegetables, a day and night are perfect, and you won’t be complain anymore. You will only be in awe of life.
Whatever the world does to you, may you be as brave and hopeful as ever.
Author W. Somerset Maugham (picture from Wikipedia)
The original Chinese text is from https://www.weibo.com/3611356753/FhPiBipga?type=comment#_rnd1530516812435.
The Story of Zen
02 years
by Alice Lin
in informative
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Years before, the only chrysanthemums in the village were grown by the lead monk in the temple garden. Three years later, in the fall, the garden became known as “the garden of chrysanthemums,” the fragrance wafting through the air to the village.
Everyone who visited the temple admired the garden. One day, someone asked the lead monk if they could take some chrysanthemums to grow in their yard. Quickly, the monk agreed and picked out the best, most colorful flowers for him. Soon, the news spread and people started to come, one after another, to ask for the flowers. In the eyes of this monk, those people were very close to him and deeply cherished. They were all good friends, and he could not deny them the flowers. Pretty soon, all of the flowers in the garden were gone. None was left.
Without the chrysanthemums, the garden was colorless and desolate. Seeing how barren the garden was, one of the disciples sighed and said, “What a pity. We had such color and fragrance and now we don’t even have a single flower. There is nothing left in the garden.”
Understanding their disappointment, the leader said, “Just think about it. In three years, the whole village will have chrysanthemums. Isn’t that better than having them only here? The whole village will be full of the wonderful fragrance.” When the disciples heard this, they felt the warmth of love from their leader and visualized the fantastic sight of the blooming of hundreds of chrysanthemums in the village.
The leader continued, “It is such a good thing to share, for everyone can enjoy this blessing. Even though we gave them out, with nothing left to us, we still feel the joy in our hearts. We truly own our happiness.”
The moral of this story is that spring does not arrive with the blossoming of a single flower. When you see hundreds of flowers blooming, you know that spring has come. Sharing brought not only the spring but also the joy to the village. What a great lesson that this lead monk taught us! That is when we have(or own) the happiness, we can always give or share with the others. The happiness resides within; it is not affected by the material outside. Moreover, It is more delightful to share the joy than to keep it to oneself.
A Simple Thought
03 years
by Alice Lin
in informative
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A simple thought can change your environment. It can change your world. If we all have positive thoughts, then it is possible to change the whole world. My friend told me a story about when he was buying groceries in the supermarket. As he was getting a cart, he noticed some small trash in his carts. Before, he didn’t pay much attention, but that day; he unconsciously picked up all of the garbage and gathered it in the front of the cart. He saw the trashcan and threw it in. He told me that as he was pushing the cart into the market, he saw a middle-aged person saw what he did. He did the same thing. The man went the extra mile too: he started to pick up trash from the other carts.
Hearing about this scene, I am enlightened. Your thoughts can change other people’s thoughts. Because we change, our environment also changes. Suddenly, I realized it’s not hard to make the world different to be better. We just need to have the right kind of mindset. As long as our thoughts are positive, kind, and caring, this becomes a sort of invisible energy spread rapidly outwards from person to person. The impact of spreading of this energy on our environment is far beyond our imagination.
I often heard stories about paying it forward. In the toll road, someone would pay for the ticket of the person behind him or her in line. That person would pay it forward, then the next person and the next. It starts off as nothing. But it became a chain transaction because of one simple thought. It began with one individual being kind and made many people’s days. Isn’t that how we can make someone’s day?
Indeed, a kind and loving thought may not solve any major world crisis. Nevertheless, I believe the loving thought is contagious. As mentioned in his book “The Contagious Power of Thinking“ We don’t need to be on the Internet to be connected. We are all interconnected. Our thought and emotion can be felt by the friends, siblings and the other side of people; they can reproduce in them. Yes, it is that powerful. The simple thought certainly will make our world different and more beautiful.
