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Vol.6 Way
to make oneself mentality prepared. |
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Humans have various types of
desires. Typical ones are
appetite, cupidity, aphrodisia,
and lust for publicity.
Desire is something hard
to take control of. I believe
it is not far from the truth
that the majority of incidents
reported by newspapers
originated from the inability
to control desires. In the
world of literature and
performing arts, there are
sayings that “One’s quality of
performance deepens by being
honest to his / her desires”
“Following one’s heart is the
ideal of what human life should
be”, but in the real world,
these actions immediately lead
to downfall.
In the old
days high priests sat in Zen
mediation and performed cold
water ablutions by a fall. I
believe that these people were
ultimately in search of “how to
overcome desires”.
Everyday life changes rapidly,
and we face new challenges all
the time. We encounter problems
and find ways to resolve them
one by one. Interestingly, most
of the factors which require
answers are connected to one of
the abovementioned desires.
Humans are weak – human
errors occur due to
environmental and physical
circumstances. If there are no
benchmark to deal with desires,
errors will continue to be made
and may even end up affecting
people’s lives. In order to
prevent such disasters, I think
we need to set up a threshold
limit against desires and
regard them as decision making
guidelines.
On the
other hand, desires are the
driving force for humans to
develop and organizations to
grow bigger, so the threshold
limit differs depending on
one’s position and generations.
The bottom line is to stay
realistic.
Ordinary
people including myself suffer
all the time. After the age of
60, I still suffer. In my case,
I try to set up goals on
various occasions in my private
life in order to achieve those
desires.
I presume
appetite is the easiest desire
that you could control, out of
appetite, cupidity, aphrodisia,
and lust for publicity. There
are numerous pursuable
guidelines out there such as
maintaining body types for
women and countermeasures
against metabolic syndromes for
men. However, cupidity,
aphrodisia, and lust for
publicity are desires that are
hard to control. These are
simply based on individuals’
view of life and there seems to
be no social barometer to refer
to.
Corporate
executives earning extremely
high income while their
employees earning barely enough
to survive is a good example of
the above.
In other
words, drawing the line on
desire is to “make oneself
mentally prepared”. Don’t
dither after making a decision.
Don’t regret even if you face
an unexpected result. I imagine
that an enlightened world
awaits from an accumulation of
these efforts.
I
believe that you can enlighten
yourself without Zen mediations
or performing cold water
ablutions by a fall.
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