Calm Your Mind and Desires Become Easier to Satisfy
Buddhism teaches that deep within every person’s heart, there lurks a shadow of greed. These shadows are like sparks—if left unchecked, they can ignite and spread like wildfire, ultimately consuming us.
How do we resist this greed? Master Yancan offers this teaching: "Life is meant to be lived in contentment and happiness—why torment ourselves chasing things beyond our true capacity? Ambition and lofty goals may give us motivation, but if we exceed the limits of our ability, life becomes exhausting and painful."
Life is short. If we calm our minds, the bottomless pit of desire becomes less daunting. With contentment, you will discover how beautiful life can truly be.
Why have we become slaves to desire?
In a society awash with material desires, people’s hearts often grow restless. Somewhere along the way, we were conquered by countless cravings, becoming slaves to them. It seems that everything we do is for the sake of satisfying our own wants. Our relationships, our views on spending, and our daily lives are all shaped by desire... We’ve fallen into a vicious cycle of wanting. We may not call ourselves 'driven by self-interest,' but we justify it as 'pursuing success.'
1. One source of desire—The trap of vanity
Many literary masters have written about vain people, but among them, the French author Guy de Maupassant’s short story "The Necklace" stands out as the most prominent and classic example. The story tells of a clerk’s wife who receives an invitation to a ball hosted by the Minister of Education. Driven by vanity, she borrows a necklace from a friend and becomes the center of attention at the ball, but upon returning home, she discovers the necklace is lost. To repay her friend, she and her husband borrow a large sum of money and work tirelessly for ten years to pay off the debt. One day, ten years later, she meets her friend again and learns that the necklace she lost was only a fake.
Fate played a tremendous joke on her. She and her husband’s ten years of hardship were all for a fake, for a mere joke! Should she be shocked, or bewildered? How many decades does a person have in a lifetime? If her suffering was due to fate’s injustice, then vanity was her punishment. She should realize that this was entirely a result of her own making.
There was once a cat, extremely proud, believing itself to be exceptional and all-knowing, never regarding other cats as its equal. Thus, whenever it made a mistake, it would go to great lengths to cover it up, afraid to lose face and tarnish its lofty image.
One time, this proud cat hadn’t caught a mouse in days, and its stomach was rumbling with hunger. When it finally spotted a mouse, it dashed after it with all its might. At that moment, one of its companions was watching from a window. As soon as the proud cat noticed, it quickly adjusted its exhausted posture, trying to appear graceful and composed while running. But this slowed it down, and the mouse took the chance to escape. Afraid the other cats would laugh at its poor hunting skills, it explained, “That mouse is too skinny—I’ll catch it once it’s fattened up.”