DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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In human life, often you will encounter difficulties that lead to failure, so in your heart will be disappointed and miserable. Then from there, you get discouraged, lose confidence… However, if you still maintain a confident, positive attitude but bravely rise to face all kinds of difficulties and challenges, then you will have a better chance to win success. So face difficulties, you should not feel discouraged but think of ways to solve any problems that you face.

To stay strong in the face of difficulties, you can say to yourself:

- A difficult situation is an opportunity for me to grow, once I have overcome it, it proves that I have entered a better stage of human life.

That's why Nguyen Ba Hoc's maxim is always passed down by people:

- The road is difficult, it is not difficult because the river is blocked, it is far from the mountain, but it is difficult because people are afraid of the mountains and rivers.

Indeed, difficulties will be made more difficult and complicated by your own heart. But with the will to defeat, even a small difficulty will make you falter. When you are determined to succeed, no matter how great the difficulty, you will overcome it.

To become a person with energy, you must first face reality. Facing reality is not necessarily certain that it can change, but if you do not patiently face it, nothing will change. So you need to cultivate the virtue of patience to face all kinds of difficulties that you encounter because there is no difficult situation that cannot be overcome. Your life is in your own hands.

The right view helps you have a meaningful life and know how to live it to the fullest. Patience in the face of difficulties is not losing hope for tomorrow. It is very difficult to change others or to change circumstances, but it is very easy to change yourself. With the faith to change fate, you must turn your sorrows, and delusions into efforts, and firmly believe in your own will until the end.

Patience is a kind of faith, diligence that does not give up, or it is a kind of strong and steady spirit. You should remember:

- Patience without hesitation,

- Perseverance without compromise,

- You stand firm without giving in.

Successful people look for opportunities in an environment full of difficulties, but losers only see difficulties in an environment full of opportunities for failure. So when facing difficulties, they try to keep the mentality of running away, but the reality is that no one can escape the difficulties. So choosing to bravely face difficulties is truly responsible for your own life.

In this way, when facing difficulties, you do not fight but face to show your bravery. Don't see it as a hindrance, but see it as an opportunity to grow yourself. So don't pray for security, but accept your imperfections to perfect yourself. Just like a child will not be able to walk without once tripping and falling. If it grows up in an environment that is too fully enclosed, getting whatever it wants, it will easily spoil its body. If it has never struggled with difficulties and has not experienced adversity, then when it comes into life with just a little disparagement and threats, it will be wobbly and give up. Here is a butterfly's lesson:

- One day in a cocoon, a tiny hole appeared. There was a person who happened to pass by, he stopped and watched for a long time when he saw a butterfly trying to come out of that tiny hole.

After quite a while, the butterfly seemed to give up, and the hole didn't get any bigger. Butterflies seem to have tried their best and there is nothing more that can be done. Seeing that, the other person came up with the idea to help the Butterfly, by using a knife to split the cocoon. The butterfly immediately came out of the cocoon, but the body was atrophied and stiff. The Butterfly's wings are not developed to fly, only a little wiggly.

The butterfly helper continued to watch, thinking that soon the Butterfly's wings would open and support the weight of its body so it could fly. But that never happened. Instead of being able to move around, for the rest of her life, Butterflies can only drag on the ground with a shrunken and stunted body. It cannot fully form itself, it can never soar to live its full life

Through the above story, you can see that the disaster of Butterfly's life is caused by passers-by who do not understand when cutting the cocoon. That kind gesture wanted to help the Butterfly soon get out of the cocoon and fly up, but it was an act that ruined Butterfly's life. So there are certain things that you should absolutely not interfere in the internal affairs of others, if you do not know what is changing, cannot interfere in the natural process of others forming. Without deep understanding, the act of helping turns into an act of destruction.

Here I do not discuss the ignorance of passersby but emphasize the self-effort that the Butterfly must make. It is a persistent effort to come out from a very narrow cocoon, but it takes enough time for the water to pass through the wings, making it strong before it can come out and fly. It is a law of nature that requires it to undergo in order to fully form itself.

Your life is the same, there are things that others cannot do for you, for example:

- Karma, or a blessing...

Bad karma you do yourself, you have to bear. In the same way, the good blessings you create yourself, you can enjoy yourself, no one can replace you. So you have to discover yourself, turn around, persevere through, improve, and perfect continuously. In fact, life sometimes has difficult things that make you need the help of others to overcome. That is certainly not lacking, not more or less, but the important thing is always your efforts to be self-sufficient and overcome difficulties.

If you are allowed to live without any obstacles, your abilities will be limited, you will not be as strong as you are now, will not be fully formed into who you are, and most of all, will not soar to achieve the lofty dreams of life.

You look at the plants that grow on loose soil, look green and fresh, but just need a strong wind to blow the roots. Meanwhile, the trees that grow on rocky mountains, although thin in appearance, have roots that are hard and the grip is very strong, no storm can knock them down. So you can't pray that life doesn't push you into harsh situations, but you can pray that life doesn't make you fall in the face of life's storms.

The same goes for your prayers, not asking for you to be free of difficulties, but for the strength to overcome them. Spiritual experience shows that your prayers are often answered in a different way so that you can create and develop all possibilities, not something that is made ready and then you are blocked stand and stay in yourself. The following prayers present you with an opportunity to strengthen yourself in every way:

- May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas give me the courage to live without fear, and a healthy body, so that I can face all difficulties, to prove that I can overcome them all. Because every difficulty is an opportunity for me to grow.

So you have to see difficulties as a challenge, a filter to enrich your spiritual life, by rebalancing your desires, balancing and correcting your inner life, knowing how to do things with self-mastery, and building a deeper capacity. Therefore, the process of overcoming difficulties to become a good person requires you to overcome yourself first. It is the fundamental meaning and value in all dimensions of life.

The difficulty is first within yourself and depends entirely on your state of mind. By its very nature, the difficulty is there as an invitation to go beyond yourself. It is like an invitation to a constant effort to develop personality in all trends, and interrelationships of life. Accepting life and duty is accepting difficulty. Each difficulty when overcome will turn into joy and happiness for you. There is difficulty in showing signs of change. The transformation will be positive with a positive outlook.

Difficulties sometimes make you hesitate, falter, feel tired, heavy...but you should not consider this as an obstacle to your upward and good-oriented spirit. This upward direction, this good direction is reflected in the self-mastery of yourself. The more you master yourself, the more you expand your ability to unify your life in all relationships.

So you have to patiently face difficulties is the required attitude of every Buddhist, trying to find the problem is the responsibility of each of you personally. Going beyond the old, self-centered thinking pattern to look at problems from the perspective of others, can help you yourself to have unexpected results.

You have to really get to the core of each issue, find the things that are most important to you, and allocate the right time, get the most important things done first, then success will be close.

Therefore, if you want to become a famous person, you must consider difficulties not as a problem, only when you cannot find a problem to fix it will it become a problem. In fact, sometimes there are great difficulties that human strength seems to be insurmountable. You just have a look at the relationship of cause and effect, in close association with Right Effort, then you can remove and overcome difficulties. Just like the Buddha in the past, only with his love for humanity, passion for commitment and service, and putting the welfare and happiness of sentient beings above all else, did he have the courage and strength to face all difficulties in the palace until he crossed the city to seek the way. At that time, difficulty was like an invitation to explore to find the bright sky for his spiritual life and human beings.

Even if there are difficulties such as a calamity caused by the force of violence, of cause and effect, all are not outside of your right view and right thinking. Having these two factors you have foreseen everything and foreseen everything. It is from there that the Buddha made new works for a more perfect human evolution, which were outlined in his mind when he was still a mortal like you. Today you have the predestined to be a perfect human being, please join me towards the Three Jewels:

- Lord Buddha, Buddha is the Joy in all the Difficulties of my life. It is in the midst of difficulties that I know how to rely more and more on the Buddhas. Through Your Right Effort, you show me difficulties as a very difficult, but also very sweet companion. Walking in difficult passages, my feet may fall and stumble, but thanks to that, I become stronger and more stable.

Indeed, difficulties make you persistent, make you wiser; teach you to be creative, make you proficient, give you opportunities, and give you a lot of life experience. Bring you new and interesting things in life…

Thus, the difficulty is a way of the presence of the Buddha's Word to make your life more mature. Through the right effort, don't be afraid of difficulties, but consider those difficulties as a daily thing, just afraid that you don't have the courage to face and accept challenges. Having the courage to accept challenges you never knew existed is one of the ways to quickly grow up. Don't be afraid of the things you don't know, because no one knows everything, only when you meet a difficult situation and overcome it, you can look back and see how much more mature you are. Life without challenges will not help you grow and will not change you.

So you must have a positive mindset to face the difficulties you face. You can grieve but know that grief can't change anything. You can choose to be negative, but you have to know that if you don't try, no one will be able to help you. Positive thoughts create a positive life, negative thoughts create obstacles to life. At work, encountering unfair circumstances, being assigned difficult tasks, and meeting customers that you don't like, are all inevitable. Everything has both sides, choose to see the good side of it, then you can have a positive life.

As I once said, waiting for circumstances to change or forcing others to change according to your will is difficult, but you dare to change yourself is the easiest and fastest result.

It's really hard to change yourself! Because change means that the familiar has become foreign. Most of you are comfortable with the situation at hand without daring to experiment with things you don't know. But only when you dare to give up your comfort, and have the courage to experience, you will know what happens next. Sometimes, only by changing yourself, you can change your destiny, but you will definitely become a person.

In short, where your life will go is up to you to decide. When you hit a tough time, it's common to hold onto feelings of pessimism and discouragement toward the future. But if you can change your attitude a little bit, see difficulties as dawn before reaching the door of hope. In the end, there are always unexpected good results waiting. You probably can't change the world. However, as long as you are willing to accept change and face life calmly, no matter how setbacks and difficult circumstances come, you will definitely be able to have a better life.

The happy days are all your own efforts to get. Others cannot give you these things, which you have to spend a lot of time trying to get. When you who is full of confidence moves toward your dreams and strive to live the life you want, you will have the success you never expected. The efforts will eventually pay off. As long as you are willing to learn, work hard, be willing to endure hardships, you will eventually become the person you are, able to get the fruits of success you desire.

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