..續本文上一頁e can achieve from staying awake and engaged in those experiences. It doesn”t matter what job you”re doing. Just know that success, failure, happiness, and suffering don”t exist from their own side. Not even two people will agree about them. So give up the neurosis of seeing things as if they exist outside of you and unrelated to your mind.

　　For me, this is a very helpful way to look at things, because it gives me the liberty to not turn things into problems from viewing them as outside my mind. But for a lot of people, that”s too inconvenient. People prefer to see their problems as outside themselves, so they can blame something else rather than take responsibility. You”ll have such better results, however, if you see there”s no problem with your life. Everything is in place, just where it should be. You may think your problem is something out there, something objective. In fact, it”s interdependently created from your subjective mind. Therefore, it”s not intrinsic, with it”s own inherent nature; it doesn”t exist on its own at all, but only in relation to your mind—your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions. In acknowledging this, you”re not simply being hard on yourself, or berating yourself for having an ego. There would be no point in doing that.

　　When you have less confusion in your mind, then each “problem” becomes another opportunity to strengthen your wisdom. Before, you may have read books to give you wisdom and skill, but they didn”t actually become a part of your life until you encountered these field trips, enabling you to apply them. So now you can help many others, starting with your family. First you can help them by your example; then, if they are open, with verbal communication; and if they are even more open, with guidance.

　　We can succeed in knowing the wisdom of Dharma, but even more effectively, we can become lamps that light many others. A hundred lamps may all have the potential to be lit, but if none are lit, then none can light the others. If just one is lit, it can light the other ninety-nine. In this way, we can serve as a lamp in our immediate situation, which is where it matters most. Some people think they should be like the sun, illuminating the entire earth. With this level of ambition, they think lighting a small area has little meaning. Again, this is the attitude of seeing oneself in a race, as needing to be bigger or better than the rest. What really counts is first lighting up ourselves, and then serving in our particular circle to light many other lamps, which in turn can light yet more lamps. Since all human beings are potentially lit lamps, we can light ourselves with our own awakening and then serve as a reference for others to do the same. This grassroots way of affecting our world is a much more reliable source of happiness than striving to become wealthy, or influential, or famous.

　　We should compare these scenarios to becoming a small buddha, a small lamp that lights itself and never goes out, a lamp that can light others around us, within our own small circle. That is a genuinely incredible outcome. And we have that very possibility. We”re all in the Dharma for that. We need to chip away our various attachments, delusions, and mistaken notions, honing our intention and our resolve. We need to deepen our wisdom mind and our skill in working with our mind, and we will see the qualities of our realization begin to truly blossom.

　　This process has to be set in motion as early as possible in our spiritual path, not at the last minute. We can”t expect it to happen on its own; we have to be consciously involved. People may put so much effort and energy into becoming good practitioners and working hard on their spiritual path, yet may still be confused, even at the end, about why they”re d…

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