..續本文上一頁rson but don”t know how to use your goodness — i.e., you use it at the wrong time or place, or in a way that gets other people upset — it won”t benefit you, and will instead cause you harm. In this way your goodness turns into evil. So you have to be circumspect in how you let your goodness show.

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　　Keep your evil intentions to yourself, and be careful with your good intentions, too. It”s like handing a knife to a person: You may have good intentions, hoping that he”ll put it to good use, but if he uses it to kill someone, your intentions backfire on both of you.

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　　Goodness comes from evil, in that once you really take a good look at evil, it loses. Whatever you look at, look at it from all sides. This is why they don”t let you look a long time at pretty things or beautiful women, because after a while you”ll see that they aren”t all that beautiful after all. So if you see something lovely, look at it long and hard until you see that it”s not as lovely as you thought. If someone makes you angry, contemplate them until you feel compassion for them. The same principle holds for delusion.

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　　If you”re wise, then greed, anger, and delusion can help you. If you”re wise, even desire can help you by making you want to develop your inner worth. So don”t look down on these things. You”re sitting here listening to a sermon. What made you come

　　 Desire did. When people ordain as monks and novices, what gave the order

　　 Craving. So don”t look only at the drawbacks of craving and desire. If you don”t have the desire to be good, you can”t develop inner worth. People who develop their inner worth have to start out with the intention to do it. Ignorance is good in that when we know we”re ignorant we”ll do something to remedy the situation. Ignorance leads us astray, but in the end it will lead us back. Knowledge never led anyone to look for learning. Ignorance is what leads people to look for knowledge. If you already know, what”s there to look for

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　　When we practice the Dhamma it gives three kinds of benefits: We help ourselves gain release from suffering, we help other people, and we help keep the religion alive.

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