..续本文上一页practicing it, it”s as if you”re missing parts of your body. If you study and practice, it”s like having two eyes, two hands, and two legs. You can do things a lot more easily than a person with only one eye, one hand, or one leg.

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　　Having self-respect means that you respect your thoughts, words, and deeds. Respect for your deeds means that whatever you do, you always follow the three principles of skillful action: no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex. Respect for your words means that whatever you say, you always follow the four principles of skillful speech: no lying, no pisive tale-bearing, no harsh language, and no idle chatter. Respect for your thoughts means that whatever you think, you always follow the three principles of the skillful mind: trying to keep your views straight, with no greed or ill will.

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　　Having broken precepts is better than not having any precepts to break. Wearing torn clothes is better than going around naked.

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　　Lots of dead beings have gone into your mouth — pigs, chickens, cattle, etc. — so make sure that it isn”t possessed by their spirits. Before you say anything, no matter what your intention, look right and left and speak only when you”re sure that it”s just right for the situation. Don”t give in to bad manners.

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　　Concerning Right Livelihood: Even if our basic livelihood is honest, but we practice it dishonestly, it”s considered wrong. For example, we”re farmers, but we lay claim to other people”s fields as our own: This is Wrong Livelihood, and the crops we grow on that land will do us harm.

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　　There are two kinds of foulness: the kind the Buddha praised and the kind he criticized. The kind he praised is the filth and foulness of the body, for it makes us see clearly the aging and unattractiveness of compounded things so that the mind will gain a chastened sense of dispassion, grow disenchanted with its attachment to suffering, and set its sights on developing its inner worth so as to escape from that suffering. As for the foulness the Buddha criticized, that”s the foulness of an evil mind, which defiles our thoughts, words, and deeds. This is something the Buddha criticized and penalized in very heavy terms. So we have to keep washing off our actions in all situations. Only when our thoughts, words, and deeds are clean will wise people praise us as being uncomplacent and good.

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　　Restraint of the senses means that we bring the senses and their objects into proportion with one another. For instance, guarding the eyes means that we don”t let our eyes get bigger than the sights they see, and we don”t let the sights get bigger than the eyes. If the sights are bigger than the eyes, they get lodged there. We think about them night and day. If the eyes are bigger than the sights, that means we can”t get enough of those sights and keep wanting to see them more. In either case, we give rise to greed and delusion. The fires of passion, aversion, and delusion burn our eyes and make us suffer.

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　　One important noble treasure is meditation, keeping the mind from wandering aimlessly around in all kinds of issues. When we keep the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha in mind, it”s as if we were soaking in their virtues. When that”s the case, the mind will have to become saturated with inner worth. It”s the same as if we were to take a handful of bitter herbs and soak them in syrup until the syrup saturates them. Their bitterness will disappear and be replaced with sweetness. No matter how shoddy a person”s mind, if it gets constantly soaked in goodness, it will have to become more and more refined, like bitter herbs sweetened in syrup.

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　　Whatever you do, be true in doing it if you want to meet up with the truth. If you”re really true in what you do, doing just a little bit can be enough. One mill…

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