To be poor is to suffer. Is that true? Nobody really can be called poor. Nobody really can be called wealthy. If the poor man looks down, he can see that there is always someone even poorer than him. And the wealthy man, when he looks up, he sees that there is always someone wealthier than him. So there is no absolute comparison. There is no way to compare how beautiful you are or how ugly you are. Look at me. How short am I? If I stand next to Thây Pháp Trí, am I short or am I tall? So from this point of view, we have to come back to our mind. Our sorrow, our suffering, our jealousy, we create these for ourselves. They do not come from the outside. If we are able to invite the energy of Avalokiteshvara, it means that we are able to recognize that all our happiness and all our sadness come from our feelings. These feelings are changing every minute, every second. None of them stays permanently. Feelings come go. If we are able to call up the energy of Avalokiteshvara, then we are able to eliminate all the suffering inside of us because we recognize that the suffering is not us.
BE LIKE A TREE Zen Talks by Thích Phước Tịnh
Edited and Illustrated by Karen Hilsberg Jasmine
CHAPTER NINE The Energy of Avalokiteshvara
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