Emotions Come From Our Minds – We Must Be Awake Not to Be Deceived

Translated by Ian Haight and Hwajin Kang (original: http://blog.naver.com/mahabira6061/70135178556)

Before I left for Canada, I found 3100 Chinese Yuan in a corner of my room in Seoul while I was packing to leave. I wondered how much Canadian money it would be. Maybe about $5? I looked it up online to see how much this Chinese money would actually be worth, just in case. It was about $560 Canadian! Hurray! What a windfall! I suddenly had become rich. Yet, later I had to lose some money to pay the airlines to ship my bicycle—$200. I also had wanted to get an inn for $19, but I thought “Why don’t I stay luxuriously in a $39 room?” So for once, I got a high-priced room for myself. I was happy that I would still own $100 even after all that. I went through security checks in Incheon and Beijing without any trouble. In China, I went up to a Chinese lady at a currency exchange service. Just as I took out my Chinese (Taiwanese) money from my wallet, she said, “Taiwan money, no exchange.” No way~~~! My money could not even show its whole appearance and had to go back into my wallet. I was both excited and disappointed. It wasn’t the money’s fault that I couldn’t exchange it.  Around me nothing had changed, despite my hopes.  I had just thought foolishly, and searched carelessly and poorly. During my 11-hour-long flight I blamed myself for acting frivolously. When I arrived in Canada, I took my Taiwanese money to an exchange service downtown. The exchange rate was better than I thought: the remaining yuan was about 98 Canadian dollars. I did not try to look up and double check the exchange rate because I knew I would be disappointed if I was cheated and received less money than I was supposed to. Similarly, although the real facts do not change, people get disappointed and, sometimes, torture themselves due to their own thoughts, judgments, habits, and traditions. Moreover, people oftentimes do not accept mistakes and stubbornly insist on their excuses or blame others. This type of action also may create even worse pain and in the end people will have to carry their mental burdens for an extensive period of time. However, once a person admits a fault, the person might then still have time to fix the problem or at least feel less pain. We could relate this to lessons explained in The Thousand Hand Sutra; sins are all created in our minds when we live without self-examination.