Hasten towards the good, leave behind all evil thoughts, for to do good without enthusiasm is to have a mind which delights in evil.
If one does an evil action, he should not persist in it, he should not delight in it. For full of suffering is the accumulation of evil.
If one does a good action, he should persist in it and take delight in it. Full of happiness is the accumulation of good.
As long as his evil action has not yet ripened, an evil-doer may experience contentment. But when it ripens, the wrong-doer knows unhappiness.
As long as his good action has not yet ripened, one who does good may experience unhappiness. But when it ripens, the good man knows happiness.
Do not treat evil lightly, saying, “That will not touch me.” A jar is filled drop by drop; even so the fool fills himself little by little with wickedness.
Do not treat good lightly, saying, “That will not touch me.” A jar is filled drop by drop; even so the sage fills himself little by little with goodness.
The merchant who is carrying many precious goods and who has but few companions, avoids dangerous roads; and a man who loves his life is wary of poison. Even so should one act regarding evil.
230A hand that has no wound can carry poison with impunity; act likewise, for evil cannot touch the righteous man.
If you offend one who is pure, innocent and defenceless, the insult will fall back on you, as if you threw dust against the wind.
Some are reborn here on earth, evil-doers go to the worlds of Niraya,fnHell; the state of suffering. the just go to the heavenly worlds, but those who have freed themselves from all desire attain Nirvana.
Neither in the skies, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor in the rocky caves, nowhere upon earth does there exist a place where a man can find refuge from his evil actions.
Neither in the skies, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor in the rocky caves, nowhere upon earth does there exist a place where a man can hide from death.
People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely, because there are very few people who can keep their thoughts under control.
When you take up the Buddhist discipline to learn how to control your thoughts, you make very interesting discoveries. You try to observe your thoughts. Instead of letting them pass freely, sometimes even letting them enter your head and establish themselves in a quite inopportune way, you look at them, observe them and you realise with stupefaction that in the space of 231a few seconds there passes through the head a series of absolutely improbable thoughts that are altogether harmful.
You believe you are so good, so kind, so well disposed and always full of good feelings. You wish no harm to anybody, you wish only good—all that you tell yourself complacently. But if you look at yourself sincerely as you are thinking, you notice that you have in your head a collection of thoughts which are sometimes frightful and of which you were not at all aware.
For example, your reactions when something has not pleased you: how eager you are to send your friends, relatives, acquaintances, everyone, to the devil! How you wish them all kinds of unpleasant things, without even being aware of it! And how you say, “Ah, that will teach him to be like that!” And when you criticise, you say, “He must be made aware of his faults.” And when someone has not acted according to your ideas, you say, “He will be punished for it!” and so on.
You do not know it because you do not look at yourself in the act of thinking. Sometimes you know it, when it becomes a little too strong. But when the thing simply passes through, you hardly notice it—it comes, it enters, it leaves. Then you find out that if you truly want to be pure and wholly on the side of the Truth, then that requires a vigilance, a sincerity, a self-observation, a self-control which are not common. You begin to realise that it is difficult to be truly sincere.
You flatter yourself that you have nothing but good feelings and good intentions and that whatever you do, you do for the sake of what is good—yes, so long as you are conscious and have control, but the moment you are not very attentive, all kinds of things happen within you of which you are not at all conscious and which are not very pretty.
If you want to clean your house thoroughly, you must be vigilant for a long time, for a very long time and especially not believe that you have reached the goal, like that, at one stroke, because one day you happened to decide that you would be on the right side. That is of course a very essential and important 232point, but it must be followed by a good many other days when you have to keep a strict guard on yourself so as not to belie your resolution.
4 April 1958