Carelessness

Carelessness is the gate to danger. If we are careful, it means that we close the gate to danger and we can live a happy life. How does carelessness occur? It occurs because of greed, hatred and delusion. Greed, hatred and delusion open the gate of carelessness. Why is that? It is because when people are greedy, they are selfish and never think twice, when they are in hatred, outrage is provoked and then they can commit wrong things and when they are deluded, they don’t know right from wrong. That is dangerous, so close the gate of danger now.

There is the Chinese story which can illustrate this well. Here is the story:

In the field, there was a grasshopper which was eating grass. Near there, there was a frog which waited to eat the grasshopper. In the bush, there was a snake which desired to eat the fog and on the branch of a tree, there was an eagle which kept watching the snake with desire of eating. And it was not far from there, there was a boy who aimed his slingshot at the eagle. While the grasshopper was being eaten by the frog, the snake ate the frog. And the eagle swooped down to eat the snake and the boy shot the eagle. In a few minutes, all animals; grasshopper, frog, snake and eagle died. Why was that? That was because all of them were careless, desiring to attack the others then they opened their back or the gate of danger. They would not watch their back. Then they were themselves were attacked by the others.

See how careless they were and compare to ourselves if we are careless like that. If we are, it is not too late to bring our mind or attention back to here, now, the present moment; be careful. Don’t open our back and let greed, hatred and delusion have us. To close the gate of danger is easy; we are just mindful of our own actions here, now. We must not do any action to harm ourselves or the others. When we don’t harm others, we will not be harmed. Believe it or not, let’s try it. Be careful.