Don’T Make Things Difficult

Sometimes it is easy to do things, but on some occasions we just confuse ourselves and make them difficult. Why is this? It can be said,"Because we lack awareness, carefulness, mindfulness, knowledge and wisdom". It is especially wisdom that we need so that it becomes easy to see or understand what to do. With wisdom, large tasks can become small tasks when we do them, or big problems can become easy problems to solve. To further our understanding, there is a story, in the Book Han Fei Jue, which gives a good example of this. Here is the story:

There was once a man who wanted to buy himself a new pair of shoes. He used a ruler to measure his feet and jotted the measurements down on a piece of paper so that he could have the right shoes for his feet. When he got to a shoe shop, he discovered that he had forgotten the piece of paper. So he had to rush back for it, and then returned to the shop. Unfortunately, the shop was closed, so he could not buy the shoes. He complained to himself, "My goodness, I could have bought the shoes today. I shouldn’t have forgotten my piece of paper! I have missed the opportunity today, so I have to come back again tomorrow, stupid me!"

A person asked him, "Did you want to buy a pair of shoes for someone else or for yourself?" He said, "For myself!" "Well! Here are your feet on the end of your legs", said that man, "Why did you need to measure them and write down the size?" He said, "Poor me! Yes of course, they were for me. I should have just tried them on for myself".

The moral of this story is that without awareness, carefulness, mindfulness, knowledge and wisdom, everything becomes difficult. We can confuse ourselves about what we are going to do. Therefore, we must live a life carefully, mindfully and wisely. It is not that difficult to live life like that! We just need to pay attention closely to every moment of life, to observe life closely in the here and now. It is not a difficult practice, is it? Do try it out for yourself.