Once upon a time, there was a teacher who knew everything about this world. Yes, this is a continuation from the last one. I wonder if the teacher started talking about something more interesting after all. The answer was no. He never changed and always talked about something ordinary. Nevertheless, a lot of people kept coming to him to listen to his lecture. It’s strange, isn’t it? What was attracting them so much?
One morning, he was talking about something as usual. Even if it was said that the ordinary things were important, they could get bored with listening to it every day, couldn’t they? Especially for the people who were there for a long time. They always expected that one day they would be able to hear something special from him. But nothing had changed. So it was just like any other day on that day.
They all were thinking that “Oh, I’m bored of listening to this kind of story again…” It happened when they started thinking like that. Everyone heard birds humming. So people who were listening to the teacher thought that birds were singing. Then, the teacher said as below.
“I know that you who have been here for a long time to listen to my stories were getting bored. But if you think that in this way with which you are listening to the same stories over and over, your heart gets shut. Just like that you heard the birds start humming, things are changing all the time. All the stories may sound the same to you, but they actually aren’t. Because your heart has become shut and dull, you become not able to accept any of slight changes. Even if we are awake with our eyes open, our heart is in asleep. So with this condition, you wouldn’t be able to understand any truth (anything new) with your heart. The truth will only come to the heart which is open”
We usually think of getting bored of living in ordinary life, but nature (=things surrounding us) changes every day. I wonder what the reason is that we can’t recognize this fact, is it because our heart has become too dull to understand it.
I think, unless anything terrible actually happens, we don’t pay attention to those changes in our daily life. For example, when nature gives us challenges…But, if our heart can possibly be acuter, we would be able to pay attention to those slight changes and our acuter sense may help us to avoid disasters before they happen. Also, it may help us to find something new. So, to get this sense back as much as you can, you will need to interact with nature more….I think.
