First thing in the morning, where on earth does this anxiety and worry come from.
Worries, concerns, and regrets I thought were over are running wild the moment I open my eyes in the morning. The ears are sensitive too. The body is still lying down, but the mind has anxiously gotten up on its own. So while the body curls up deeper under the covers, the self is already stirring up the whole inside of my thoughts. The observer tries to grab the edge of the self's trouser cuff, but ends up letting go. After watching the empty, aimless heart - helpless, only able to look on - for a while, I suddenly notice, and with no alternative, I begin to chant mindlessly. Shakyamuni Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha..
And the self, having wandered here and there, suddenly stops with this thought.
It's true that I'm poorer and more strapped than you. But whether that poverty and tight circumstance makes me more unhappy than you, or obliged to be unhappy, I'm not so sure. Yes, it's true I have a few more inconvenient, cumbersome procedures and things to endure than you. But for today's me - the one who lived through a younger, more lacking past - it's not a situation to worry over. Because I've lived until now.
I'm making excuses about it being cold because it's winter, but in the place I live, I may fall short of some, but I'm living far more comfortably than many. I'm cursing past ties because I'm tight on money, but it's not like I have nothing to let go of. I worry that trust with someone will break, but if I sort out whether that worry is mine to bear or the other's, honestly I have nothing to say.
Envy and jealousy rooted in relative deprivation. Greed that arose from my own desires for things I never agreed were mine with anyone, and the anger rooted in not being able to satisfy that greed right in front of me. And the anxiety of mind that this anger stirs up, and the petty quarrels raised to avoid that anxiety. In the end, because of those quarrels, I am unable to live the present even now, continuing to wander between past and future - piling up folly and karma, it seems.
As if the empty sky, the temperature, and the wind are the same, and only I alone am going through cold, hot, warm, cool seasons of the heart.
And after a while. Suddenly this thought also arose.
Perhaps the very fact that I am flailing in anxiety and petty quarrels is itself proof, by myself, that I am not the worst. It's because I'm not the worst that I can even imagine something worse, isn't it?
I can't really gauge how far, but the teaching that the bodhisattva should look after sentient beings all the more when his body is ill - I found myself thinking it may share a similar grain with this. By going through pain and situations I hadn't known before, I've been given a backdrop where I can share the aches and frustrations of others' cores that I hadn't known before, a chance for fellow-feeling. A chance to look in and observe. Somewhat like how a benevolent king slips out in secret, past his ministers, to look at the people's hearts, I think.
