Ignorance

Last Sunday Thay talked about the cause of suffering. Our physical and mental sufferings are caused by three things –craving, hatred and ignorance. What is ignorance? Ignorance means the inability to see the truth about things, to see things as they really are. Most of the time, we lack of understanding to see things as they really are, that is why we suffer. Like we see that our body and mind as permanent, as our total universe, as real as it can be. We are so much in love and attach to that it until the minute we step into our graves.  Because of this attachment, we start craving. We want to have a better house to live in, better food to consume, better clothes to dress our body and so forth.  We crave for the pleasures of the senses. We can even be extreme to pursue our happiness base on these material things and think that once we have all these, we will be happy. 

A funny incident happened on the same day. My sister came to visit us and found a new tub of Basil Chunky Dips in the fridge. She said with joy: “Ah… I am going to open it.” I told her it belongs to my boy but I said go ahead and eat it. After my boy found out his beloved dips had been opened by his aunt he got upset. I told him to look for the cause of his suffering. He told me once he knows how to apply the things he learnt from the temple he  does not need to sit for Thay’s test on their understanding of Buddhism. (This leads to my next piece of writing about learning.)  What caused him to be that angry? What is the big deal if someone opened his dips? Is this end of his world if someone opened his dips? This reminds me of the wind blows the flag or the flag moves by itself in a Zen story. Who open the dips or the dips open it by someone? Does it matter? It’s all in our mind. Because we  are attached to the dips, we call the dips ours. “I, Me, Mine” causes us to suffer. Our ego tells us this is mine, don’t touch.  Just look at this tub of dips, what is it made of? What happens after we eat it? What it will become? Will I be happy if I consume the whole tub of this dips? How long can I be happy for just on this tub of dips? Someone offended my ego. These dips can only give us a few minutes of pleasures for our taste buds. Should we spend that much of energy on thinking or even be angry about it? My boy and I have much to learn about seeing things as what they really are. Understand the theory and applying it on our daily lives is not as easy as it may seem.