The coronavirus and thinking
The coronavirus and thinking
Right now China is facing a big challenge, our thoughts are with the people in the People's Republic.
In videos, you can see countless people standing in front of hospitals, totally frightened and looking for help. In panic and with faces distorted by fear, am I sick, am I going to die?
We will all die, the question is how we deal with it.
Buddhists have a different philosophy of life and death, they also believe in rebirth. However, the situation is always different when you have affected yourself, then it is certainly more difficult to keep calm.
During the last wave of SARS, I was in China and traveled through the country with the abbot of the Shaolin Temple Shi Yong Xin. I asked the abbot if he had any fear or doubt about the disease.
He wisely replied:
"I BELIEVE IN KARMA, I BELIEVE THAT I WILL FALL ILL IF THIS IS MY DESTINY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN PROTECT ME THEN. IF IT IS MY DESTINY TO STAY HEALTHY, THEN THAT IS HOW IT WILL BE!"
If you believe in the teachings of Buddha, destiny is already fixed, you have to swim with the wave, and you cannot "swim" against the waves of destiny.
But thinking is what torments us, in our thoughts we already imagine how we will be taken away by the disease, how we will suffer, and die terribly. Our ego makes us think these things and imagines the strangest stories, which later never happen as we imagined them.
Therefore, such thinking does not help us, it harms us.
The Corona Virus can even help us. It helps us to see how finite our existence really is, how small and insignificant we are, and that life as we know it today can be over tomorrow.
Remember that this can be a good opportunity to reflect on your existence, and perhaps spend some time with your "enlightenment", pondering the topic of "awakening".
Just as her first great love came into her life, so can "enlightenment" come into her life.
Think back to the time of your first great love, how you kept thinking about your beloved, so it is with enlightenment.
If you are open to enlightenment, "enlightenment" will come into your life.
And here is the great misfortune of the coronavirus can be an impetus to realize the transience of life and to seek "enlightenment" NOW, not tomorrow because we do not know if tomorrow will come.
Illness is the most fearsome tyrant
- Albert Camus - French writer and philosopher - 1913 to 1960
The cure is worse than the disease
- Francis Bacon - English philosopher, statesman, and natural scientist - 1561 to 1626
There is only one disease, as there is only one health
- Ernst Jünger - German writer - 1895 to 1998
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