Cultivating Peace: Mind and Body

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Cultivating a Peaceful Mind lies in Having Few Desires.

Having few desires and knowing contentment means to have no intense desire or insatiable greed and thus be able to cultivate a peaceful mind. Bringing peace to the minds of others is the activity and compassionate vow of a bodhisattva.

One should make a compassionate vow to benefit others and work for their welfare and not just stop at having few desires and feeling contentment. Otherwise, it is not only insufficiently active and positive, it may even become negative and passive.

Superior people cultivate a peaceful mind through the path. They give rise to bodhi mind and cultivate the bodhisattva path. Middling people cultivate a peaceful mind through activity. If given an appropriate amount of work to keep them busy, they won't go looking for trouble or make trouble for others.

Inferior people seek peace of mind through the pursuit of fame, fortune and material desires. We hope that everyone can at least cultivate peace of mind through activity and not be the inferior type who seeks it in fame and fortune.

Cultivating a Peaceful Body lies in Hard Work and Thrift.

People should work, but work is not all there is to life. Life is not just working for material wealth, still less for laboring for satisfaction of material desires. One should work for the sake of one's mental and physical health and opportunity to render services gratefully to others.

Besides a healthy body and peaceful mind, diligence and hard work usually also bring material remuneration. After receiving remuneration, however one should use it in moderation, lest in seeking to satisfy material desires one should engage in mentally and physical unhealthy actions.

Put another way, after hard work ought to come thrift. The principles of hard work and thrift are the key to physical health. Thrift will also result in many benefits that you can pas on to others.

If you do so, you will become someone that everyone likes and admires.

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