All Dharmas Are at Ease, Yet People Make Their Own Noise

Even when the weather shows that rain may come, each person receives it with a different mind. For someone farming, it becomes welcome sweet rain. For someone who needs to go somewhere, it may become an inconvenient obstacle. Rain is only rain, yet depending on the mind that meets it, it becomes joy or discomfort.

There is a meaning like this in the Xinxin Ming: when there is no sleepiness in the eyes, all dreams disappear by themselves; when the mind is not divided, the ten thousand dharmas are one suchness.

There is also this saying: all dharmas are originally at ease, yet people make their own noise.

The affairs of the world do not shake us from the beginning. Often, our own mind becomes noisy when it grasps those affairs, discriminates, and reacts. Outer conditions simply arise and pass away, but we add thoughts of good and bad, benefit and harm, and are shaken by them.

Dreams arise when we are asleep. When the eyes are clearly awake, dreams disappear by themselves. In the same way, when the mind is awake and not noisy, the discriminations that are pushed around by outer conditions gradually settle down.

What matters is not forcing the world to become quiet, but first allowing our own mind to become quiet. When the mind is quiet, rain is seen as rain, wind as wind, and events can be seen just as they are.

Today, may we not make ourselves noisy according to outer events, but look at things as they are with a quiet mind and keep our equanimity.