A Life of Creating Good Fortune and Enjoying It with Gratitude
Everyone lives wishing for good fortune. You hope to be healthy, you hope your work goes well, and you wish peace and happiness for yourself and your family.
Wishing for good fortune is a natural longing for happiness, and it is also an important act of religious faith.
But good fortune does not come about by wishing alone. Just as you can gather fruit only after sowing seeds and tending them with care, you can enjoy the fruit of good fortune only when you create it with a good mind and right action.
Wishing for good fortune is a hope, creating good fortune is practice, and enjoying good fortune is the fruit of those conditions.
Good fortune created in this way meets good conditions and leads to happiness in your life.
Yet there is one more thing to consider here.
Even when people enjoy the same good fortune, the happiness each one feels in receiving it differs.
Some have a great deal and are never satisfied, while others have little and live happily with gratitude. Even in the same circumstances, one person sees first what is lacking, and another discovers the preciousness of what has already been given.
In the end, happiness does not depend only on how much good fortune you receive. It also depends on the mind with which you receive it and live with it.
Creating good fortune is making good conditions, and knowing gratitude and contentment is tending that good fortune into true happiness.
So wish for good fortune, but do not neglect creating it; enjoy good fortune, but do not lose a grateful heart.
Good fortune is created through action, and happiness is enjoyed through the mind.
Create good fortune with a good mind, tend it with a right way of living, and enjoy happiness with a grateful heart.
This is the wise life of cultivating good fortune and happiness together, following the Buddhist teaching of causes and conditions.
Today, bring to mind one good fortune you wish for, and carry out one right action that fits that wish. If you wish peace for yourself and your family, offer a warm word; if you wish for good relationships, be the first to give a small help.
As the day closes, look for something to be grateful for among what you have already been given. Turn your mind away from dwelling on what is lacking, and feel the preciousness of the good fortune you enjoyed today.
Wishing for good fortune is a natural feeling. But good fortune does not come about by wishing alone. Just as you sow seeds and tend them, you create good fortune with a good mind and right action.
When the good fortune you have created meets good conditions, it leads to happiness in your life. Yet even when you enjoy the same good fortune, happiness differs according to the mind that receives it. You can have much and feel only lack, or have little and be happy with gratitude.
Wish for good fortune, but do not neglect action; enjoy good fortune, but do not lose gratitude. Good fortune is created through action, and happiness is enjoyed through the mind.
- Everyone lives hoping for health, peace, and good fortune.
- Hoping alone does not make it so. You create good fortune as you plant a seed.
- Tend it with care, through a good mind and right action.
- The good fortune you create meets good conditions and bears fruit.
- What matters is a grateful heart, not how much or how little. Good fortune is created by action; happiness is enjoyed by the mind.