I thought if you have some problems you want to ask me; is this all? (Yes.) No need? Everything’s OK? (Yes.) (Yes, it is.) So just have a good look and then goodbye. You have good translation? (Yes.) You speak English or what? (Yes.) Canadian? (Pardon?) What are you? (Polish.) Polish. You speak good English. (Oh, yes.) You can understand? (Yes, I can.) How can you come so quickly? (I have been for business for one week in L.A. (Los Angeles, USA), and I have met […], the contact person from L.A.) Oh, and he came… (And he had told me, “You have to go to the Master, Who has observed everything,” and I thought, “OK. But I don’t have a ticket, I don’t have with me too much money, so don’t worry, hey?”) You don’t have to come. (Yes, I had to.) If you want to. You don’t have to. It’s just that in these weeks, I know I’m home. I know I’m in Taiwan (Formosa), so I thought it is definite, then I let every foreigner come to see me if you want to. Because sometimes, it’s difficult for you to arrange a definite time, like you have to come in August, or you have to come for two or three days, things like that. Sometimes it’s not easy for you to arrange.
You go and find those foreigners and ask them to sit in the front, so that it’s more convenient for them to ask questions. You come over here. The new people, they might want to ask some questions but the old don’t need. I mean the [ones who] already saw me many times, no need. You want to come here in the front? You. No, the Westerner only. Come here. And the monk, the Canadian monk is not here? I saw him outside. It was too hot? It’s OK for you, the foreigner? You know what? It’s very cheap here to make yourself tan. Because when people want to have a tan, they have to go to Costa Brava, Costa bom- or… It costs a lot to have a tan. And here you just sit there and meditate and become a Buddha and get a very golden tan at the same time. Very convenient. So, this is a convenient holiday resort. Better than elsewhere.
What do you want to do in L.A.? What for? Just have a good look? (No, I have arranged there to do some transaction…) A businessman. (Not really.) Not really? It’s very difficult for a Polish to go abroad, or is it still OK? (It is easy, but the problem is money) Finance. (because they earn about $100 per month.) Still? (Yes.) I thought the communism is over, they earn more now. All capitalists now. (Yes, that’s why it’s more expensive there. But no more money.) Oh, funny. Only change the name, nothing changed. So, what is the use? (Pardon?) What is the use of changing the name and never having no any money – [it’s] all the same and even more expensive? That’s terrible. How come? I thought they will make something new, no? (They have for themselves, I think.) That’s very clever.
Now, what can we do? But you don’t have business and transactions, and people go to make money there? (Yes. It’s difficult somehow to begin.) So, what do you think you can do for your country to… To begin? It’s already been about 10 years now. (I think, it’s still [that] some people are very rich, and some people are very, very poor so…) It’s the same before or not? Before, everybody’s poor, right? (Less percent was very rich.) What do you mean, before [there were] less poor and more rich? (No, there was less. Less percent of people were really rich, and now it is about 10% people who are rich.) Oh, it’s already better than before.
The communist system is that they make everybody become poor so it’s equal. So, there’s no difference. And the capitalism is that they make the differences between the rich and the poor. (Yes.) The people who can earn money or who are capable can earn money, this they can do. (Yes.) Sometimes not in a good way, but, well… You have a lot of choice, at least. (Yes.) In communism, you don’t have to have any choice. It’s very easy. Just one choice. One choice. Everybody poor. Equal. Communism exists because too many people are poor, they like it. They think, “OK. At least everybody’s poor. So we have no problem. Your car, my car, the same or maybe no car at all. So no problem.”
But the thing is, I think we’d better strive. Strive to have a better life all the time. Not because we are materialistic, but because life should have joy and abundance in all things, in all aspects. We do not have to give power and finance to the negative class of people. If, for example, the good people don’t strive to make income for themselves or to have some power within the society, then all the power and the finance goes to the negative power, all the bad people. Then they will, in turn, control the good people and then the good people can do nothing, cannot even spread the goodness. So, to me, to earn money, to make a business, to strive in your life to earn a good standard of living for your family and yourself and your country is a duty, not a sin.
I do not encourage my people to stay in poverty and to give all the power and the finance to the negative system that has no morals. People who have no morals, who have no responsibility feeling, and who have not a sense of sharing with other people. For example, we, people who are practicing moral standards, if we have money, we always share with other people. We help in disasters, we help the victims, we help the refugees, we help the poor, we help the needy, we help the sick and the orphans, and things like that. So, it’s very good to have money. Very good. It’s not capitalism. It’s the power of finance that we must have, and also the power of sometimes social activities.
If you are a politician, you should stay in politics and be a good politician and fight for your country and for the standard of living of other people. If you’re a businessman, you must be a successful one. You always strive to be successful, earn as much money as God gives you, and then you can share. Money is very easy to use. If you don’t have, then you can say, “Oh well, I don’t care about money. I’m a practitioner. Money for me is untouchable.” Cannot do that. Cannot have such an attitude. Like, what you don’t have, and then you’re lazy to achieve, and then you say, “No, no, I don’t care about… I renounce everything.” It’s not true. So anyhow, so that’s with your country. Cheers.
In the old times, the people, so-called practitioners, they always renounced many things. It’s OK. You can do that for a while, but I don’t think you should do it all the time. No? Well, I think you can. Why not? Everybody becomes monks and then we eat the air and we drink the dew in the morning or afternoon. That’s it. What do we need? Actually, we don’t need. The practitioners don’t need so much. What we eat is just vegetables, and what we wear doesn’t have to always be beautiful. Truly. We don’t really care for outside appearance. We really don’t. Sometimes I put some makeup on and wear some clothes, and after three to four days I am so happy just to go next to the river and wear nothing. And put nothing on and just be alone and be natural. Sometimes the makeup and the clothes make you feel tired. The outer requirements of beauty and decency sometimes make you tired if you’re not used to it. And especially for the practitioners, we just feel like being natural. Sometimes we feel like having no hair even, no clothes and things like that, would be very relaxing. But if we want to do it for the sake of beautifying the world, or to work in society, it’s also OK.
And in Formosa (Taiwan), we practitioners, we don’t really need anything. We have only two to three pairs of clothes, a sleeping bag, a tent and we may not even need a tent. There’s some kind of sleeping bag tent as well. You just zip it up and then you have a net in front of you. A kind of small, sleeping bag tent that they have for emergency. They take it together for climbing the mountain and things like that. Just like a sleeping bag. You put it outside your sleeping bag and you zip it up. And then it’s like a tent but you don’t have to have a lot of weight and you don’t have to do anything. So for us, the so-called practitioners, we really don’t need material comfort. We really don’t. And that’s why it’s easy for us sometimes to think, “Oh, no. Why should I earn money? I don’t really need anything anymore.” It’s a very easy way out. But when we come to think about it, if we still live in this world, many people depend on us – our family, our children, our parents. And our relatives and friends. Sometimes they need our help. If we are not in a position to help them, who will? Who will be? Because nobody – I don’t mean nobody – but very rarely people in this world want to help the poor and needy people.
When I was in France, in Monaco, there was a driver. He drove me every day when I wanted to go somewhere, because I didn’t have a car or anything there. Well, I don’t have it here, but still, all my cars are public transportation, for you, anyhow. And then he drove me all the time. And sometimes because he had to wait for me in the between times, so I invited him to come to my house, my place. I rented a place over there. It’s cheaper than a hotel. If you want to stay a little longer. It’s cheaper than a hotel. So, I invited him to sit in the lounge, in the living room and gave him some (non-alcoholic) drink and said, “Please wait for me. Excuse me,” and things like that. And many times like that. And also, other drivers as well. And he was very touched, he said, “It’s the first time ever that a customer, a person of Your position… at all, any customer at all, would ever invite me to their own living place and give me a (non-alcoholic) drink.” And I said, “What? I’m going to take you to dinner next.” Yeah, we do. We do that all the time anyhow, so he was very surprised.
Photo Caption: Spring of the SOUL Can Arrive Early or Late As Your Free Will Decides
