When Bodhidharma came to China, he visited the emperor Liangwudi who was addicted to Buddhism facilities. The emperor introduced him about his job, how many temples he built, how many monks he offered them food and clothes, how many sutra he commented. Then he proudly asked Dharma, “ I have done lots of things for Buddhism facilities, how many accomplishments do I have?” “Nothing.” “How many accomplishments do I have?” he was astonished. “Never”.

Bodhidharma didn’t lie to Liangwudi. But what the problem is. Liangwudi donated and dedicated the Buddhism facilities a lot. Why Bodhidharma would say he didn’t have a little accomplishments? The problem is he was full of his desires to do these kinds of things. His desires drove him to accomplish them. In Buddhism view, every purposed action, reaction and thinking are evil. How scared about that! Can really the Buddhism views tell us the truth? Let me tell you another story, One day, Buddha and Ananda were going their mendicancy, a child came to them and put mud and sand into their bowl. Buddha told Anana we got the treasure. Anana couldn’t understand why Buddha will think the mud and sand are treasure. Buddha said the child thought these mud and sand that he loved very much, he donated his loves to us is that he donated his heart. That told us having desire to do something or not having desire to something will have a different consequence. On one hand Liangwudi dedicated his contribution to the Buddhism facilities, that need to encourage. On other hand he spread his achievement then he wanted to get accomplishments and merits that his desire drove him to accomplish.

That kind of statements how can affect our daily lives, and how can make our daily lives intelligently that couldn’t be affected by them? The first thing is we need goals, we need purpose; if we don’t have them, we will lose, we don’t know what we want to do. Then we need to keep our goals, to achieve our goals; to develop, to improve ourselves. That’s correct. But the key is in the process. How have we done that? Did we ignore that will affect others people or environment? Were we full of our desire? Did we only focus on our benefits? Did we want to obtain a good reputation to let people remember us? Ask these questions, before we do, in the progress, and after we did. Even though we did these, but we will still confuse, we will still hit some harm. Don’t worry that, at this time, calm down, be peaceful, to communicate with you inner, you will know the answer. Whereas we couldn’t make all things perfectly. To keep our mind can’t be dirty. In the Sixth’s story(2), I told you about Shengxiu’s story, he couldn’t attain Buddhahood but because of his hard working, he earned the respect, he became the emperor Wuzetian’s tutor. Not can every one be Buddha, but we can work hard to keep our inner clearly.

Other things are when we do the charity. some of situations, a good purpose gets a harmful consequence. I read a news, some people want to free the captive animals, it’s a good purpose. So they bought thousands of snakes then took them to a mountain and got them free. The consequence was the snakes attacked the villagers. The villagers killed these snakes and these people needed to pay for compensation. A behavior of saving animals becomes taking away their lives. Do we think about the reason? Why do we want to save the animals? Do we want to get the merits and accomplishments? Or Do we just want to save the animals because the animals are more like us, mankind. If your answer is the first statement, you are in the desire evil. Even you did lots of charity, you couldn’t get any accomplishments, on the contrary, you damage others, you harm nature and universe. If your answer is the second statement, you don’t have the purpose, you did a good job. I don’t know what these people’s purpose is but the consequence told me something. Therefore desire is our inner evil, we can’t cancel them, but we can fight to them, we can eliminate them. However Evil and Buddhahood are the pros and cons of things, they exist our mind at the same time. Transferring the evil is Buddha. Having one desire then brings tons of desires is evil, eliminating one desire then eliminates others desires is Buddha. Confucius said: “ if you want achievement you should allow other people achieve them; if you want to be successful you should allow other people succeed them’.

To summarise, they are not accomplishments because of our desires, because we purpose practices.  They are accomplishments because we eliminated our desires, because our purpose is not to benefit us but to benefit others.

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