We waste too much time immersed in anxiety about whether we are good or bad. We’d be better off expending our energy on simply taking care of all that needs doing. A tale is told of a young Buddhist monk who worried a lot. While walking through the forest to return to his monastery, he came upon and old Zen master. Delighted to have found an audience for his obsessions, he tried to strike up a conversation with the seemingly carefree older man.
The young monk talked a great deal, mostly about himself. The old man listened and smiled, but didn’t seem to have much to say. Then the young man declared, “I became a monk to attain spiritual enlightenment. For a long while, I was afraid I would never attain a saintly attitude, but my years of service have paid off and now I have become quite humble.”
“How about you?” he asked the old man. “Are you humble?”
After a few minutes, the master replied, “I don’t really know. I’ve never thought much about it.”
In our right pocket we need to keep one reminder: “For my sake God created the universe,” and in our left pocket another: “I am dust and ashes.”