First comes patience. 

Ultimately, there is just happiness.  

When others strongly want something, we should practice patience. How? Defer to them.

If it’s not an issue of, say, principles or safety, why not? Will it really make a difference to us to let the aggressive driver into our lane? Yes, he’s annoying. But no, it shouldn’t make a difference. Who is to say whose journey is more important. Or urgent. And does this honestly matter? Is it worth the price we pay? The anger we feel?

There’s also the embarrassment of hearing ourselves proclaim “I won!” when we exit the road and the car is still behind us. As our blood pressure normalizes, a realization befalls us: we just created another enmity. As if we didn’t already have enough.

The next time your wishes do not concur with someone else’s, remember that we are not more important than others. Any tug-of-war on this issue is not important. Only patience is. Very likely, you will see how patiently accommodating the other person will make everyone a winner. 

Correcting faults is cultivation. (Click image for video)

In the eyes of an awakened being, 

we are all lamentable. 

Nothing makes a dung beetle’s day like a lump of feces.

Whether they roll it into a round ball, bury it, or inhabit it where they find it, the dung beetle lives and breathes dung. It’s their nursery, their source of food and water, their home. They might even attach themselves to the animal source and wait for the inevitable. Without dung, they are lost. And so they are apt to steal a dung ball, sometimes under the guise of helping another beetle.

From birth to death, their existence centers on dung, on something we deem repulsive.

What a miserable way to live we tell ourselves, as we grimace in disgust.

And with that, we return to our own existence and the things that make our day. We eat and drink. We raise our children and tend to our home. We interact with others to attain more of what we want, perhaps even through dishonorable means.

As human beings, we consider ourselves fortunate. As do the beetles. Both, however, are inordinately mistaken.

When goaded, not fighting back takes courage. (Click image for video)