LIVING THE 80/20 WAY BY PRACTICING PURE MIND YOGA: Letter No.2: THE IMBALANCE THAT MAKES ZERO TO HERO  

Welcome to the series of living 80/20 way with Pure Mind Yoga.

In this article, we are going to see how the rule of 80/20 was integrated into Guru’s teachings and practice methods, and how we should appreciate it more properly. I hope that my first article has triggered your brain with something new, interesting, and helpful. Most importantly, you have said “yes” to less work, less stress, and more fun! I have rejoiced a lot by reading Guru and all of your comments these days. By doing so, I have earned 80% joy of my day with just less than 20% of my time and effort! Thank you so much for giving me such productive moments.

I can see that some of you said you would look for a copy of “Living the 80/20 Way” by Richard Koch. Yes, this is one of the books that I would definitely recommend to anyone who may ask me for some titles. But if you do not have enough patience and time to go through all the challenging pages, I would say you have initially practiced living the 80/20 way by reading my article thoroughly. I recognized that for most of the books that I have read, the most important and interesting content belongs to just 20% of the book’s pages or chapters. As the audience of this series, you spent less than 20% of the time that I read the books, but you have learned the ”quintessence” of the book not less than I did. For me, reading is the most complicated skill which combines patience, passion, curiosity, and challenge. Therefore, it is absolutely not easy.  In the book named ”Self-learning” by a famous Vietnamese author that I used to read, I was impressed by how the author formed the definition of a “good book”. Accordingly, “good books” are not those which not only address our problems and give detailed instructions of what we should do, but also the ones which trigger our brains, give us a lot of meaningful thoughts afterward by self-reflection, and turn it into massive action that will eventually change your life. Do you have any idea about the books that could make such a huge influence on your life? I hope most of you have quickly and confidently answered: “Yes!” with me.

What are those books?

For me, those are “One Life One Mantra”, “Life is Dharma, Dharma is Life”, “Research on psychological effects of Pure Mind Yoga on stress and depression”, and thousands of articles on chanhtuduy.com which were written by Guru after nearly thirty years. By this, I meant to address Guru’s second Mind Dharma – Samyagdrsti-Prabha Samadhi, which encourages the practitioners to read and comment on the articles on chanhtuduy.com to build and develop the base of the right view. Accordingly, the learners will be well-equipped gradually throughout different stages: the basics of right view, the full right view, the absolute right view, then turning absolute right view into samadhi. If you spend less than 20% of time and effort to read the book “Living the 80/20 Way” by Richard Koch and still got the most of it by reading my article, you spend much less than 20% of your lifetime, your capability, health, and effort to get the most of the right view that one can spend the whole life to search for. There are three volumes of Tripitaka: Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka, and Abhidhamma Pitaka, there are countless sutras of different Buddhist branches such as Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana, not to mention endless titles of books writing about Buddhist teachings. How many years will it take for you to pick up the right resources and to get the core of Buddhist teachings out of all those possible sources? And do you have the ability and the right methods to manage such a huge task? Such a relief that we are among the luckiest ones who do not need to waste our time and effort to do so! With articles and lectures on chanhtuduy.com, Guru has presented Buddhist teachings on different topics that are closely related to our lives, with consistent logic, examples, and explanations that cannot be easier to understand. It is not overexaggerating that your thirty minutes on reading an article on chanhtuduy.com may be much more valuable than days and nights that you spent searching for books, reading aimlessly, and not being able to turn into meaningful actions.

 

 

Have you ever thought about the amount of time and effort, and of course, health and money, that Guru has spent on reading, thinking, reasoning, practicing, testing, reflecting, then writing for years so that you can do one final easiest thing: read it and barely get benefits from it? I am sure it will be a definitely astonishing result if we dare to make a calculation on the imbalance of causes and effects here. But let us be brave and calculate it together!

Firstly, imagine if you have been living in jobless, mental illness, great sadness, disappointment, depression, unpredictable sufferings, how much will you pay for the price of inner happiness, smooth life, and social achievements? It must be more expensive than anything that you could find in the stores, right? We will put this in some illustrative numbers for our easier imagination. A book normally costs around 20-50€, the monthly subscription on Youtube Premium costs 11.99$, monthly subscription for Netflix cost 17.99$, monthly subscription for audible cost 7,99$ and you have to pay for each audiobook separately out of only one title a month for free with your membership, one time eating out at the restaurant may cost around 30-60€, buying a gift to your beloved ones may range from zero to infinity, renting a single-room apartment in Sweden cost around 400-600€/month, building a house in Sweden may cost typically around 20-25.000 kr/m2, which means 2,5-3,5 million kronor for the standard house of about 130m2. Even though the prices of these things keep escalating, they are not equivalent to the happiness that one can gain by spending on them, which means we are still far from the price of happiness. People do not really spend money to own the things they really want, they spend money on the feeling of ownership. By this, you may recognize why your brains are seduced by the advertisement of Black Friday. You made a payment to get a short and temporary sense of satisfaction, not happiness. For that reason, it is very challenging for many people to make a saving because in many cases, 80% of the salary will go directly to buy unnecessary things in the first 20% days of the month.

There are obviously many easy ways that you can earn happiness for free, such as a freely walk after a working day, giving others a small act of help, smiling at a stranger, singing along a favorite song, praising someone because of their kindness, etc. But because it is free, and we do not need to pay, sometimes we seem to underestimate or even forget these simple ways of being happy. Those are moments of happiness that can release remarkably stress and burden in your life. Now, think about what have you spent on chanhtuduy.com to get all the knowledge and blessing experiences from Guru’s teachings and practice methods, which end up releasing all your sufferings? If we MUST price it, there is no PRICE that we are ever able to pay. A question came up: Have we taken for granted such a treasure in our lives? Have we ever underestimated the rare and precious chance to learn Dharma just because Guru was so passionate and gave it all to us?

So, are there any possible ways that we can utilize our spending wisely to make up 80% of the happiness? I meant the real inner happiness which stays with us in the long term.

Yes, we do have a solution! This is when rational thinking should wake up, and we should think carefully about the traps of spending on material things and the sense of ownership that we may fall into. But as Buddhist practitioners, let’s take some legendary examples to see how wise people spend wisely on the right purposes.

Before introducing the examples, I would brief you a bit about Guru’s series “The third Mind Dharma: The Practice of Uninterrupted offering” that you may have read. In this series, Guru presented the meaning of “making offerings”, the 13 subjects that are worthy of making offerings (the Buddha, Pratyeka-Buddha, Sravaka – including eight levels from Sotapattiphala to Arahattaphala and from Sotapattimagga to Arahattamagga, hermits who attain from the first to the fourth jhanas, and virtuous Buddhist practitioners who fully observes five precepts. Have you noticed that among those who deserve to receive offerings, there are hermits or heresies who had undergone extreme hardship and challenges to their level of achievement, meanwhile Buddhist practitioners who just keep maintaining precepts can stand equal to them? Why so? Because human beings are capable of practicing Dharma to attain Buddhahood, Bodhisattvahood, Pratyeka-Buddhahood, Arahatship, jour jhanas, and observing precepts. Human beings own eight kinds of freedoms and ten endowments that are able to practice Dharma. As being born into the human-being realm, we were born into the  20% (or even lesser) rarest beings in the samsara that have the precious chance to become a Buddhist practitioner, to practice Dharma, to attain liberation, and on the other hand, to stand equal to other beings who are worthy of making offerings. Paradoxically, 80% of human beings chose to immerse themselves in the samsara and be swayed in the Eight winds, getting lost in the circle of birth and death.

There are many inspiring stories about making offerings in different eras. Two of the most inspiring stories for me are the story of Master Atisha and the story of Shenguang. The former story was once when Atisha came to Tibet to seek to learn Dharma from Dharmamati. He made offerings of numerous amounts of gold and silver, gemstones, eaglewood, silk, etc. before staying with his Guru to receive the complete transmission of the teachings and Dharma practices. He faced numerous challenges during those years long. The latter story was from Tang Dynasty in China. When Patriarch Bodhidharma crossed the Yangzi River to China to find his disciples, he accidentally met Shenguang, a Dharma expounder who was well known in many pagodas. After receiving the teachings from Bodhidarma, he broke out of joy for perceiving the miracles and wonderfulness of Buddhist dharma. The strong, urgent will of liberation had pushed him to bow down in front of Shao-Shih Cave, Song Shan Mountain to show his earnestness. When the Patriarch opened the door, Shenguang told him about his aspiration. The Patriarch said he need make offerings as a necessary formality before learning Dharma. Shenguang then cut his arm to present to the Patriarch as an offering. The Patriarch accepted this gift and gave him a Dharma name of Huike, which means being able to get enlightenment. Hopefully, these stories provide you the answers about the value of Buddhist teachings that we have learned from Guru.

What else is the meaning of these stories to us?

As you know, the readers of chanhtuduy.com come from all walks of life, they can be university professors, scientists, physical and social science technicians, office workers, teachers, designers, students, etc. They can be pensioners or elementary-school students. No matter how old they are and what professional they are working on, the articles on chanhtuduy.com are kind of “one-size-fit-all” to them. By reading the articles on chanhtuduy.com, they not only discover deep insights into the nature of reality, but also find the answers to their problems, reflected on their lives, and accordingly transform their mind and change their lives tremendously.

The question is when we can earn 80% of the achievement that our lives can wish for by utilizing Guru’s resources of knowledge that was built upon on most of his life with just 20% of our time and effort, have we ever thought about whether showing our gratitude or showing how to express our gratitude properly? Even though gratitude sounds a bit abstract to describe, it should also be paid properly. We can be grateful to a person who gave us the right answer when we might get lost in the street, how about gratitude to the person who showed us the path when we got lost with suffering in this samsara world? I hope this question triggers to give you an answer on how to show your gratitude smartly with the help of the rule of 80/20.

I must say the more I think and write this series, the more I realize that there is nothing else cooler than leading a Pure Mind Dharma practitioners’ lifestyle which synchronizes harmoniously the rule of 80/20. In the next article, we will elaborate a bit more on the Guru’s practice methods, the benefit of living the 80/20 way by practicing Pure Mind Yoga practically, and how it changes our lives and our lifestyles!

See you very soon!

Sweden, November 20, 2021

Cao Dieu Mat Tu.

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1, LIVING THE 80/20 WAY BY PRACTICING PURE MIND YOGA: Letter No. 1: Less is more – Cao Dieu Mat  Tu

2, LIVING THE 80/20 WAY BY PRACTICING PURE MIND YOGA: Letter No.2: THE IMBALANCE THAT MAKES ZERO TO HERO  – Cao Dieu Mat Tu

 

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Vietnamese version: Sống theo nguyên lý 80/20 bằng cách thực hành Yoga Thanh Trí (Bài 2): SỰ MẤT CÂN BẰNG BIẾN MỘT NGƯỜI BÌNH THƯỜNG TRỞ NÊN PHI THƯỜNG – Cao Diệu Mật Từ