In the morning, when we first wake up, before getting out of bed, before thinking about what we will eat for breakfast or which obnoxious jerk we will see at the office, we can start the day by thinking, "Today as much as possible, I won’t harm anybody. We must truly want to develop a kind heart, not just keep thinking that we should develop a kind heart. In other words, we must realize the disadvantages of being self-centered. We need to know how to actually transform our mind. Filling ourselves with "shoulds" often just makes us feel guilty because we never are what we think we should be. How do we cultivate a kind heart? It is not enough to tell ourselves that we should be nice, because telling ourselves what we should or should not be, feel, or do doesn’t make us become that way. In fact, they could even be disadvantageous: people may get very upset if they find all their spoons have been bent! Upon waking up If you have psychic powers but lack a kind heart, the powers are of no use. One child asked, "Can you bend spoons with your mind?" Another asked, "Has God ever talked to you?" They were very disappointed when I said, "No." I went on to explain that for me a real true miracle is becoming a kind human being. One time I gave a talk in a Hong Kong school to a group of children. In other words, becoming a kind human being is probably the greatest miracle we can perform. The true miracle is to walk on earth." It’s true. Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Vietnamese monk, said, "It is not so important whether you walk on water or walk in space. Actually, I think being a spiritual person means becoming a real human being. Often people think that to be a spiritual person, we must ignore or neglect our everyday life, and go into another, special realm. Many people have the misconception that spiritual life or religious life is somewhere up there in the sky-an ethereal or mystical reality-and that our everyday life is too mundane and not so nice. Becoming a kind human being is probably the greatest miracle we can perform.
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