Original Intention

I came across the word "beginner's heart" from Toshitaka Suzuki's book, which means "beginner's heart" in Japanese. I think that it can be extended to "the heart of the beginning" or "the heart of the beginning", and I like it at first sight.

From the perspective of a Zen master, Toshitaka Suzuki believes that the purpose of practice is to "maintain the original intention". The joy of meditation at the beginning, the joy of hearing the truth for the first time, as time passes, you will lose your emotion, forget your original intention, as if you have lost your coordinates and cannot find your position.

When someone gets their first salary, they are very happy: they can finally support themselves! If you look at him again in another three or five years, his income will increase several times, and his quality of life will not be low, but he will often be depressed. He has long forgotten his original intention of financial independence, and feels that he "should have more money" in comparison with others. He always feels that he is poor, and he also wants to take a little of other people's money.

Charlie Munger gave a vivid example:

A big capitalist had a vacant building, so he offered it free of charge to the homeless, many of whom were young people. As you can imagine, they are happy when they are given free accommodation.

Years later, the capitalists had to demolish the building to develop a new project. The unexpected happened, a college student who lived in one of them encouraged the residents to refuse to move out, and he not only denied that he was a scoundrel, but instead acted like a righteous avenging angel, on the grounds that this man was so rich that he had a building that could sit idle for years, but we were homeless, and now he could bear to drive us out into the street!

After forgetting the original intention of receiving favors, it is an irrepressible jealousy and hatred. More than once I have heard people denounce their friends for strikingly similar reasons: he is so rich and urges me to pay it back, which is really inhumane!

Munger's example is not extreme at all, but rather reflects the weakness of human nature: if the conditions are right, 95% of people will turn bad.

If you go far, it is easy to forget the place of departure; After living for a long time, it is easy to forget that you are a human being.

Forgetting the original intention can make a person unrecognizable. When you feel inadequate compared to others, think about the happiness you first received, and perhaps, the jealousy and hatred will subside by half, and the possibility of becoming bad will also be reduced.