I Heard It Like This: The Wisdom of Masahisa Goi (English Edition)
Compiled by Hideo Takahashi
161．
What bother me most are excuses.
If you cover up your mistakes by saying: ‘It couldn’t be helped,’ or ‘It was out of my hands because I left it up to God,’ then you are making excuses.
You need not care what other people will think or say.
Let them think as they please. Just never make excuses.
God knows everything, so let God deal with people’s opinions.
Above all, never make excuses to yourself.
That is the worst thing you can do because it inhibits your progress.
If you are in the wrong, just apologize to God, saying, ‘I am sorry God, I will not do it again.’ Since God is your own loving parent, you will surely be forgiven. This is how the principle of ‘fading away’ takes effect.
It does no good to make excuses, thinking ‘It couldn’t be helped,’ or ‘The other party was in the wrong,’ or ‘I did what anyone would have done.’
If you take that standpoint you will never get away from your karma. It will keep on sticking to you.
On the other hand, you can say to yourself: ‘It looks as if so-and-so is in the wrong, but I must have had some sort of karmic cause for being treated in that way.
Now, our shared karma is being extinguished.
May it disappear soon. Thank you, God. May peace prevail on Earth.’ This will enable the disharmony to vanish.
There is nothing that ‘can’t be helped.’ Everything happens through the law of cause and effect.
So, if someone does something unfavorable to you, it is because, in spite of how well you may have treated the person in this lifetime, you held some sort of karmic cause carried over from a past lifetime.
If you can think, ‘Ah, my karma is being erased thanks to this! How grateful I am,’ then you have the mind of a Bodhisattva.* It is important for you to become like that.
*A Bodhisattva is a person with a saintly disposition who chooses to be born in this world out of a wish to uplift others.
■I Heard It Like This: The Wisdom of Masahisa Goi (English Edition)
Compiled by Hideo Takahashi
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■I Heard It Like This: The Wisdom of Masahisa Goi (English Edition)Kindle
Compiled by Hideo Takahashi
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