H shared a story with the rest:
A car suddenly came from nowhere, nearly clashing with a taxi on the road. The driver of the car did not apologize to the taxi driver, instead he scolded the latter. But the taxi driver merely gave a friendly smile and waved to the car driver. The passenger in the taxi questioned the driver, “The car driver was at fault. Why did you treat him that way?” The taxi driver answered, “ Beware of garbage truck! A garbage truck refers to a person who is overwhelmed by his negative emotions, who is ready to throw them onto others. If you quarrel with him, you will end up being another garbage truck.”
Acho Rinpoche:
None of us wants to be a garbage truck. However, our true nature was obscured by lust, hatred and ignorance during our many rounds of re-incarnations in our past life.
In Grand Master’s book entitled “A Transcendental Book” (通天之书), he mentioned that he went to hell one day and the Hell Lord showed him a few doors. Through one of the doors, he saw the remaining 15 Large Lotuses out of the original 18. 3 of them already withered. For the 3 Large Lotus Bodhisattvas lost their way in the secular world, fallen prey to the worldly temptations and ended up in hell.
From this story in the book, we could tell that even for the Bodhisattvas who were suppose to come save the sentient beings, they could end up being defiled by the latter instead. They ended up collecting the emotional garbage, and finally fell. They might not have realized their falling, although it was clear to the those around them. When a person collected too much emotional garbage, it will become noticeable to others around him. But the person himself will not notice his own problem because he would always think that he was right and tend to be defensive; he will not accept any advice from others.
When you have collected too much emotional garbage, your behavior will become weird and noticeable to others. How do you tell if you have collected too much emotional garbage? When you become unhappy, dissatisfied, argumental and always insist on your own points of view, those are signs of falling. But you will never notice it! So, a practitioner must learn to be humble.
Grand Master also mentioned in his book that many people thought that they did very well in their cultivation and achieved good spiritual responses, but they had actually ended up enlarging their ego and stop listening to the advice of others. Grand Master said such people did not achieve a true spiritual response, although they too claimed to be able to dream of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and even see them while awake. Unfortunately, they have actually fallen due to their lack of humility.
A practitioner must be humble and never think high of himself. It will be easier for him to pass the tests with such mentality. There are just too many temptations in the world today. I wish that you would practice well and surpass the realm of evil - finally savoring the fruits of enlightenment.
