Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo period, said something to the effect that life is like walking on a long road carrying a heavy burden. No one is free from worries. It looks as if fate had loaded all of us with burdens that correspond to our capacity. While fate compels us to walk with a heavy burden along the road of life, the road is never flat or smooth. Each of us walks along our own road, continually facing a host of difficulties, like steep slopes, thorny paths, cliffs, and dead-ends. Yet, somehow, the burdens carried by others look lighter than our own. Is it because our own burdens are too heavy? Or maybe everyone else is tougher and able to handle their burdens easily. The truth may be that people who skillfully overcome their difficulties and pain seem not to feel the weight of their heavy burdens. There are people who face a constant stream of difficulties yet seem to enjoy doing so. The most essential quality for a human being is toughness. It is like the engine of a motor vehicle, I think. The other quality that is essential for balancing toughness is wisdom. It is like the skill required for steering a motor vehicle. People who rely on toughness only and do not make use of wisdom will pass through 10 or 100 times more difficulties than they need to, because they are not able to drive smoothly along the road of life, and they inevitably face problems. They need wisdom to always think of all the ways they need to overcome their difficulties. Externally wisdom is needed to think of these ways, but internally it is important to apply wisdom to increase one's humanity. If we consider all the difficulties of life as grindstones for polishing our humanity and make sustained effort to overcome them, wisdom will emerge naturally from inside us, I believe. This is the beginning of the era of wisdom. |