Do Not Take Difference for Wrongness
You form many connections as you live, but even those close to you will not always share your thoughts and character. A connection is not wrong simply because two people are different.
Look at nature: mountains and water differ, sunlight and shade differ, wind and clouds never stay in one place. Without forcing themselves to resemble one another, each finds its own place, and together they form a single nature. The relationships between people are the same.
When you try to force another person to fit your own thinking, suffering arises; when you strain to make yourself fit perfectly to someone else, your mind grows weary. It is wisdom to cherish a connection as it comes, to be grateful for a connection as it stays, and not to cling to a connection as it moves away.
Do not take difference for wrongness — meet each connection as it comes and let it flow on, without leaving a knot in your mind. Happiness may lie less in fitting well with everyone than in a mind that remains unhindered within every connection, beyond whether it fits or not.
Everyone's thoughts and character differ. Like water flowing around a stone, do not force yourself to match one another — continue each connection from your own place. When you stop taking difference for wrongness, your mind grows far more at ease.
- Being different does not mean being wrong.
- Water flows on without trying to change its shape.
- You can be together without forcing each other to match.
- Cherish the connection that comes; release the one that goes.
- When you stop taking difference for wrongness, your heart grows light.