贪心：飞蛾扑火的远近因缘

Many lay practitioners often told me that they pray for the Buddha’s or the bodhisattvas’ blessing to help them succeed in their jobs or business so that they can afford to offer more money to the Three Jewels. This is good motivation, but in fact we need not offer money to the Three Jewels. Real Buddhas and bodhisattvas would not care for us to have more money. Rather, they would very much like us to have developed renunciation and bodhicitta. As long as we can manage to live a reasonably decent life, they wish we should concentrate on the practice of Dharma and do our best to take control of our own cyclic existence. This is really what we should be doing now.

我经常听到很多居士对我说，希望佛菩萨能给他加持，让他的生意做得更好，能挣更多的钱去供养三宝。虽然这个发心不错，但实际上我们不需要用钱来供养三宝。真正的佛菩萨不希望我们有更多的钱，他们更希望我们有出离心、菩提心。对佛菩萨来说，我们有钱没钱无所谓，他们希望我们的是，只要生存没有太大的困难，就一心一意去修行，竭尽全力地把握住自己的生死，这是我们目前的工作。

In Training Anthology, Shantideva expounded a viewpoint based on teachings from the scriptures. If a bodhisattva, undertaking to practice alone at a quiet place, immerses himself or herself completely in the bliss of meditation and cannot be bothered to deliver other beings from samsara, it is deemed a bodhisattva has fallen from grace. Therefore, once having aroused bodhicitta, one should still get involved in certain activities, only with different purpose.

寂天菩萨在《集学论》中通过引用教证也阐述过一个观点：如果菩萨自己一个人到静处去修行，耽于减少烦恼的幸福、禅定的滋味，而不度化众生，这是菩萨的堕落。所以，如果有了菩提心，事情还是要照样去做，但做事情的目的就不一样了。

Take the example of a moth. Do you know why, whenever a moth sees fire, it must fly directly into the flame even knowing that it will surely be burned to death? Does the moth intentionally want to kill itself? No, it simply loves the fire.

有一个比喻可以说明这一点。你们每个人肯定都知道飞蛾，但你们知不知道飞蛾为什么投火，挡都挡不了，冒着被烧死的危险，一定要投到火里面去，它是不是要故意自杀呢？不是，它就是很喜欢火，所以一定要投到火里面。