The Venerables at Cheng Tian Si have my heartfelt respect. And gratitude for their encouragement and guidance and compassion and wisdom.
There is a fellow retreatant from Malaysia, who has been volunteering at the temple for some time. And once, she wanted to prove to herself that she could do other chores and help out in different ways, besides the lightweight ones which she was interested in anyway.
So she approached the Venerables to seek permission to change duties to clean the toilet. And the Venerable replied with 让我想一想.
And the reply which came back a day later was a No. For good reasons of course.
The whole point behind this entry was the fact that the Venerables walked their talk. That they do things mindfully, and just because a volunteer volunteered, it didnt mean that they jumped at the chance without thought. They took their time to slowly analyse the whole situation and weigh out every factor.
It take a strong presence of the mind and control, to be able to stand up and say 让我想一想, before diving into action, like all of us do.
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