“I want us all to have endurance—enduring until there’s no more endurance.
In other words, as soon as you see the truth, you let go. When you let go, you see peace arising. When peace arises, you don’t have to practice—because you’ve finished practicing. It’s like a cabinet. Before, it was a tree, but there was a problem that required making a cabinet. The tree was cut and shaped because there was still a reason to make the cabinet. Once the cabinet is finished and we’ve coated it with shellac and put it on display, that’s the end of having to do anything. It ends right there in the cabinet.
Before, this cabinet was a tree; now, it’s beautiful cabinet. We can say that what once wasn’t beautiful has turned into something beautiful.
It’s the same with all of us. All of us have been run-of-the-mill people.
And not just us—even the Buddha was just the same. He started out ignorant. That’s how he came to know. Wherever there’s dirtiness, there’s cleanliness right there. When you wash that spot, the cleanliness doesn’t arise anywhere else. Wherever there’s disturbance, there’s peace right there. Wherever there’s wrongness, there’s rightness right there. They’re together, both of them, right there. Wherever there’s greed, aversion, and delusion, there’s lack of greed, lack of aversion, lack of delusion right there.”