“Do we yet have something that, whenever we bring it to mind, fills our heart with joy?”
On the subject of joy, our forebears also taught that every person born into this world must find a way to have something that brings gladness to the heart each and every day.
And what manner of thing brings such profound joy — joy that carries us through days, nights, months, and years? That is precisely what our ancestors so earnestly and repeatedly instructed us to seek out, and having found it, to continue nurturing it diligently.
One may ask: why did our forebears instruct us to do so? Because the more we have something that fills our heart with complete and wholehearted joy — joy that endures beyond a single day and night, sometimes stretching across many days, and in the case of truly significant matters, lasting for months or even years — such sources of joy become deeply embedded within our hearts, never to fade. And they will serve as a sacred charm, guarding us against unwholesome thoughts, unwholesome speech, and unwholesome actions, across days, months, and years to come.
12 January 2015
