The Most Important Task is to “Perfect one’s Soul Garden”—Series of the Bright Spots (2)

Written by Yixian on January 14, 2014

In the Second Home, everything is wonderful and desirable, so how is this realized and maintained so well?

The picture of Xanadu in each person’s heart could be different and unique, but at least two points are the same: one is the graceful, serene, clean, tidy, and natural environment, with abundant food, no worries, quarrels, troubles, or noise, and the other is the harmonious human environment: people are simple, kind, friendly, and diligent, there is no mutual guarding among people, but only family-like love and sharing from their hearts.

When you calm down, you may think, what are the sources of your worries, troubles, and pain? Do they come from Heidi’s earthquake, Philippine’s Typhoon, the coldness of North America, extreme heat of Australia, or the poverty in Africa and the conflicts in the Middle-east? Probably not. Are they because you do not have enough food to eat, clothes to wear, or a place to sleep? These are not likely the reasons either. They are mostly coming from the chatter of family and relatives, the gossip between neighbors, the stress and competition among companies, and the misunderstandings among friends and coworkers. These are the main elements that bring out your worries and troubles and that even exhaust you.

There are those who say, “Man has a selfish nature. As long as there are people, there are contradictions, fights, and conflicts, therefore troubles and pains cannot be avoided”.

So how does this Xanadu — the Second Home — achieve such deep harmony among people and how does it become a home without contradictions and conflicts?

The answer is to, “beautify your soul garden”. All Chanyuan celestials living in the community consider this to be their number one priority and their most important task. People’s words and actions are led by their consciousness, while consciousness is relatively abstract. If we look at consciousness as a garden, it will be much easier to understand. Sincerity, kindness, love, beauty, honesty, and trust are beautiful flowers growing in our soul gardens and they make our qualities shine like diamonds, but jealousy, complaining, selfishness, comparison, laziness, and waste are weeds living in our soul gardens and they prevent us from being happy.

The flowers in soul gardens are gratitude, praise, sincerity, respect, maintaining faith, honesty, kindness, diligence, simplicity, flexibility, bravery, unselfishness, devotion, service, care, tolerance, consideration, compassion, mercy, and the like.

The weeds in our soul gardens are jealousy, hostility, outrage, contention, complaining, comparison, hatred, fear, anxiety, falsity, wickedness, ugliness, dishonesty, hypocrisy, greed, possession, forced occupation, desire to excel over others, justification, and other weeds and barnyard grasses.

Ask yourself, would you prefer to stay with those who have beautiful flowers in their soul gardens, or with those who have more ugly weeds?

Every Chanyuan celestial in the Second Home lives their life according to Chanyuan values, it is much easier to find the “weeds” in this collective life than in traditional secular society. Through continuous beautification of one’s soul garden, the more beautiful your garden becomes, the more happiness and freedom you will enjoy. For married couples, love and respect increases, while mutual emotional torture and complaining decreases. For parents and children, understanding increases, and the generation gap slowly fades away. For brothers and sisters and for peers, praise and friendship increase, as complaining and jealousy are soon forgotten.

In Konohana Family － the 5th branch of the Second Home － they have a value of, “cultivate one’s heart before cultivating fields”, which has the same meaning as beautifying one’s soul garden. When one’s soul is pure, the field is pure, when one’s heart is beautiful, the world is beautiful, so the basis for building up a “beautiful China” must also be putting “beautiful soul gardens” first.

Another reason for purifying your soul garden is that you can sublimate your LIFE quality through such purification. Besides harvesting a happier present life, you also lay the foundation of sublimating your LIFE to higher LIFE space. When you come to the Second Home, you feel the family-like warmness and love from everyone here: everybody smiles at you, people offer any help you need quickly, the grounds are neat, tidy, clean, and beautiful everywhere. People get along with each other very well and happiness, harmony, and love are always in the air. The more deeply you integrate into this home, the happier and freer you become. Therefore, almost no Chanyuan celestial would want to go back home once they live in the Second Home, the longer they live here, the less they would like to leave.

These are all fruits from beautifying the soul garden.

In the Second Home, as your soul garden becomes more perfect, you gain more and more freedom and happiness. Nobody manages you, you are the boss in the field for which are responsible, and you may utilize your talents as much as you can, because the management of the Second Home is “Paradise Management”.