Venerable Boan’s Bori Temple in Sydney <8>

Drown, 溺 [niào, nì]: to die after falling into water.

If we fall into water and cannot breathe, we will drown. Sometimes, we find ourselves in situations where we feel like we cannot breathe, even if we are not in water. This can feel just as agonizing as drowning. When our minds are stuck, we may feel as if we are dying. However, since we create these mental blockages ourselves, we can easily break through them and breathe again, just as if we were surfacing from the water.

In the water, we can at least thrash about to stay afloat. But when we find ourselves completely trapped in our mind, with no way forward, backward, or to the sides, we are not truly alive, even if we survive. Just as learning to swim makes us unafraid of falling into water, learning to control our minds makes life less frightening because we can face any situation head-on.  

We must do our best not to be trapped in a pitfall of our own making. A momentary lapse of judgment driven by greed can become a deep pit in which we can drown. That is why we must take a step back to observe ourselves, recognize where our attention is going, and ensure that we do not fall into the trap that we created.

- Ven. Boan