Humility; Spiritual Progress
There are many things we can engage in which will either hinder or help our spiritual progress. One thing that can impede our progress is to have a mind that we already know all there is to know, that there is no further progress to be made.
“There were also two thousand Sravakas, some of whom had something more to learn while others had nothing more to learn.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter I)
There are several places in the Lotus Sutra where we hear of different groups of people or individuals who think they have nothing more to learn, and yet we see in the Lotus Sutra, that the reality is different. In fact every practitioner at the time of the Buddha had much more to learn, especially as the Buddha reveals the purpose of the appearance of Buddhas as well as the Eternal aspect of the Buddha.
There are many ways this kind of mind can creep into our daily life and into our practice. We might think that only we are doing the practice correctly and other are incorrectly practicing. We might also invest a lot of our energy in defending as superior our own particular way of practice, insisting that others are wrong.
We might even become attached to only one way to practice and ignore the truth teaching in the Lotus Sutra, that there are several methods of practicing.
“The poor son was glad to be treated kindly, but still thought that he was an humble employee. Therefore, the rich man had him clear dirt for twenty years. After that the father and son trusted each other. Now the son felt no hesitation in entering the house of his father, but still lodged in his old place.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter IV)
When we can approach our practice and even our entire lives with an open mind a mind that gladly accepts the fact that it doesn’t know everything then we open our lives up to even deeper and more profound experiences of the Lotus Sutra.
