From day to day and moment to moment, all kinds of thoughts and emotions come popping up in our minds. We can be in a perfectly good mood, only to suddenly become spiteful when we see a certain person. Our husband comes home and we suddenly become angry, or our child comes home and we suddenly want to scold him or her.
When we allow our emotions to be dictated by the shifting conditions around us, our thoughts can transform in an instant, so that it is not easy to maintain a settled, peaceful, happy state of mind. When we obtain money or new things, it quickly puts us in a happy mood, and when we see someone we don’t like, we suddenly become irritable and discontented. Every person, thing, and circumstance that passes before us has some influence on us, and keeps us constantly in flux.
But it does not have to be this way. Originally, we human beings have the ability to maintain a settled state of mind, no matter what situation we are facing, no matter whom we might encounter. This is our essential divine nature as human beings.