Chapter Three · The Coin World

tch people throw in the coins that belonged to their own fear and craving, and think about my own cost and structure. When I stood there watching, as they tossed coin after coin — cheering with delight one moment, sinking into disappointment the next, laughing something off here, trying again and again there — I would enter my own Coin World. In that instant, the lights of ten thousand homes seemed like a single coin. One face is craving. One face is fear. They do not come in turns. It is only that, at a given moment, one face is up. When you charge forward, you think you are only craving, but fear is there as well. Perhaps you fear poverty, fear losing, fear spending your whole life as an ordinary person. And when you step back, you think you are only afraid, but craving is there too. Perhaps you still want it, still feel unwilling to let go, still cannot quite bear to lose it. It is only that you fear paying the cost even more. So a person's true state is never "I have only craving," nor "I have only fear." The true state is this: Craving and fear exist at the same time. At any one moment, one side simply offers greater resistance. The water flows toward whichever side offers less resistance. By this point we can begin to think more clearly about the "stones at the bottom of the river." Stones on the riverbed are not all the same. Some are large stones; some are little broken stones. Craving is a large stone. It is more obvious, easier to see, and more likely to alter the flow directly. A person wants to make money, wants to turn his life around, wants success, wants to prove himself, wants some kind of future — these things are usually plain to the eye. From the bank, you can see them immediately: yes, this is what I want. Yes, this is what I am rushing toward. Yes, I am pushing this hard because I want it so badly. That is why I say craving is like a large stone. This has nothing to do with whether it is noble or base. It is simply because its influence on the current is so readily visible. When water rushes over it, the surface rises at once. Human beings are the same. When craving is strong in a person, the movements are quick, the emotions intense, the decisions fierce. You can see it very easily. Fear is different. Fear is more like a small stone — small, broken, inconspicuous, and better at hiding. It rarely says, "I am afraid." More often it says, "Wait a little longer. I am not ready yet. Better to be more cautious." It says: "It is not that I do not dare; I just want to be clearer first. It is not that I am shrinking back; it is only that now is not the right time." So people very easily feel the effects of fear. But they find it much harder to recognize fear itself. You know that you feel unwell. You know that you stepped back. You know that you hesitated. But you may not know that what is pressing underneath is fear: fear of failure, fear of losing face, fear of trouble, fear of wasted effort, fear of being laughed at, fear of having to admit that you are not really as capable as you hoped, fear that you are just an ordinary person after all. Later I increasingly felt that what people usually see are only the large stones. They feel how badly they want something. They want to win, to prove themselves. But what truly traps a person is very often those small broken stones. They do not stand out in ordinary times, but they pile up. One stone of fear of failure, one stone of fear of losing face, one stone of fear of wasted labor, one stone of fear of rejection, one stone of fear that others look down on you, one stone of fear that you do not really deserve what you want. Most people never look at them at all. And in being ignored, those stones slowly drive things to an irrecoverable point. Fear can pile itself into a landslide dam lake. That is what makes fear so terrible. Craving raises waves on the surface. Fear clogs the river channel. Large stones lift the water upward. Small stones block the water. Many people say that after encountering