The Origin
There was once a disciple whose mind was perpetually restless, filled with wandering thoughts and fantasies, unable to settle their heart on their essential work. Seeing them drift through time and waste their potential, the Master offered this profound and sharp teaching to cut through the mental fog.
The Master’s Teaching
Original Instruction
“You’re still lost in your own head, spinning all these fantasies and overthinking everything.”
It’s like flipping a Chinese pancake — you keep turning it over and over, even after it’s already burnt, but you just can’t stop. Your mind is constantly churning, calculating, and running wild with thoughts and feelings.
Why can’t you just focus on one thing
and do what you need to do right now?
But when you stay in this scattered state — constantly overthinking, going round and round in circles in your mind, analyzing endless details, following every feeling and impulse — it becomes very hard for others to trust you with important work. Your heart isn’t really settled on the task in front of you. Instead, it’s always somewhere else, floating around, thinking about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with what actually needs to be done right now.
“It’s like your whole self is floating in the air. Your feet aren’t planted on the ground.”
You have no real connection with the task or the situation right beneath you.
By always following these wandering thoughts, feelings, and impulses… are you truly helping yourself, or are you unintentionally harming your own future?
When you keep chasing those mental loops, you end up having to let go of the real work that needs your attention today. You can’t fully focus on both. In the end, the things that actually matter get neglected.
“If we live like this for a lifetime, it becomes very hard to accomplish anything meaningful.”
Over time, opportunities and people may gradually move on, and we risk being left behind.
Closing Aspiration
May we always remember and cherish these precious teachings.
May we gather our scattered minds, distance ourselves from useless overthinking,
and truly ground ourselves in successfully completing
the tasks of the present moment.