Do Not Belittle a Small Good

answered by Dharma verse tradition

기원전 3세기 전승

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Schindler's List (1993)

dir. Steven Spielberg · USA

Where evil has become the everyday, the good one person can do seems too small to matter. When the whole world erases people into numbers, is saving even a single life among them a futile gesture, or the saving of an entire world?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Saying 'one of me is of no use,' do I erase in advance the small good I could do right now?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

莫輕小善

莫輕小善以爲無福

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Do not belittle a small good, thinking it brings no blessing; drop by drop the great vessel is filled.

💡 TL;DR

When evil is vast, one despairs at the smallness of one's own good.

📝The Classic Answers

When evil is vast, one despairs at the smallness of one's own good. Yet the old teaching likened a small good to a drop of water. A single drop seems nothing, but gathered, drops fill the vessel. When the whole world erases people into numbers, saving one life looks slight against the statistics. But to that one person, it is an entire world. Before being crushed by the despair of scale, I choose first to let fall the one drop I can add now.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If you folded away a small kindness today as 'useless,' just let that one drop fall.

📖 Classic Source: Dharma verse tradition. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.