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140 / YASUTANI ' S INTERVIEWS WITH WESTERNERSdescribed to me, rather than making you out to be cold-hearted andselfish, reveals a deepening of your natural sympathies, but all thislies outside your consciousness. One who thinks of himself as kindheartedand sympathetic is truly neither.1 That you no longer areconsciously aware of these emotions only shows how deeply entrenchedthey have become.There are many people who spend all their time giving aid to theneedy and joining movements for the betterment of society. To besure, this ought not to be discounted. But their root anxiety, growingout of their false view of themselves and the universe, goes unrelieved,gnawing at their hearts and robbing them of a rich, joyous life. Thosewho sponsor and engage in such social betterment activities lookupon themselves, consciously or unconsciously, as morally superiorand so never bother to purge their minds of greed, anger, and delusivethinking. But the time comes when, having grown exhausted fromall their restless activity, they can no longer conceal from themselvestheir basic anxieties about life and death. Then they seriously beginto question why life hasn't more meaning and zest. Now for the firsttime they wonder whether instead of trying to save others theyought not to save themselves first.I assure you that you have not made a mistake in deciding to treadthis path, and one day it will become clear to you. It is not selfishnessto fo rget about saving others and to concentrate only on developingyour own spiritual strength, though it may seem to be. The solemntruth is that you can't begin to save anybody until you yourself havebecome whole through the experience of Self-realization. When youhave seen into the nature of your True-self and the universe, yourwords will carry conviction and people will listen to you.STUDENT : But I become tired and discouraged so easily-the Wayis terribly long and hard.ROSHI: The Buddha's Way calls fo r energetic devotion and perseverance.When you stop to consider, however, that philosophershave been struggling fo r two or three thousand years to resolve the1 Compare with Lao-tzu's "The truly virtuous is not conscious of his virtue.The man of inferior vinue, however, is ever consciously concerned with his virtue ·and therefore he is without true virtue. True virtue is spontaneous and lays no claimto virtue." (From the Tao Teh Ching, quoted by Lama Govinda in his Foundationsof Tibetan Mysticism, p. 235.)