Is diligence and uncompromisingness always the right way to achieve the goal? It all depends on the internal coordinate system.
How to understand this paradoxical phrase? There is always a path between us and our goal — it is the main obstacle. But if the goal is in ourselves, the barrier disappears. That is, the shortest path to the goal is the path to yourself, and our main goal is to improve ourselves. Only in this way can we get around many obstacles — after all, we often build them ourselves, with our behavior. If we know that the goal is in ourselves, our attitude to external problems also changes, an understanding appears: some of them can be overcome, while others cannot — and there is nothing dramatic in this. And we begin to focus less on external circumstances, and the trajectory of our life becomes different. The outer goal can easily turn out to be false or so difficult to achieve that when we reach it, we will be left with nothing but rubbish. And there will be no happiness. Happiness is finding the way to yourself.»
* Sosan (turn of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries), the third patriarch of Zen Buddhism. His thoughts are reflected in the verse composition «Shinjinmei», or «Motto of the True Mind». The exact phrase is: «Side paths are doubtful, and the faster we go along them, the slower we reach the goal.»