How Can One Preserve One's Own Integrity in the Evil World of the Five Turbidities?

There is another aspect of the theft precept: stealing another person's trust through various channels, causing them to let down their guard, so as to facilitate one's own various undertakings. For example, gaining someone's trust and inducing them to invest in oneself, only for the funds to end up squandered—not only is there no return, even the principal is gone. Or having done something wrong to others, one offers them false repentance, insincere, merely seeking to win their forgiveness; when the other person develops trust and forgiveness, the offense of stealing trust is established. Therefore, when one is insincere toward others yet pretends to be sincere, this too constitutes theft. Stealing another person's heart, another person's affections, and so on—all of these constitute the offense of theft, and all carry evil retribution.

Theft also includes all kinds of false and deceptive advertising, tax evasion, falsified accounting, fraudulent receipts and expense claims, poaching staff, poaching clients, and stealing business from other enterprises—there are far too many such things to enumerate. Many people commit theft without knowing it. In every corner of the world there are the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion; no corner is pure. What is meant by the evil world of the five turbidities? This is precisely the evil world of the five turbidities.

Those of you who run companies and are bosses in the world should carefully examine your own business conduct: do not break the law, do not violate the precepts, do not follow the crowd in indulging the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion, do not go along with evil trends and bad habits, and run your business as lawfully, properly, and in accordance with the precepts as possible. The karmic retribution in this life and future lives is what matters most; cause and effect far outweigh the benefits of wealth and fame in this present life. One should value cause and effect, and not wait until it is too late to regret. The Sahā world is one great dye vat—there are extremely few who are not tainted by evil, extremely few who can keep themselves pure alone, extremely few who can withdraw with clean hands.

So who, exactly, are the "successful people" in life? What is meant by success? What is the definition of success? How long must success last before it counts as success? The myriad states and appearances of the world manifest perversity to the fullest extent. After encountering the Buddhadharma, if you wish to keep yourself pure alone, you should work from sunrise and rest at sunset, eat and drink your fill, have a dwelling that shelters you from wind and rain, and devote all remaining time to cultivation, passing your days in peace and stability—think of nothing else, for thinking of anything else generates evil karma.