Our happiness depends on that of others
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Among all the clumsy, blind and extreme ways we go about building happiness, one of the most sterile is egocentrism. “When selfish happiness is the only goal in life, life soon becomes goalless,” wrote Romain Rolland. Even if we display every outward sign of happiness, we can never be truly happy if we dissociate ourselves from the happiness of others. This in no way requires us to neglect our own happiness. Our desire for happiness is as legitimate as anyone else’s. And in order to love others, we must learn to love ourselves. It’s not about swooning over the color of our own eyes, our figure or some personality trait, but about giving due recognition to the desire to live each moment of existence as a moment of meaning and fulfillment. To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.
In brief, the goal of life is a deep state of well-being and wisdom at all moments, accompanied by love for every being, and not by that individual love that modern society relentlessly drums into us. True happiness arises from the essential goodness that wholeheartedly desires everyone to find meaning in their lives. It is a love that is always available, without showiness or self-interest. The immutable simplicity of a good heart.
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Showing posts with label buddhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buddhism. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Simple to understand, hard to always do
Compassion:
noun
1.
a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
noun
1.
a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Dalai Lama's panel discussion in Fayetteville
Currently waiting to watch the Dalai Lama's panel discussion on nonviolence, Turning Swords Into Plowshares: The Many Paths of Nonviolence, at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. I'm sure there will be much to blog about later. Will update.
UPDATE (again): Well, something happened on Blogger, and my update I posted yesterday was deleted, so I'll try to recreate it.
The panel discussion also featured Dr. Vincent Harding, a civil rights activist and professor that wrote the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered about the US involvement in Vietnam in 1967, and Sister Helen Prejean, a nun that has worked in the prison system and wrote "Dead Man Walking".
These were the points I took away from the panel:
1. Our actions have motivations for them to become actions. We need to have our motivation be compassion, instead of fear, anger or hatred, like is so common in our culture right now. Compassion must come from within and be genuine. It is not pity. It is a general understanding and wish that all beings find peace and happiness. Nonviolence can be achieved by having compassion be our motivation for our actions. It does not entail that we "roll over" for our enemies either. We must still sometimes prevent wrongdoing, but we should still hold compassion for our enemies, or the cycle of violence will continue.
2. Our enemies are our teachers. In order to practice compassion and forgiveness, we must engage in productive ways with our enemies. It is easy to be compassionate and forgiving to our friends, family, etc., but it is hard to do this with your enemies. We must understand one another, and that all of us want basically the same things. In finding the commonalities, in finding that our enemies are not "demons", but humans with motivations and emotions and makeup similar to our own, it will be easier to find compassion and forgiveness. But this cannot happen if we do not bother to engage in a meaningful way with our enemies.
3. Holding on to fear, anger, hatred, etc. takes time and energy. This energy is better spent on simply trying to do good things; helping people (even if it's just one person); making things better. If you instead try to do good, you simply will not have time for hatred.
I can't help but feel like what I wrote yesterday was better, but the basics were the same. As soon as I can find some video and/or transcripts of the talks, I will post that as well.
UPDATE (again): Well, something happened on Blogger, and my update I posted yesterday was deleted, so I'll try to recreate it.
The panel discussion also featured Dr. Vincent Harding, a civil rights activist and professor that wrote the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered about the US involvement in Vietnam in 1967, and Sister Helen Prejean, a nun that has worked in the prison system and wrote "Dead Man Walking".
These were the points I took away from the panel:
1. Our actions have motivations for them to become actions. We need to have our motivation be compassion, instead of fear, anger or hatred, like is so common in our culture right now. Compassion must come from within and be genuine. It is not pity. It is a general understanding and wish that all beings find peace and happiness. Nonviolence can be achieved by having compassion be our motivation for our actions. It does not entail that we "roll over" for our enemies either. We must still sometimes prevent wrongdoing, but we should still hold compassion for our enemies, or the cycle of violence will continue.
2. Our enemies are our teachers. In order to practice compassion and forgiveness, we must engage in productive ways with our enemies. It is easy to be compassionate and forgiving to our friends, family, etc., but it is hard to do this with your enemies. We must understand one another, and that all of us want basically the same things. In finding the commonalities, in finding that our enemies are not "demons", but humans with motivations and emotions and makeup similar to our own, it will be easier to find compassion and forgiveness. But this cannot happen if we do not bother to engage in a meaningful way with our enemies.
3. Holding on to fear, anger, hatred, etc. takes time and energy. This energy is better spent on simply trying to do good things; helping people (even if it's just one person); making things better. If you instead try to do good, you simply will not have time for hatred.
I can't help but feel like what I wrote yesterday was better, but the basics were the same. As soon as I can find some video and/or transcripts of the talks, I will post that as well.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Some brief thoughts on celebrating death
So after about a decade and a half of being on the Most Wanted list, Osama Bin Laden has been killed. Without really finding a delicate way to say what I'd like to say about such a passionate subject, I'll just pose some questions and brief thoughts.
Is the world really better off without this man? I have no doubt that he was at least, misguided, and at worst, despicably evil. I understand the emotions surrounding his death at U.S. hands. While I know no one personally, directly affected by what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, that event did hurt us all. We all felt it in a rare moment of national (perhaps international) emotional gestalt. I understand the human need to place blame and seek vengeance. I'm pretty sure I would kill to protect people I love without pausing to feel conflicted about it. These are natural, human reactions, and we're all human. And I understand that.
But what happens later? Why must we always think and react with the reptilian part of our brains? While I could no doubt kill someone intending my loved ones harm, I can't as certainly proclaim that it wouldn't haunt me later. This is what you should be thinking about when you get patriotic about our servicemen. That they kept you from having to make those decisions that may haunt you for the rest of your life.
While I believe it was probably an unavoidable blow that had to be given, I hope it has the meaning that we wanted it to have. I hope that it becomes a goal that was worth all the time, money and lives spent in achieving it. I am not a nationalistic chest beater, but I see the importance (and maybe even the necessity of this event). But what saddens me is seeing how people react to it. Whenever I would see some third world country's streets full of revelers over the death of some overthrown or assassinated leader, beating effigies or burning flags, I always thought, "How primitive." And now I see that we have shown the world our primitive side too. It's no wonder that we can't get along better when we run through the streets in exuberant celebration of someone's death.
I understand it, and I empathize, but I'm not sure it's the right response. I don't want to deny anyone healing that needs it, but taking pleasure in the death of someone (no matter how despicable), and in some cases going even further to wish your particular brand of eternal damnation on a being, seems like a dark blemish on the soul, not a healing salve. When dealing with loss, do we assemble totems that will bring the object of our loss back to us, or do we instead find a way to accept and move on. To live our lives well, as the saying goes.
Please ask yourselves some of these things as you think about current events, and if you feel like dancing in the streets, maybe try this celebration in it's place: Here's to living our lives well. Here's to being better. And here's to hope that we can all heal our wounds without inflicting new wounds on others.
Be good to one another.
Is the world really better off without this man? I have no doubt that he was at least, misguided, and at worst, despicably evil. I understand the emotions surrounding his death at U.S. hands. While I know no one personally, directly affected by what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, that event did hurt us all. We all felt it in a rare moment of national (perhaps international) emotional gestalt. I understand the human need to place blame and seek vengeance. I'm pretty sure I would kill to protect people I love without pausing to feel conflicted about it. These are natural, human reactions, and we're all human. And I understand that.
But what happens later? Why must we always think and react with the reptilian part of our brains? While I could no doubt kill someone intending my loved ones harm, I can't as certainly proclaim that it wouldn't haunt me later. This is what you should be thinking about when you get patriotic about our servicemen. That they kept you from having to make those decisions that may haunt you for the rest of your life.
While I believe it was probably an unavoidable blow that had to be given, I hope it has the meaning that we wanted it to have. I hope that it becomes a goal that was worth all the time, money and lives spent in achieving it. I am not a nationalistic chest beater, but I see the importance (and maybe even the necessity of this event). But what saddens me is seeing how people react to it. Whenever I would see some third world country's streets full of revelers over the death of some overthrown or assassinated leader, beating effigies or burning flags, I always thought, "How primitive." And now I see that we have shown the world our primitive side too. It's no wonder that we can't get along better when we run through the streets in exuberant celebration of someone's death.
I understand it, and I empathize, but I'm not sure it's the right response. I don't want to deny anyone healing that needs it, but taking pleasure in the death of someone (no matter how despicable), and in some cases going even further to wish your particular brand of eternal damnation on a being, seems like a dark blemish on the soul, not a healing salve. When dealing with loss, do we assemble totems that will bring the object of our loss back to us, or do we instead find a way to accept and move on. To live our lives well, as the saying goes.
Please ask yourselves some of these things as you think about current events, and if you feel like dancing in the streets, maybe try this celebration in it's place: Here's to living our lives well. Here's to being better. And here's to hope that we can all heal our wounds without inflicting new wounds on others.
Be good to one another.
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