Graciousness: a timeless virtue.  

What a lovely, old-fashioned word.

Graciousness brings to mind ladies in hooped skirts and men in top hats out for a morning stroll through the park. Yes, well, that’s an unfortunate image. Why? Because graciousness is the unselfish offering of courtesy, being accommodating and kind, and respecting others and being at ease with oneself.

It’s not a virtue we should ascribe to a past age.

We need it today if there is to be a tomorrow.

Let’s fast-forward one of those couples to today. Fully kitted out for their morning jog, smartphones tucked into their own armbands, and earbuds in, our couple is busily making calls to get an early start on the day. In their world, our world too, there’s no time for “graciousness.” Really?

There’s no time to let someone give his opinion before offering yours?

No time to let someone in line ahead of you?

Compliment a co-worker on a job well done?

Play with your child?

No time?

There’s always time for the things we want to do.

Always.

Don’t allow that negative thought

to become your new mantra. 

Something is seen or heard that bothers us, a lot. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t thoughtful. It’s not supposed to be that way. Whatever the reason, we are incapable of just brushing the thought aside and getting on with our life. It’s pretty ironic when you think of it.

What we want to do is focus on the thought of Amituofo, but our mind keeps sliding away from him.

What we don’t want to do is keep thinking the negative thought, but our mind keeps returning to it as surely as chicks scurry back to the mother hen.

We end up turning those irritating thoughts into our latest mantra; reviewing them like a favorite movie, refining them as if editing the next best-seller. Maybe our returning is understandable: the irritation is right outside our window. Or perhaps we just can’t, actually won’t, forgive and forget. Well, we need to.

If you were to die right now, what would you want to be thinking of—Amituofo or that thought?

Different doesn’t mean wrong. 

Thousands of years ago, only trusting those who looked like you could have saved your life.

Strangers, people who looked different, might well kill you. Reasonable in light of how they too had been taught not to trust those who didn’t look like them. So with survival the foremost concern, humans had a good reason to distrust anyone first, outside their family; then, their clan; and, in time, their village.

Gradually, distrust embedded itself in our DNA and store consciousness. In dangerous times and circumstances, such distrust was understandable. But most of us now live in a very different world. Distrusting others because they appear different doesn’t save us; it eviscerates us and crushes others. Why?

Differentiating arises from dualism: me vs them.

It personifies ego attachment: I’m right, so whatever they think and do is wrong.

It shows ignorance of causality: if they gain, I lose.

It robs others of happiness; gives fear, not fearlessness; kills hope. It holds the ultimate power to destroy he who destroys.