Free from Hostility

 

If in small everyday situations we can start responding from the mind that is not swayed by emotions—the mind of sympathy and love that is free of hatred and bitterness—we will be planting good seeds. These good seeds will mature into good condi­tions. With good conditions, we can continue to practice. Our practice of morality and of respecting and not harming others will further increase our good conditions. With such conditions, the bad seeds will not have the opportunity to mature , and we will not find ourselves in violent situations.

Following the Buddha’s advice, we should strive to never lose our calm, clear mind and never utter harsh or evil words but instead treat others with a mind of sympathy and compassion. Letting go of our anger, we will permeate the entire world with an awareness imbued with concern—unreserved, infinite, and free from hostility and ill will.

Three Jewels

The Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. They are called jewels because they are of immeasurable value.

All Buddhas strive to teach us universal truths that will enable us to awaken—to uncover the true nature within each of us and escape suffering and attain happiness. Their determination to help us as well as their patience in teaching us is infinite. While our love for others is transitory, the Buddhas’ love for all beings is endless. Our love is conditional and discriminatory, but the Buddhas’ love is unconditional and held equally for all beings.

Buddhas help us by teaching us the principles of reality, principles such as causality; the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena; the non-existence of a permanent, independent self; and the interconnectedness of everything that exists. In other words, they teach us the universal, eternal laws of the cosmos—the Dharma. When we truly comprehend these teachings, we will then be able to eliminate our mistaken views and, instead, have right views and correct understanding. When we do not have such understanding, we will continue to wander aimlessly throughout countless lifetimes, immersed in our ignorance and delusion.

We improve our understanding and practice the teachings with the support of the Sangha, the community of those who practice the teachings. With the help of good friends on the path, we strive to attain purity of mind and to live lives of harmony. The pure mind is the mind that has no wandering thoughts and discriminations. It has no worries, no attach­ments, no thoughts of like or dislike. To live lives of harmony is to be gentle and caring in our thoughts and behavior.

We express our gratitude to the Three Jewels by endeavoring to practice as the Buddhas have taught us. How? By being content with the circumstances we find ourselves in. By listening to what the other person is saying, instead of being pre-occupied with our own self-interest. By empathizing with the pain and disappointment in the lives of those we encounter. Ultimately, we express our gratitude by awakening to correct views and understanding, and attaining purity of mind and living in harmony with all beings. In this way, we will begin to repay our immense debt to the Three Jewels for all their patience and help.

Hearing Its Own Sound

When your mind is in a state of torpor or when delusive thoughts arise unchecked, compose yourself and recite the Buddha's name aloud a few hundred times. You will then naturally experience a pure, peaceful state. This is because the faculty of hearing is very keen and therefore people are easily influenced by external factors which disturb the mind and lead to errant, delusive thoughts. Thus, you need to recite aloud to control the faculty of hearing and enlighten the mind. When the mind hears only its own sounds, each sound in its totality following upon the one before, all thoughts of right and wrong, what should and should not be done, are naturally abandoned.

~ Taming the Monkey Mind, 

Benefiting Self, Others, and All

 

One day, Ananda explained to the monks that those who give in to greed do not understand what is meant by benefiting self, benefiting others, and benefiting all.

We can see from our experience that our craving is usually of a selfish nature: we want something either for ourselves or for those close to us. The satisfaction of this craving is a temporary sense-indulgence that brings us short-lived happiness.

The only way to truly benefit ourselves is to awaken—in other words, to transcend the cycle of rebirth—whereby we obtain lasting liberation and genuine happiness. Until we free ourselves from rebirth, we will not be liberated. As long as we remain within the cycle of rebirth, we are bound by craving and ignorance and will not find true liberation or happiness.

In benefiting others, we move beyond thoughts of self to those of others. At this point, we will realize that all beings, not just ourselves, wish to eliminate suffering and attain happiness. With this realization, we will want to help others accomplish this. We begin by wishing that those we love and care for would attain happiness. Then we wish the same for those we do not know and, gradually, for those we do not like. Ultimately, we will develop the wish for all beings to be free from suffering and to attain happiness.

When we shift the focus of our wish for happiness and liberation away from just ourselves, we will begin to think less of our own happiness. Instead of looking at everything in a self-centered way, we will transform our thoughts into those of caring for others. We will stop asking what is in it for us and will instead ask how we can help others.

The concepts of benefiting ourselves and benefiting others occur at a low level of realization. When our understanding reaches a higher level, we will realize that all beings are one and that there is no duality between self and other. To benefit one being is to benefit all beings. Therefore, to benefit others is to benefit oneself. Realizing this interconnectivity among all beings will enable us to realize that we do not need to worry about self-benefit because when we help the whole, we help ourselves. So, there is no need to worry about “me.”

Fundamental Flaw

Wrong thoughts are our personal opinions, which arise in response to external sensory stimuli. Relying on this sensory input, we think about what we have encountered and draw conclusions based on what we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. Then, we begin to label some things good and others bad, some pleasant and others unpleasant. In other words, we begin to discriminate, seeing duality in everything.

The fundamental flaw in this process is the reliance on our senses. What we fail to consider is the fact that our breadth of exposure is minimal at best and that our senses may well be faulty. Consider the Buddha’s account of a group of men blind from birth trying to describe an elephant. Each of the men was taken to a different part of the elephant: its head, an ear, a tusk, its trunk, its stomach, a foot, its tail, and the tuft of its tail. The blind men in turn said that the elephant was like a pot, a basket, a ploughshare, a plow, a storehouse, a pillar, a pestle, and a brush. The men then began to argue with one another and even came to blows over the matter.

These reasonable but limited answers were the result of knowing only a part of the truth, not the whole. And sadly, like those blind men, most of us also encounter only a part of the truth. We, too, cling stubbornly to our own viewpoints, convinced that we have all the facts. And thinking that we have all the facts and feeling confident of our conclusions, we reject the views of others. Thus, our ignorance arises from our wrong thoughts. The manifestation of our ignorance is our attachment to our wrong thoughts, and this inevitably intensifies our ignorance.