When realizing we failed to react compassionately,

imagine how a role model would have reacted, 

 can help us improve. 

If we have been cultivating for a while, when something predictable happens we would expect to react better than we would have previously. But what of the times when we’re so surprised it’s as if we never learned Buddhism?

Or good manners, apparently.

For example, shocked by a person’s unexpected decline in health, we fail to adapt to his new condition quickly enough to bring him a chair.

Relieved and elated that a dreaded visit went well, we fail to offer to help the person get to her next destination.

Imagining how a bodhisattva would have reacted in the circumstances is one option, but trying to emulate an awakened being can be daunting. Much less intimidating is envisioning how someone we know and admire would have acted. Repeatedly doing this when we fail to measure up should prepare us to react more thoughtfully in the future regardless of the circumstances.   

When entering a Buddhist center, 

we need to leave more than our shoes at the door. 

Upon first entering the cultivation hall in a Buddhist center, most of us look around with a mixture of curiosity and respect, and try to follow what everyone else is doing. Hopefully, after attending for some time, we settle in and contentedly follow the established rules and procedures, focusing on our practice, not the established form.

But other people may find that, instead of according with the proceedings, they begin wondering why things are done in a certain way. Another center does things differently. Why can’t things here be done like that?

With such thinking, we will have entered the hall with excess baggage—our attachments. A vital part of self-cultivation is letting go of personal preferences and remembering that when things work, just not the way you’d like them to, is fine.

So when leaving your shoes at the door, remember to also leave your attachments.

Be careful with words. 

What we heedlessly say 

may haunt others the rest of their lives. 

We all know the feeling. Someone we admire or trust inadvertently says something, and it feels like she just slapped us. Caught completely off-guard, we may say something, but more likely we’re too dazed to. The moment passes, and the person moves on to another topic. Slowly we recover, but the pain remains.

We may not think of what the person said for years until something triggers the memory and those words rise anew. And with them the pain. Thus etched in our memory, we realize what was said so long ago has the power to haunt us for the rest of our life, arising unbidden at the strangest, most seemingly unrelated provocation. Had the person realized her casually-spoken words would cause us such pain, would hound us with their needless presence, she wouldn’t have dreamed of saying them.

She just didn’t think.

We can.

And need to.