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Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts

A Relief Society lesson in which I shared my meditation practice

0 comments Posted by weaselby at 1:49 PM

One lesson from church today was really excellent, beautiful, and absolutely in the same vein as my current study of universal altruism, compassion, and lovingkindness. I even got to share how I've been using meditation to actively cultivate lovingkindness for others (the lovingkindness or metta meditation). I got great feedback :) So, I'm going to type up a few passages that struck me with special force or clarity. They're from chapter 22 of Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow, "Doing Good to Others":

"We  are of the same Father in the celestial worlds. ... If we knew each other as we should,...our sympathies would be excited more than they are at the present time, and there would be a desire on the part of every individual to study in their own minds how they might do their brethren good, how they might alleviate their sorrows and build them up in truth, how  [they might] remove the darkness from their minds. If we understand each other and the real relationship which we hold to each other, we should feel different from what we do; but this knowledge can be obtained only as we obtain the Spirit of life, and as we are desirous of building each other up in righteousness."

"We have been sent into the world to go good to others' and in doing good to other we do good to ourselves." 

"We should be friends everywhere and to everybody. There is no Latter-day Saint that hates the world: but we are friends to the world, we are obliged to be, so far as they are concerned. We must learn to extend our charity and labor in the interests of all mankind, This is the mission of the Latter-day Saints--not simply confine it to ourselves, but to spread it abroad, as it of necessity must be extended to all mankind."

That was really beautiful. LDS culture can tend to be insular and isolationist. It's not supposed to be that way. The gospel is not that way. Human compassion, love, and connectedness know no bounds. Thank you, Lorenzo Snow.

"Cultivate a spirit of charity; be ready to do for others more than you would expect from them if circumstances were reversed."

I know it's popular and makes sense to "look out for #1, because no one else is going to," but imagine if everyone practiced the above, to do for others more than they expect to be done for themselves. Everyone would be amply cared for. I know it sounds naive and utopianistic, but it's beautiful and is possible. It's just that everyone has to do it. And the only person you can personally ensure does this is you. There's that quote attributed to Gandhi, "be the change you wish to see in the world." Love it. But in the interest of accuracy, since that's not exactly what Gandhi said, here's the closest actual attributed quote: 
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.”  Both work for what I'm trying to say, so enjoy :)

"We have just got to feel...that there are other people besides ourselves; we have got to look into the hearts and feelings of others and become more godly than what we are now. ... Now if you want to get heaven within you and to get into heaven you want to pursue that course that angles do who are in heaven. If you want to know how you are to increase, I will tell you, it is by getting godliness within you. ... A person never can enjoy heaven until he learns how to get it, and to act upon its principles."

Godliness is, to my mind, the attributes of God: love, compassion, charity. Also, faith, virtue, knowledge, patience, brotherly kindness, humility, and diligence (D&C 4:6). So, taking care of others and cultivating love and charity make us more godly and bring heaven to us and us to heaven. More support for my current experimentation with all the good I'm finding through Buddhism. :)

And, with that very eloquent segue, here is an excerpt from Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva (Padmakara Translation Group edition). It's from the chapter "Taking Hold of Bodhichitta" ("bodhichitta" being "enlightenment mind," the mind that strives toward awakening and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings):

For all those ailing in the world,
Until their every sickness has been healed,
May I myself become for them
The doctor, nurse, the medicine itself.

Raining down a flood of food and drink,
May I dispel the ills of thirst and famine.
And in the aeons marked by scarcity and want,
May I myself appear as drink and sustenance.

For sentient beings, poor and destitute,
May I become a treasure ever-plentiful,
And lie before them closely in their reach,
A varied source of all that they might need.

My body, thus, and all my goods besides,
And all my merits gained and to be gained,
I give them all and do not count the cost,
To bring about the benefit of beings.

Nirvana [to me, oneness with God] is attained by giving all,
Nirvana is the object of my striving;
And all must be surrendered in a single instant,
Therefore it is best to give all to others. (3:7-12)

May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road.
For those who wish to cross the water,
May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.

May I be an isle for those who yearn for land,
A lamp for those who long for light;
For all those who need a resting place, a bed;
For those who need a servant, may I be their slave.

May I be the wishing jewel, the vase of wealth,
A word of power and the supreme healing,
May I be the tree of miracles,
For every being the abundant cow.

Just like the earth and space itself
And all the other might elements,
For boundless multitudes of beings
May I always be the ground of life, the source of varied sustenance.

Thus for everything that lives,
As far as are the limits of the sky,
May I be constantly their source of livelihood
Until they pass beyond all sorrow. (3:18-22)

 

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Friendship

0 comments Posted by weaselby at 11:55 AM

"What is so powerful about this ideal of friendship is the way it can reconcile the absolute and the personal. You can disagree about the choice of carpet color and remain friends. A Buddhist can be friends with a Christian without either trying to convert the other. In friendship differences can be respected and even enjoyed. In relationships lacking friendship, differences can zoom out of proportion and become ethnic, religious, or ideological divisions. We demonize the threatening other, project our shadow upon them, and find conflict. Friendship is the supreme expression of compassion and tolerance with respect for the primacy of truth over all subjective tendencies. But friendship reminds us that the objectivity of truth does not reject the subjective. It integrates the particular and the universal, achieving the coincidentia oppositorum, the reconciliation of opposites. Nicholas of Cusa, a fifteenth-century cardinal, statesman, mathematician, and mystic, said that God is found "beyond the coincidence of contradictories."

There is a simple test to determine whether one's pursuit of truth has lost contact with this touchstone of friendship. When we hear on the news that a Catholic person has been shot in Belfast, or an Israeli soldier has died on the West Bank, or so many Chinese baby girls have disappeared from an orphanage, or so many Tibetans have been killed--are we hearing a news item about individual people, or about ehtnic or religious groups? Do we perceive the murdered Israeli soldier or Palestinian demonstrator as a Jew or an Arab, or as a human being who happens to be a Jew or an Arab? How do the figures strike us--as individual tragedies or as statistics that are being used as political weapons?"

-page 9 of the introduction to The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, by The Dalai Lama

 

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