A friend of mine and I were talking about religion,
politics, etc... That is how a conversation
with me normally goes whether anyone likes it or not…
So, he was telling me about the writings of the Dalai Lama, which made me want
to learn more about it. I've known a little about the Buddhist religion
and have agreed with most of the teachings, but I had never really delved into
all of it as I do with everything else.
This little excerpt really spoke to me.
Friends and enemies
I
must emphasize again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and
patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and
then attempt to practice them.
And
who creates such opportunities? Not our
friends, of course, but our enemies. They
are the ones who give us the most trouble, so if we truly wish to learn, we
should consider enemies to be our best teacher!
For
a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is
essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies,
for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind! Also, it is often the case in both personal
and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.
So
anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless we train our minds and
work to reduce their negative force, they will continue to disturb us and
disrupt our attempts to develop a calm mind.
Anger and hatred are our real enemies.
These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the
temporary "enemies" who appear intermittently throughout life.
Of
course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be
selfish, you should be very altruistic! You
should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them,
serve them, make more friends, make more smiles, the result? When you yourself need help, you find plenty
of helpers! If, on the other hand, you
neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. And is friendship produced through quarrels
and anger, jealousy and intense competitiveness? I do not think so. Only affection brings us genuine close
friends.
In
today's materialistic society, if you have money and power, you seem to have
many friends. But they are not friends
of yours; they are the friends of your money and power. When you lose your wealth and influence, you
will find it very difficult to track these people down.
The
trouble is that when things in the world go well for us, we become confident
that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our
status and health decline, we quickly realize how wrong we were. That is the moment when we learn who is
really helpful and who is completely useless.
So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us
when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism!
Though
sometimes people laugh when I say it, I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this, I have the problem of
knowing how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, in particular,
genuine smiles. For there are many kinds
of smile, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic smiles. Many smiles produce no feeling of
satisfaction, and sometimes they can even create suspicion or fear, can't they? But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling
of freshness and is, I believe, unique to human beings. If these are the smiles we want, then we
ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.
You can find more about ‘Compassion and the
Individual' at: http://www.dalailama.com/page.166.htm
Even though I, myself, am a practicing
Christian, I understand Mahatma Gandhi's stance, "I love your Christ.
It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ." It seems, though, that both religions are
quite similar in that they both preach respect for one another, unconditional
love, and compassion among other qualities revolving around kindness and
love.
It
seems we could all use a genuine smile a day… perhaps we should start out by
giving one, and pretty soon, maybe we all will begin to receive.
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