“In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away” – Shing Xiong

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Our Job

Another student was saying to me that in Practice Management they were talking about where they would like to work after graduation, but that the state of the world is so unstable that we may not have the choices we think we do. She re-opened my eyes to the job before us.

The problems she mentioned were global warming, rising sea levels, drought, starvation, impending doom and we agreed all these were traceable to human greed. What we didn't get to finish discussing because class started was that we CAN do something about this - when we change ourselves by practicing Generosity, Compassion and Wisdom the ripples that spread out change others and in this way we can and do impact the world around us, the layers of dimensional overlap that we experience, if not all those that exist at least those we experience.

The irony is that direct action is ineffective and only by creating those ripples can we actually do something. That's my understanding of Buddhist practice anyway. Of course part of the practice is to determine how best to cultivate and implement and then actually perform with Generosity, Compassion and Wisdom but starting on the cushion and taking it with us 24/7 is the job at hand.

Thinking there is no hope is not discerning the potential hidden from us by media manipulation of information and our own fear. We need to learn about and contemplate and support all the exciting developments in tech and community that are happening around the world that the media doesn't want us to know about because how we live and spend is valuable to certain corporations. We also have to focus right here where we live on being kind and having integrity and we can count on the ripples from that having an impact we may not see but will benefit from.

No comments:

Post a Comment