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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: Helena on May 29, 2011, 06:21:36 PM
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I would like to share this beautiful address that the famous author, J.K. Rowling delivered at the Harvard Commencement Ceremony for the Graduates of 2008. As you all well know, she is famous for her "Harry Potter" series. But more than that, she brought back the love of reading in the British communities where kids had started to stop reading altogether.
Here, Ms. Rowling spoke of many things - from her own fear, to failure to cruelty of mankind and to what greatness each being can achieve. This is really no different than us being in our spiritual journey.
Sometimes, I think a lot of people venture into spirituality thinking or expecting to find some peace so that they can continue being just as they are without the pain and guilt. But in true spiritual journey, we walk the path to find the ultimate goal which is enlightenment and that would take us into many scary revelations about ourselves.
Many a times, we are afraid to face these scary revelations. Hence, we stop or abandon our spiritual path altogether. And this is where we truly lose out.
I hope you will enjoy reading Ms. Rowling's speech as much as I have. I have taken the liberty to highlight the bits I love in BOLD.
Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/
I know it is very long to read. But I do find it most relevant to each of our own spiritual journey as well. Sometimes we fall and many times we fail. But in our failures, we do learn important lessons and perhaps, even catch a closer look into the people we are. I like how Ms. Rowling shared how her failure had helped her find out who she really is and propelled her to follow her dreams.
In Dharma, I do not think even our Gurus can stop us from committing mistakes and spare us from the bad karma that we will incur. If only they could, our learning curves would be much shorter.
I think it is precisely in going through the journey and walking the path, even if it is scary and painful, even if we do fail - we will see our true self.
This is Ms. Rowling's entire speech.
Text as delivered.
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.
So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank-you very much.
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Thank you , Helena, for sharing J.K. Rowling”s inspiring speech with us. In the Dharmic sense, what Rowling describes as failure in life is only failure in conventional (worldly)terms. Following societal conventions, one is a success in life if one has graduated with a degree, has a great job and has married a dream man and realized a family of one or more kids. But these are merely societal norms and in today’s quicksands of life, many have floundered and failed to live up to these societal norms. Those who are seen as being highly successful in public, are, in private, living lives of greater misery than the so –called failures of life.
When, Rowling finally realized the truth about herself (by breaking the bonds of conventions), it set her free to soar to full realization of her real potential for living life meaningfully, with love and compassion, stemming from her ability to use her imagination to empathize with the poor downtrodden suffering beings who were victims of terrible totalitarian regimes.
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Failure is only failure when one has not tried.
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Thank you Helena for sharing JK Rowling's speech.
It is long but I urge everyone to read it.
Extremely inspiring, compassionate, uplifting ...........
The world would be a better place if we start to emulate the better qualities of one another.
Like what hope rainbow said, "Failure is failure when one has not tried."
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Failure is only failure when one has not tried.
Indeed.... We cannot say we have failed when we have not tried. Nor can we say we are going to fail if we do not try. Hence failure is really an excuse for NOT DOING. Because, if you think about it on a deeper level, one has not "failed" when one has tried. If we learn from our "failures" so to speak, we are actually gaining and progressing:
Thomas J. Watson is attributed with saying "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate".
This illustrates the importance/benefits of failure because it then gives us our own personal yardstick to success. We are all different hence we all have very different yardsticks!
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Failure is only failure when one has not tried.
Indeed.... We cannot say we have failed when we have not tried. Nor can we say we are going to fail if we do not try. Hence failure is really an excuse for NOT DOING. Because, if you think about it on a deeper level, one has not "failed" when one has tried. If we learn from our "failures" so to speak, we are actually gaining and progressing:
Thomas J. Watson is attributed with saying "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate".
This illustrates the importance/benefits of failure because it then gives us our own personal yardstick to success. We are all different hence we all have very different yardsticks!
I can't agree more. The reason we don't try or embark on anything is probably we are afraid to fail when we thread on unfamiliar territory. However, if do not try at all we will never progress and we will stay the way are because we don't know better.
Without trying, there is no new input and therefore no basis to move forward. If we have tried and we succeed, all good and well but if we fail, we can learn from what made us fail and don't go onto the same path again or we may even discover the path that makes us succeed in the process.
Therefore in this way we can say that failure is the basis for success provided we see it as an education process and not the end of the world.
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Afraid to fail is just the same as afraid to let people see us down.
Basically we are protecting our super mighty EGO.
In order to protect our EGO we would rather not to do anything then letting people find out that we are not good. This just make us stay back and always leave in our comfort zone.
It's not easy to put our EGO down especially as we grown older. Our EGO grow bigger together with our age.
If we don't cut or stop it now it just going to get worst later and come to a stage there is no point of return but just finding ways to cover our mistake with lies, blame, excuses…….or just stand still not doing anything.
But if we understand that Failure is just part of the process for us to learn and turn it over for success then make much more sense for people not to afraid of failure but it is just a journey that every single person will go through to succeed.
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For me, there are two ways to look at failure.
If it is from an ego point of view, it is self-cherishing and how do you know when it is self cherishing? Observe how your mind reacts and your emotions are responding. The fear will surface, because we know if we fail, we will feel humiliated, embarrassed or ashamed. We do not want anyone to know that we have made a mistake or failed, and we try to hide or cover up. Every action and even our speech will reflect the self cherishing nature in us. It is automatic.
The other way to look at failure is one that is detached from ego. It has nothing to do with gaining fame if we succeed or feeling ashamed or humiliated if we fail. In fact, we are more concerned with those around us and the lessons learnt. We will want to share our failures or learnings with as many people as possible so that they too may learn and avoid the pains you went through. And you'd rather have yourself fail than someone else. Because you realise you can endure the misery but someone else may need that success more than you.
These are some of the observations that I can share in my own experience. I am sure there are more ways than this, as people are different.
The real benefits of failures are the lessons that come with it. When lessons are learnt and shared, everyone will gain knowledge as a result of our failure. Hence, it becomes a positive thing.
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For me, there are two ways to look at failure.
If it is from an ego point of view, it is self-cherishing and how do you know when it is self cherishing? Observe how your mind reacts and your emotions are responding. The fear will surface, because we know if we fail, we will feel humiliated, embarrassed or ashamed. We do not want anyone to know that we have made a mistake or failed, and we try to hide or cover up. Every action and even our speech will reflect the self cherishing nature in us. It is automatic.
The other way to look at failure is one that is detached from ego. It has nothing to do with gaining fame if we succeed or feeling ashamed or humiliated if we fail. In fact, we are more concerned with those around us and the lessons learnt. We will want to share our failures or learnings with as many people as possible so that they too may learn and avoid the pains you went through. And you'd rather have yourself fail than someone else. Because you realise you can endure the misery but someone else may need that success more than you.
Thanks Helena, I agree with you.
In fact there are many examples of people that are considered "successful" by society standard but are mostly failure from a simple point of view of how beneficial they have been to others (and themselves).
What's the point of getting rich and famous when we have made people un-happy, when we have accumulated hatred, when we have stolen, cheated etc... There is no gain.
No, no,no, there is NOTHING wrong with being rich and famous (or not), that's not what I am saying here, but it is not a relevant criteria for failure or not when we come down to what really matters.
My goal = being rich. I succeed at it = I am not a failure. I fail = I am a failure.
At the end of the day, when I die, can my money help me? NO = I have failed to help me, even if society sees me as a success.
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For me, there are two ways to look at failure.
If it is from an ego point of view, it is self-cherishing and how do you know when it is self cherishing? Observe how your mind reacts and your emotions are responding. The fear will surface, because we know if we fail, we will feel humiliated, embarrassed or ashamed. We do not want anyone to know that we have made a mistake or failed, and we try to hide or cover up. Every action and even our speech will reflect the self cherishing nature in us. It is automatic.
The other way to look at failure is one that is detached from ego. It has nothing to do with gaining fame if we succeed or feeling ashamed or humiliated if we fail. In fact, we are more concerned with those around us and the lessons learnt. We will want to share our failures or learnings with as many people as possible so that they too may learn and avoid the pains you went through. And you'd rather have yourself fail than someone else. Because you realise you can endure the misery but someone else may need that success more than you.
These are some of the observations that I can share in my own experience. I am sure there are more ways than this, as people are different.
The real benefits of failures are the lessons that come with it. When lessons are learnt and shared, everyone will gain knowledge as a result of our failure. Hence, it becomes a positive thing.
Dear Helena,
It is interesting how you have pointed out here that we indeed do things automatically. And most often than not, it is the not so nice things that we are so automatic about. Could it be years of feeding the self cherishing mind? An instinctual survival mechanism of the ever inflating AND inflated EGO? Whichever the case, I and I am sure all of us are guilty of to varying degrees.
Why is this though I ask myself? Is it really "easier" to cover or justify or even deny than it is to just plain own up to our shortcomings or faults? If one puts it into such a context, the latter seems easier than the latter as the latter requires a string of "lies" to make up for that very shortcoming. Strange how our self cherishing mind works isnt it! It really is not the easiest way out but the harder one...
Hence coming back to the benefits of failure... This short and sweet sentence really says it all! To fail is beneficial should we choose to accept and grow from it. To fail and accept without the realisation that we need to better or improve ourselves is no better than the mountains of justifications or lies. Just my thoughts! :)
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The other way to look at failure is one that is detached from ego. It has nothing to do with gaining fame if we succeed or feeling ashamed or humiliated if we fail. In fact, we are more concerned with those around us and the lessons learnt. We will want to share our failures or learnings with as many people as possible so that they too may learn and avoid the pains you went through. And you'd rather have yourself fail than someone else. Because you realise you can endure the misery but someone else may need that success more than you.
Dear Helena, I really like how you look at failure above. I believe this is a truly spiritual way of looking at failure and an example of absorbing suffering for the sake of others. It is true that if failure has got any value, it is the lesson that we learn from it and how we use it for the benefit of others and our spiritual progress.
Sharing our failure with a mind so that others may also learn from it and do not have to go through the same type of pain you went through is beautiful.. It takes a certain type of detachment to be able to do that. We need to have been able to overcome the pain, learn the lesson in it and really have the mind to benefit others. I find this way of looking at failure very inspiring.
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I can't remember who but some wise man said that ' Failure is THE path ". I think this is the message that Rinpoche wants us to grasp. This is most appropriate with regard to spiritual paths.
If we attend a Dharma talk and whatever that was taught was agreeable to us , it means we did not learn anything new. Smooth sailing does not equate with spiritual progress. To attain to higher states of being is not a bed of rose for most of us ordinary beings.
The process of mind transformation will usually mean a letting go of old ideas first . Before we can truly give them up , there will be varying degrees of resistance and doubts .If that can be overcome through study, contemplation and meditation, it is a very good starting point. The real test is when we apply that new knowledge , when we try to integrate it in our daily life. We will have to overcome the emotional and intellectual habits and comfort zones we had built up over countless lifetimes conditioned by old ideas. We will fail many times. But we will learn every time we pick ourselves up. Everytime we do that, we are becoming wiser.We realize that following the instructions of our Guru or what is prescribed in the scriptures, holding vows etc are the means to a better way of living.
We have to learn from failure because we lack merits from not practicing much in our past lives. Incarnate Lamas live perfectly in accord with the dharma with no doubts or resistance.Ordained monks accept and hold their vows readily because they have faith in the Buddha and have conviction that by following the instructions all good will come.
We on the other hand are a different lot. We have tons of the 3 poisons in our mind which have been controlling us like opium to addicts. To expiate the poisons we will have to deal with withdrawal symptoms, regression, discouragement, lack of faith etc. We win some , we lose some.But as long as we continue to persevere in our effort to get rid of them, we are progressing along a definitive path to true happiness. As Rinpoche said, ' It depends on how much we want it '.
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THE BENEFITS OF FAILURE
I failed in my grades as a school going child, I failed in my jobs as a working class person, I failed in my love relationships, I failed in my business. I am still failing in certain areas of my life. But I still strive on. I wonder if there is anyone out there who did not fail.
Failure is lesson learned and experience gained. Never look back with regrets, look forth with confidence. Never give up because by doing so would mean I am a loser.
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To this day, I am a failure in my father's eyes.
To this day, my father think that I am a lost cause, the black sheep of the family.
But I have learnt that it is his perspective. He sees what he wants to see. Above all, he can only see what his experiences and knowledge have taught him to see.
Just because he does not believe in my work and in the importance of spirituality, does not make him right.
Everyone can only see to the extent of their own experiences, knowledge and education in life. And each person will tell you a different story of what's good, successful and a failure.
However, because the masses have been programed so well to value materialism and measure success by material standards, that is what they are familiar with. Anything outside of that box will be deemed as unsuccessful and a failure.
That perspective works fine if you see things the way the masses do and want the same things as the masses do. What happens when you don't?
A true success when you know in your heart, you are at peace with the decision you have made and the result is what you want. It does not matter if other people have different ideas. We don't live by other people's rules, nor do we live their lives.
This is why knowing and understanding who we really are inside makes all the difference in the world.
Then we would stop beating up ourselves for never being able to become someone other people expect us to be. Especially our parents. We would also stop wasting our time and energy feeling guilty for never meeting their expectations of us. Most of all, we would stop feeling hurt.
Success and failure can only be defined by you, the individual.
If we have learnt something valuable from an experience and mistake, then it is not a failure. It is part of our learning.
If we have not learnt anything and still won, then it is a formula for disaster.
Winning or losing depends on how we have turned out in the end. Question will always remain: Have we become better people because of it?
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Thank you, Helena, for sharing your story. I would like to share mine too.
I have tried to use the yardstick of ‘conventional’ success (as I have inferred from Rowling’s yardstick of ‘conventional’ failure) to measure my two grown-up daughters’ success in life. So far, they have been quite successful. One is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the other is an actuary. One is married and the other is not. The recently married daughter will soon feel the heat of society’s (conventional) pressures on her, if she does not beget a child.
However, it was the experience of my second child( who almost succumbed to depression), that made me sit up and begin to dismantle my fixed and smug ideas about being a good mother. With Dharma , I now come to realize fully the truth of Rowling’s speech about real success and real failure. So I have failed miserably, as a mother, because I did not teach my children about true success and true failure. My neglect and skewed guidance of my children have had and will have a tremendously painful impact on them.
Dharma has shown me how imperative it is that one subscribes to what Rowling describes as an empowering realization of one’s true self, as opposed to the persona that society’s norms have created as one’s ‘self’. Also Dharma and Rowling have taught me how empowering the Imagination is when one uses it to empathize with (and experience the suffering of) people and beings who are downtrodden; from there , one grows real caring and compassion.
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Failure makes me take a step back and take stock of my life. It makes me analyze where I have gone wrong and why is it I found it so hard to get out of it. I know for a fact that my external failures are superficial as it is only a reflection of the failure within my mind.
Many well intentioned people will have their own theories about why you are failing and what you should do to get out of it. All the recommended methods and solutions may sound logical and workable but most of the time it won't work because nobody knows you like you know yourself.
Recently I managed to get a glimpse of what had caused my failures when I read an inspiring article written by some author. I realised that the reason why I keep stumbling is because I have let myself become someone I am not through the influence of environment. In the course of everyday's busyness, I have lost sight of what truly important to me.
I knew that I have hit on something right because that realization suddenly gave me peace that I have not felt for a long time. It give me peace because I found the root of the problem that showed me a path on how to get out of the situation.
Had I not failed, I would have continued to be who I was not and pretended to be happy and probably never really lived my life at all in the true sense.
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Dear Vajrastorm,
I thank you for taking the time to share your own story. It really moved me.
I wrote from the perspective of the child, where as you wrote from the perspective of the parent. It is interesting how we seem to stand at the opposite ends but Dharma is what unites us in our care, love, compassion and a higher, deeper understanding - not only of ourselves, but of the people we love. And especially, the people we are trying to love to the best of our ability.
I have the most difficult relationship with my father. To this day, we cannot sit in the same room without him trying to drill into me how my life should be lived. This greatly explains why I do not even live in the same country as him. Of course, this also reflects my inability to conduct my relationship with him in a more positive manner.
I am so happy for your daughters that they have a mother like you. Because of Dharma, you are able to see beyond your own misconceptions of what life should be, happiness should be and the fallacy of the samsara world.
I do not wish to live the life that my parents had. I certainly do not wish to live the life that my sister has now either. None of them can convince me that they are really happy and at peace. I see no evidence of any real peace and joy, to be honest. In the most personal and private sense, they each know how unhappy they are and what they are unhappy about. They do know what their real failure lies. However, on the outside, everything looks very rosy, civil and luxurious. It is their inner failure to come into terms with themselves which is ultimately making them suffer amid their extravagant surroundings.
Unfortunately, the old British pride and stiff upper lips will never shed its true nature for anyone to see. Perhaps some day, I will also rise beyond my own failure to care more about what they need from me and not so much of what I need from them.
For the longest time, I struggled to gain some sort of approval or recognition from them for my way of life. But I guess, that's where my own failure lie - to be too concerned with gaining some sort of respect from them but not care about what I can do for them instead.
Dharma is indeed empowering in every sense of the word. At some point, I am sure I will endure being perceived as a failure and still continue to show care and love towards the only family I have in this world. When that happens, I know I would have won. I would have won over my own fears and insecurities.
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Fall down 9 times, get up 10 times.
;)
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The fact that we are in samsara reflects our shortcomings, and that we have "failed miserably again and again".. but coming to realize our "problems" is the beginning of us changing the course of our destiny.
i find the story of Chudapanthaka in the Liberation of the Palm of Your Hands most inspiring, it talks about how Chudapanthaka had great difficulties learning due to karmic obscurations. He was devastated when he was thrown out of the monastery by the abbot, his brother (out of kindness in using wrathful means)
Chudapanthaka had the good fortune to meet the Buddha several times in his life, and it was at this "low point" of his life, that he met the Buddha again.
"O Monk," said Chudapanthaka, "I am the dullest of the dull, the very smallest of the small. How could I ever learn to read?"
Buddha, our Teacher, replied:
The churl who knows he's a churl
is truly a scholar.
The churl who's proud of his scholarship
Is the most churlish of all.
Thus, it is said that the quick path is thru guru devotion. So often we are not aware of our faults nor have the know how to correct them.
Under the kindness and care of a Guru, our faults are being pointed out to us and a remedy can be given... similar to how Buddha out of great wisdom and compassion gave Chuda the holy tasks of cleaning monks shoes and the temple which brought Chuda to realizations.
best wishes to all in our spiritual journey...
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Dear Helena,
In response to your situation with your father, i so happened to come across this quote a couple of days ago:
Imagine that you are having difficulties with a loved one, such as your mother or father, husband or wife, lover or friend. How helpful and revealing it can be to consider the other person not in his or her “role” of mother or father or husband, but simply as another “you,” another human being, with the same feelings as you, the same desire for happiness, the same fear of suffering. Thinking of the other one as a real person, exactly the same as you, will open your heart to him or her and give you more insight into how to help.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
This quote appeals to me because i do sometimes have a difficult situation with some members of my family. i think that difficulties arise because of the expectations I have of my father or mother because of the title/label and I expect them to care for me or express their care for me in a certain way and when they don't, I get upset. But this quote tells me to see things differently and that they are simply another human being, which i find helpful.
I hope it helps you as it has helped me.
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I love reading all the sharings from everyone.
In our society, we were taught to WIN...all the time since young. Be the first in class, be the first in any sports.........I just thought of our children.....they have been conditioned that if they don't succeed to the expectations of their parents or the norms of society, they have failed!
As parents, we must really impart the right attitude to our children in how to see failure in lives. My neighbour's told me last year, the son of her friend jumped off from his apartment because his exam results were not up to his parents' expectation. The amount of pressure from failure is catching up our next generation.
We must guild our children wisely....
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Dear Helena,
In response to your situation with your father, i so happened to come across this quote a couple of days ago:
Imagine that you are having difficulties with a loved one, such as your mother or father, husband or wife, lover or friend. How helpful and revealing it can be to consider the other person not in his or her “role” of mother or father or husband, but simply as another “you,” another human being, with the same feelings as you, the same desire for happiness, the same fear of suffering. Thinking of the other one as a real person, exactly the same as you, will open your heart to him or her and give you more insight into how to help.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
This quote appeals to me because i do sometimes have a difficult situation with some members of my family. i think that difficulties arise because of the expectations I have of my father or mother because of the title/label and I expect them to care for me or express their care for me in a certain way and when they don't, I get upset. But this quote tells me to see things differently and that they are simply another human being, which i find helpful.
I hope it helps you as it has helped me.
Dear WB,
Thank you so much for sharing that quote. It does help me a great deal.
Actually, this quote does reflect a great deal on my Guru's personal advice to me.
Our parents, friends and even strangers and enemies are all another us or me. Because we and me came from them at some point in time, be it in this life or past lifetimes.
We were all once children or parents of one another.
As a child, we often think that our parents should know better.
But as I grew older and read more Dharma, I realised it is not age that bestows wisdom. Nor their position in life, whether they are parents or teachers, etc.
It is really Dharma.
An individual with and without Dharma makes a HUGE difference.
So, may be our parents are not so fortunate as us. They didn't have the merits or karma to meet the Dharma or learn from a Guru. They didn't have a centre or Sangha to support them and nurture them. We did and we are so lucky. So, it is up to us to do more and practice even much more for the people who literally brought us into this world.
I came through my parents. Despite my differences with my father, I must recognise what he has given me to this day. I must appreciate that I am here because of him and my mother.
Rest assured, I shall not allow my own personal delusions and projections to get in the way. Part of my Dharma practice IS in caring for the people I have the most trouble with, even if it is my father, to the best of my ability. Perhaps, even more so.
Thank you again, WB. I do love the quote very much. It does help a great deal, especially in dealing with strangers. The group of people we hardly know and we think we have no reason to care for them. Dharma is just so extraordinary in how it teaches us to connect with everyone around us.
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You fall, you learn
You cry, you learn
You scream, you learn
You fail, you also learn... there goes a song I heard somewhere... and it sure makes a lot of sense and the don't say the higher you climb, the harder you fall for no good reason. The ego, our so attached ego always seems to drag us down. But I realise from all the pain hitting rock bottom, you learn from it each time. In anything we do in life, whatever our goals may be... we need to realise what we have is precious... most important is that we do not loose focus, instead 0f focusing on the failure, focus on the goals.
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I've always think to myself. Having failure is a good thing because we learn from it. Maybe we can try a hundred's time but still failed, but you'll find we will fine tuned and learn something each time when we failed. People only celebrate the winner, never the losers. Very little people record down people who looses or celebrate them. So after a while, people forget about the losers and only remember the winner.
Some people are very lucky, some are born and rise in a condition that everything is paid for, they never have to work, they solve their problems with money and power, it seems like they never fail in life. Then life is good for a while, then suddenly everything collapse, no more money and power. Then you most probably find this person break down emotionally and helpless. Simply because they have no experience of failure, in which they use other sources to cover their mistakes and failure. In other words, they are covering their big fat ego to make themselves look good.
Then the opposite, failing is embarrass maybe you are not good enough, you fail because you made a mistake, you fail because you are not perfect. So what? It makes us learn, become stronger, and smarter. We learn from it, eventually we become better and better...
Then we win. Not just one occasion but in life! We just need to win once.
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When we failed, we learned from our mistakes. We should not be depressed, lose hope or regret but to work harder and not repeat the same mistakes.
A loser is one who will give up when faced with failure but a winner will get up and try again and eventually will succeed.
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Thank you Helena for sharing JK Rowling's speech on failure. It makes so much sense that when we fall flat, there's really no way but up. Hence, we should have a positive relationship with our failures because from them we can become anything we want. Very empowering!
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Thank you Helena for sharing JK Rowling's speech on failure. It makes so much sense that when we fall flat, there's really no way but up. Hence, we should have a positive relationship with our failures because from them we can become anything we want. Very empowering!
Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where we stand. We make mistakes and mistakes are very painful when it happens, but years later a collection of mistakes called "experience" leads us to success. Thus when we failed, never let our head hang down and grieve, but find another solution or method. In life it is about trusting our feelings, taking chances, finding happiness, appreciating the memories and learning from the past.
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Promoting failure potentially as a prerequisite for success is as silly as promoting plagiarism to benefit the true creator of a well known wizard story. That is my belief. I am the creator who has to keep the wizard alive in me for the Harry Potter stories were of my origin! You hear lies throughout the world wherever Jo Rowling has been and talked. The Harvard University has not heard them or reacted to them! The lies continued throughout the period the series of Harry Potter stories were released while the true creator had to contend with the loss of his most loved project that took him many years to build until his artwork and designed stories materials got stolen from his Australian home. That unknown creator was me as J. K. Rawling. The thought of promoting failure was conceived by me in answer to questions asked. The subject of The Fringe Benefits Of Failure was mentioned to be a possible talk at a university. When I was then asked which university would that be I simply mentioned Harvard. The more you promote failure further distances the truth to the origins of the Harry Poter story! Going to university was meant to mean getting an education. Now it has come to getting a degree that could lead to failure. It is like promoting plagiarism while the true author remains unknown while the fear the word 'failure' pose to those who sit bewildered and eager for knowledge try and imagine why an author would promote failure, so the thought of plagiarism never enters their head. Everyone on this earth fails at something in their life. That is not to be shunned but to promote failure is ridiculous and must not be condoned.