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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: icy on December 16, 2012, 08:57:32 AM
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It's very easy to love sentient beings in a general way. But it's more effective to be specific in our visualizations. Send light to the guy who squeese you off on the highway. Send light to the Inland Revenue employee who questioned your tax return. Send light to the terrorist who thinks that killing others in the name of God will cause him to be reborn in heaven. Send light to government leaders who think that bombing others solves problems. Send light to your teenager who leaves his room a mess and gets mad when you comment on it. Send light to specific people you know and care about, people who are having problems, strangers, and people you don't like. Send it to hospitals, the Middle East, the inner cities, Ethiopia and areas having natural calamities. There's suffering everywhere. The light frees sentient beings from their suffering.
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The word 'love' can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contents.A person can be said to love an object,principle,or goal if they value it greatly and are deeply committed to it.People can also 'love' material objects,animals or activities if they insist themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things.The Bodhisattva ideal in Mahayana Buddhism involves the complete renunciation of oneself in order to take on to the burden of a suffering world. The strongest motivation one has in order to take the path of the Bodhisattva is the idea of salvation within unselfish,altruistic love for all sentient beings.
For a Buddhist practitioner,the goal is to develop genuine compassion,this genuine wish for the well being of another ,in fact for every living being throughout the universe.
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Sometimes its not really about 'love', its just about caring for another sentient being in general. You dont have to love the cat stuck in the drain to save it, just care about it enough. We dont have to care about the blind man trying cross the street, just have to care for him enough to understand that its not that easy to cross the road as a blind man and help him. There isnt much that we need to give out to take the extra step and care for sentient beings in general when we can care about our friends.
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It’s definitely not easy for one to love all, even though it sounds simple but when come to people your hate…it’s might not be easy but I like this practice of sending light to all in our visualization to free them from suffering. Even though we don’t like them but this practice could make us slowly habituated and mild down our hatred and eventually be more compassion to all regardless of whether we like them or not and whether we know them or not. It’s just for all sentient being.
This is what I call as Buddhism practices. With result not just talk but truly changing ourselves for others.
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The first principle of happiness is love. The Buddha taught, "First, think of loving others." It is the first immeasurable. It is a love that gives. Before we can develop compassion, we need to develop metta or loving kindness, a love that wishes all sentient beings to have happiness and the causes of happiness. What is it exactly to love others? It is a wish for others to be well and happy and to be kind to them without expecting anything in return. It is a selfless love, detached from personal desires. For those who cannot imagine what it is like to love others, think what it is like to love yourself. So this love is like loving others just as you love yourself. Sometimes, the word "cherish" is used. It is easy to love ourselves. We do not need to be taught how to love ourselves. It is instinctual. Unfortunately, we forget to love others. So this love for others must be learned unless we are already bodhisattvas at birth.
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It’s definitely not easy for one to love all, even though it sounds simple but when come to people your hate…it’s might not be easy but I like this practice of sending light to all in our visualization to free them from suffering. Even though we don’t like them but this practice could make us slowly habituated and mild down our hatred and eventually be more compassion to all regardless of whether we like them or not and whether we know them or not. It’s just for all sentient being.
This is what I call as Buddhism practices. With result not just talk but truly changing ourselves for others.
You are correct in saying that being the way we are it is not easy one to love all but with the recommended manner of visualization of light to others is very empowering and good practice to overcome our own bad and selective nature.
With time such general kindness will help us and the people around us or transcend on our path.
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I find it very practical and encouraging to consider a generalized feeling of love as follows: if someone asked you 'wouldn't it be great if all living beings were happy and didn't have negative minds and actions?' we'd reply, 'of course it would'. This not only shows we have the potential for Universal Love, but that at the heart of all the complex layers of our perception of others, we do actually care about everyone.
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I find it very practical and encouraging to consider a generalized feeling of love as follows: if someone asked you 'wouldn't it be great if all living beings were happy and didn't have negative minds and actions?' we'd reply, 'of course it would'. This not only shows we have the potential for Universal Love, but that at the heart of all the complex layers of our perception of others, we do actually care about everyone.
Although I agree that this is a practical and simplistic way, would such an answer be not conducive to some form of action whereby the Universal love can be cultivated.
Sometimes it is easy to answer positively but really not have any inclination to what it entails as an action from us. Although it may be the seed to positive thinking for the goodwill for mankind.
What do you think? Thank you
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Dondrup,
This simple question and answer is a quick and easy way to convince people they already love everyone in a general sense, but of course it is necessary to train in lamrim and lojong instructions about love, and combine this training with experience of the emptiness of persons. The quick assessment isn't meant to be the only training in love, it's just something that arose from personal training in the teachings on love.
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Dondrup,
The same can be applied to other things too. For instance, if someone says to you 'do u want permanent freedom from suffering?' That's and easy 'yes, of course' and shows we have the seed of renunciation. I have found thinking like that is a quick way to remind myself and jumpstart such a mind.
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Sentient beings consists of animals and spirits as well. How do we bring ourselves to truly love them ? For instance, animals, we kill them directly or indirectly for food and apparels. We may love our pets and some cute animals in the zoo etc but in reality we have very little compassion for animals.
Similarly with beings in the ghost and hell realms. How do we create loving kindness towards them ? Can we see the possibility of ourselves or our loved ones being reborn in such lower realms and devastating conditions suffering for long periods of time? If we can, we may develop some compassion for them and wish them well.
Hence in reality it is not an easy practice to love all sentient beings. We can try to accept them as our past life's mother. We may also meditate using the "exchange with others" method. Apply the Lojong teachings.
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It's very easy to love sentient beings in a general way. But it's more effective to be specific in our visualizations. Send light to the guy who squeese you off on the highway. Send light to the Inland Revenue employee who questioned your tax return. Send light to the terrorist who thinks that killing others in the name of God will cause him to be reborn in heaven. Send light to government leaders who think that bombing others solves problems. Send light to your teenager who leaves his room a mess and gets mad when you comment on it. Send light to specific people you know and care about, people who are having problems, strangers, and people you don't like. Send it to hospitals, the Middle East, the inner cities, Ethiopia and areas having natural calamities. There's suffering everywhere. The light frees sentient beings from their suffering.
Lol. I know what you mean.
I take it the the light you meant is your loving kindness and wishes of alleviating the suffering of sentient being. Well it is all very good but as long we do not practice the Dharma and gain attainments there is very little we can do except send like and sentient beings still suffer.
My point is that by taking in all the above as suffering of samsare ie the First Noble Truth, knowing the reasons of these sufferings (Second Noble Truth) and the Third Truth of Cessation and the Fourth Noble Truth we then focus on realizing the law of cause and effects and the root cause of suffering ie Ignorance. Generating the motivations of altruistic intention we wish achieve the highest path of alleviating these suffering and that is to become enlightened ourself as the best way to help others. That to me is the best way to view the and the best way to love others.
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Although I totally agree that when we practise until we are enlightened is the best form of love to all sentient beings, during the journey we must also practise loving kindness which is the main practice for Mahayana and Varjayana Buddhist doctrines.
Therefore we must find the way to have love for sentient beings in a general way. Most of the recommended methods should be sound grounds for practice. Thank you all.
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Although we depend on others we still think the source of our problems are caused by others. This is the mistaken belief which causes so much of our own sufferings. As my guru had said it would be much better to focus less on ourselves and more on others. More doesn't mean more hate on others. When we focus hate on others it is actually focus on one ownself.
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All our problems come from having unbalanced attitudes towards others - like, dislike and indifference. To overcome the affliction of anger or aversion, one needs to practise patience. It is the antidote to anger and hatred. One can also generate the four immeasurables or at least loving kindness, wishing all sentient beings to be well and happy. Other practices include the sevenfold cause and effect and exchanging self with others.
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The guy who squeeze your off your lane, the Inland Revenue guy or even our enemy have reasons for doing what they are doing, be it the reasons are "right" or "wrong", it is a matter of perception and point of view. Remember, everyone have someone loving them and that being the case, we must then contemplate that then our view contradicts that reality. Why? If A and B both like C and we dislike C, then we must be the one that is wrong. Since, we cannot control A, B or C, but can only control ourselves, better we change our view to the positive or just remain open.
In this way, we have less problems.
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"Loving beings in a general way".I take that as the wish for all beings to be happy. It is something all of us can do but we must understand certain intricacies of "love".
Generally, we all love for the reason of selfishness. That is why we love our lovers, children, family more that strangers and certainly enemies. This kind of love is based upon the identification of a self at the central. This love is conditional. For example, if the lover do not reciprocate the love in a way expected, we will be angry. We cannot therefore call this kind of love, loving sentient beings.
Loving sentient beings by definition would then be derived from seeing all beings as equal. Equanimity. Since equanimity cannot be developed overnight, we can start to move our wish for others to have happiness ie "loving" to those outside our "loved ones" ie to our enemies and strangers. From human to animals and beings of other realms, improving step by step until we achieve equanimity ie seeing the interest of others to be the same as the interest of our "loved ones".
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Just as all living beings are our Mother, so too are we a Mother of all living beings. In general everyone is our dear child, but especially, they are all our precious and wonderful spiritual children born from the womb-like emptiness of our own mind, so how can we even begin to think of going to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!
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Just as all living beings are our Mother, so too are we a Mother of all living beings. In general everyone is our dear child, but especially, they are all our precious and wonderful spiritual children born from the womb-like emptiness of our own mind, so how can we even begin to think of going to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!
But in these degenerate times, due to the conditions of the times, the distractions and the general non spirituality of beings, it is very difficult to "go to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!". That is term as "Boatman like Boddhicitta" ie bringing beings to the other shore (Enlightenment) and coming back for more without us being enlightened first.
The times requires that we adopt the "King like Boddhicitta" ie we become enlightened first and them comes back for beings. This analogous to swimming to shore/safety first in the midst of a shipwreck and them save the others. That is a more practical strategy for this times.
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Yes, we can love sentient beings in the general way but in modern society, do we all know what "love" really is? The most important thing is "do we know how to love our self?" If we know and learn how to love our self, then we would know how to love others in a general way too in our daily lives. Love comes from learning to forgive our self, to get go of the past burden, worries etc. Thereafter, we will learn how to love others generally.
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It is one thing to talk of practicing being kind and compassionate to others. It is another to actually put that into practice when faced with obnoxious people. It is even more taxing when faced with downright ignoramuses and violent people. So, it would be more practical to love those closest to you first then move on to those not so obnoxious ones.
In all honesty, can you tell me that you can love someone who has beheaded another human being just because that person is not of the same faith, color, thinking, whatever without any fear? Don't try to sprint before you can even walk properly. When you can love your difficult child and demanding wife unconditionally without any negative thinking, and treat all in the family equally, then maybe you will want to expand further. Well, at least that's what I got from Pema Chodron's "Places that scare us"
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Yes, we can love sentient beings in the general way but in modern society, do we all know what "love" really is? The most important thing is "do we know how to love our self?" If we know and learn how to love our self, then we would know how to love others in a general way too in our daily lives. Love comes from learning to forgive our self, to get go of the past burden, worries etc. Thereafter, we will learn how to love others generally.
Nice Kim. The opposite can also be the case, where learning to love others helps us learn to forgive and love ourself. So beautiful.
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It is one thing to talk of practicing being kind and compassionate to others. It is another to actually put that into practice when faced with obnoxious people. It is even more taxing when faced with downright ignoramuses and violent people. So, it would be more practical to love those closest to you first then move on to those not so obnoxious ones.
In all honesty, can you tell me that you can love someone who has beheaded another human being just because that person is not of the same faith, color, thinking, whatever without any fear? Don't try to sprint before you can even walk properly. When you can love your difficult child and demanding wife unconditionally without any negative thinking, and treat all in the family equally, then maybe you will want to expand further. Well, at least that's what I got from Pema Chodron's "Places that scare us"
Dear Grandmapele,
It is true what you say, but it is especially important to gain deep experience of the Lamrim meditation of Equanimity. Many wisdoms arise from this meditation that help us change our way of discriminating others. In particular, equanimity from the 8 Verses of Training the Mind involves distinguishing between a person and their delusions. This is key to accomplishing powerful equanimity and genuine love even for those that challenge us. It is said that 'living beings have no faults; they have delusions and the delusions have faults'. This enables us to let go of strong categorization of people based on our own three poisons, thereby it is easier to forgive others and to feel love and compassion for them because we see how they are tormented by their inner enemies and forced by them to harm others. When through equanimity we feel everyone is equal regardless of how they act, we can easily redefine them as our precious kind Mothers. In short, starting by loving those closest to us is very helpful, but even more so when we have experience of equanimity first.
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It's very easy to love sentient beings in a general way. But it's more effective to be specific in our visualizations. Send light to the guy who squeese you off on the highway. Send light to the Inland Revenue employee who questioned your tax return. Send light to the terrorist who thinks that killing others in the name of God will cause him to be reborn in heaven. Send light to government leaders who think that bombing others solves problems. Send light to your teenager who leaves his room a mess and gets mad when you comment on it. Send light to specific people you know and care about, people who are having problems, strangers, and people you don't like. Send it to hospitals, the Middle East, the inner cities, Ethiopia and areas having natural calamities. There's suffering everywhere. The light frees sentient beings from their suffering.
Sending light to people whom we dislike is a very good start to developing compassion and equanimity. I know of many people who find it very difficult to even look into the eyes of those whom they dislike. So I think it's easier to send them light during our visualizations. Being spiritual entails forgiveness because being spiritual means to be selfless. Hence, if there is no "self", what's there to be hurt in the first place.
It's very difficult to not react for now. But through conscious efforts, we will experience the change is us.