So, I was recently amused by a Buddhist who went off script-Buddhism speaks of Love and Balance and not giving in to the lesser emotions. Karmic-wise, it's considered bad form to hate anything, as that opens one up to harsher circumstance. All you need is Love, right?
But this Buddhist found it possible to rationalize his hatred, because he was (wait for it...) morally superior to the object of his hate: "Corporations".
I am pretty sure that the corporations which disgust him are those soulless "For Profit" corpos.
You know who I mean. The Meanies in the Suits that Occupy Everything agitated against a few years ago.
Those guys. Ooohhh, they're BAD! BAD!
Here we are at the beginning of another year, a fresh slate on which to (re)write our lives.
Are you more animated by the things you love or by the things you hate? Do you live/love to complain
because the world just isn't fair...or are you grateful for another day each morning that you wake up?
Hate can be a strong motivator, even if it does eventually curdle the milk of our human kindness.
If your life is a constant battle against items on your personal hate list...give it up. That's not a recipe for ever having Peace in your life, because there will always be something else that adds itself to your list.
I've used the example before of a backwards colander-if you don't recall it, don't worry, I often repeat myself.
A colander or strainer catches some things while other things pass through.
A happy person has a colander which catches the good things and lets the bad things drain away.
An unhappy person's colander works backwards, catching only the bad and not retaining any of the good.
An unhappy person can't remember the last good thing that happened. But still fresh is that moment in first grade when they were embarrassed in front of the class, as it's still their colander.
Getting back to the Buddhist-he would be farther down the road to a more pleasant existence if he didn't allow hate to stain his life.
Some things are hateable, no doubt about. But if your life is motivated by hating something or someone rather than appreciating the good things, you are doing more damage to yourself than to any object of your hate (which, in the case of for profit corporations, doesn't even know/care that you exist).
2013. Clean slate. Peace, man.
2 comments:
I was reading a book by Paul Krassner, but gave it up as all he did was complain about those who disagree with him. He also boasted A LOT about smoking pot, as if that is a badge of honor. He is a sixties leftover who was never relevant.
Still slowly working my way through the Lord of the Rings set. Watched part two of the Two Towers tonight and then as much of the special features as I could handle-the extended Blu ray set has 9 dvds of extras. That's a lot to take in.
If you think that pointing fingers is necessary, you could point out that I have often complained about things political, theological, topical here on these pages, so maybe my colander is backwards, too.
Guilty. Not one of us is pure Pollyanna or Debbie Downer. I vent here, though I think that if we totaled up the neg/positive posts, the positive posts are in the majority.
I'm serious about not allowing hate/negatives to motivate us as we live our lives.
May you have a great and better 2013.
Excellent advice, hard to do.
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