The only way all beings could be happy is if everybody acted skillfully

"Each of us is the owner and doer of actions. And so you don’t want to cause people to do things that will make them suffer, and at the same time you don’t want to do anything that is going to make yourself suffer. It’s a pretty radical view of our relationships.

We like to think that we can make other people happy by being nice to them, and there is a certain pleasure they can get when we’re nice to them, but that doesn’t necessarily make them happy. You’ve probably seen many cases where you’ve tried your best to be nice to somebody and they’re not happy. They’ve got their own karma.

This is especially clear when people are suffering from a mental illness, when they’re getting old and sick, or when a baby is newly born. You can’t talk to the baby and make things okay. You realize that what we experience is our own actions. We do have an impact on other people, but the major impact is through what we get them to do.

So we want to look for happiness in a way that inspires other people to look for happiness in a way that’s skillful too. If everybody could meditate, if everybody could develop good qualities of mind and find a sense of well-being inside, then there would be a possibility that all living beings would be happy. That’s the only way it can happen."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Raise Your Standards"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Develop the equanimity of a good doctor who realizes he can't solve all the cases in the world

"When, while you’re trying to develop compassion and empathetic joy, you run across cases where you can’t help the other person, either to become happy or to maintain happiness, that’s when you have to develop equanimity. This is the equanimity of a good doctor who realizes that he can’t solve all the cases in the world. But if he lets his heart get broken over all the cases he can’t solve, he won’t have the energy to help the cases he might have been able to solve. So for the people who come to him and have the karma that allows him to help — and he himself has the karma that allows him to help them — he should think of that as a precious opportunity. It’s not always there. Make the most of it and don’t let yourself get distracted by things you can’t control or where you can’t be of help. Because, as I said, karma is complex. The combination of the patient’s karma to be in a position where he or she can be cured, and the doctor’s karmic connection with that patient: It doesn’t al...
Read more

On the ethics of meat-eating

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the...
Read more

You know that you’ve got some past mistakes. There’s going to be some pain coming in the future. This shouldn’t be news. Having concentration as an alternative to sensual pain and pleasure puts you in a safe place.

"You know that you’ve got some past mistakes. There’s going to be some pain coming in the future. This shouldn’t be news. So you develop the qualities of mind that can guarantee that pain and pleasure won’t overcome the mind. In other words, you develop concentration; you develop discernment. Having concentration as an alternative to sensual pain and pleasure puts you in a safe place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Remorse"
Read more