Insightful Reflections

Excerpts from Awaken Every Day

65

Keeping Our Hearts Open

Let’s strive to cultivate love and compassion for other living beings regardless of whether they’re receptive to our help and advice.

When we see someone going down the wrong path and there isn’t much we can do because they don’t want our advice, we can still hold the thought that wishes for their well-being. If we get frustrated or discouraged and give up trying to benefit them, that closes the door to future beneficial interactions. However, if we simply step back and give the other person space, if that person later decides that they want to change, they will feel more comfortable approaching us for help.

Accepting where people are at and what they are capable of at any particular moment is important. Otherwise, we’re always going to be battling them with “you need to be who I want you to be.” That’s a dead-end. If we can’t
control our own minds, how are we going to make somebody else’s mind change?

92

The Recipient of Kindness

Throughout our lives we have received kindness. The proof is that we are still alive. Without others’ care and efforts, we would have died long ago. People took care of us when we were infants, gave us an education, and encouraged our abilities. Strangers constructed the buildings we live in, and grew and transported the food we eat. Now more than any other time in human history we depend on one another to stay alive and to thrive.

Understanding that we have been the recipient of great kindness throughout our lives enables us to connect to other living beings with the urge to repay the kindness or to pay it forward. Not only do others contribute to our well-being, but we also have an opportunity to contribute to theirs.

Let’s take joy in bringing happiness to others.

125

Meeting a Moose

One afternoon, a friend and I were walking in the Sravasti Abbey forest when we came upon a moose on the path. He trotted away from us shyly, then turned and looked at us as intently as we looked at him. We share a universe with so many different kinds of sentient beings, all of whom have been our parents in previous lives. When we meet them again in this life, instead of just seeing them as who they appear to be now, we can think, That’s someone I’ve been very close to in the past, someone who’s been kind to me.

Whether we see moose, grasshoppers, somebody we like, or someone we fear, if we see them as someone just like us, who wants happiness and not suffering, it pulls us out of our solid view of them and gives us a way to relate to them with kindness.

146

The Winds of Karma

Here we are, blown together by the winds of karma. It’s not by accident, nor is it predestined. Due to causes and conditions, and specifically due to our previous actions, we find ourselves here.

The events in our lives and the feelings of pleasure and pain in response to them are conditioned. Sometimes we have happiness, other times misery, and often just neutral feelings. But from a Buddhist perspective, what happens to us is not as important as how we respond. How we respond to our experiences creates the causes for future happiness or suffering. Actions motivated by anger and greed create the causes for misery; actions springing from kindness and compassion create the causes for happiness.

How we respond is our choice.

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Ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 1977, Venerable Thubten Chodron is an author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey. She teaches worldwide and is known for her practical (and humorous!) explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life. She is also actively involved in prison outreach and interfaith dialogue. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and has coauthored a book—Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions—with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with whom she has studied for nearly forty years. Learn more.