Understanding, Tolerance, and Compassion
I don’t particularly look for this topic; but it keeps coming up over and over. Saying “pay attention, there’s something here.” I’ve posted my own versions of these three life attributes and it’s always interesting for me to find another persons view and to see how they resonate with me. Enjoy this one that I found last week.
When we see the shortcomings and the faults of other people it is important to realize that we’re not free from them either. When we judge others, when we give minuses to other people, when we give advice to other people, we tend to forget that we also have similar qualities ourselves.
There’s a very simple aspect in the Buddha’s teaching in relation to human behavior. It is said that human beings have three strong drives which are motivating them to act in particular ways. One is greed, another is hatred, and a more subtle and difficult one is delusion. We all have those three drives in us, and the Buddha said that unless and until we really overcome our subjugation to these drives completely, we are still crazy. We relate to the outer world, the external world, through a private world that we have constructed ourselves. In other words, we are being subjective and not objective.
Our problem is that we take this crazy, subjective world very seriously, we believe it to be true. If you can really understand that we are living in such a world, a world where there is such a lot of delusion, such a lot of grief and such a lot of hatred, that we live in a world where human beings are imperfect simply because they are still human, then you learn to see yourself and others in an entirely different way. I would suggest that this is real loving-kindness. When you see the shortcomings and faults of other people and you can remember that both you and they are living in a subjective world colored with so much delusion, then you’ll be relating to them with more understanding, tolerance and compassion.
via Understanding, Tolerance and Compassion | Friends of Godwin Samararatne.