Best Of
Compassion in a dark world
HOW CAN I BE HAPPY WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH WRONG IN THE WORLD?
A wonderful answer by a Buddhist monk:
A man once asked an old Buddhist monk:
“How can I allow myself to feel peace or happiness when the world is full of suffering, injustice, pain, and chaos?”
The monk looked at him quietly and asked:
“If your house was dark, would you refuse to light a candle simply because the whole world is not yet bright?”
The man fell silent.
“The suffering of the world is real,” the monk continued. “But if you destroy your own peace completely, you may lose the clarity and strength needed to help anyone.”
“But isn’t being happy selfish when others are suffering?” the man asked.
The monk smiled gently.
“Caring about suffering does not require you to suffer every moment. Compassion needs a steady heart. When you are consumed by despair, it becomes harder to respond with wisdom.”
Then the monk pointed toward a nearby pond.
“When the water is disturbed, it cannot reflect clearly. But when it becomes still, everything becomes easier to see.”
He looked back at the man.
“The same can happen with the mind. A restless mind may react with fear, anger, or hopelessness. A calmer mind has more space for wisdom, compassion, and meaningful action.”
The man lowered his head.
“But the world still feels so heavy.”
“Yes,” the monk replied. “And that is why your peace matters.”
“Do not try to carry the suffering of the entire world in one heart.
Be kind where you are.
Help where you can.
Speak gently.
Protect what you can.
Reduce suffering in whatever small ways are within your reach.”
“A single candle cannot remove all the darkness in the world,” he said, “but it can still brighten the room around it.”
In Buddhism, happiness is not about ignoring suffering or pretending that everything is fine. It is about developing enough inner stability to remain compassionate without being completely consumed by the pain you witness.
You are allowed to feel joy while caring about the world. You are allowed to rest while others are struggling. And you can protect your peace not to escape responsibility, but to have the strength to meet suffering with greater wisdom and compassion.
The monk smiled one final time:
“Do not extinguish your own light because the world is dark.
Keep it burning.
Then use that light to make the small part of the world around you a little brighter.”
Jeffrey
Re: On Christa Pike
@Jeroen said:
I read up on the Wikipedia page, I didn’t know the case. First of all, I think it is somewhat absurd to now keep her in intensive care on a ventilator machine, while first they try to take her life by lethal injection.
I'm sure her doctors feel the same way. Especially knowing that another attempt to execute her is a very real possibility once her health is restored. Her entire life was tragic and although I wish for the family of her victim to find peace too, I wish more people would want to prevent such through humane ways as opposed to just take revenge with extreme cruelty.
RobinH
Re: On Christa Pike
I'm by no means an expert, but I think acceptance of what is would be the choice I would try to take. My heart aches for what's happened, and I am firmly anti capital punishment. I have been all my life since I could understand what it is.
I'm actually quite concerned for the victim's parents as they have made some disturbing (to me) comments on Christa and her current suffering.
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
I’ve started participating with a TV programme called ‘Nederland in Beweging’, it’s a short 15 minute daily show on Dutch television in which you do exercises in front of your tv, following along with the presenters. It’s a full-body set of exercises, intended to focus on condition and flexibility and coordination.
It starts with a warming up, continues with sections ‘good for your heart’, ‘good for your legs’ and ‘good for your torso’, and then a cooling down. It isn't really a replacement for cardio training or strength training, but as a short programme for the whole body it is very good.
It is very accessible, I do it together with my mother, who is 77 and suffers from deafness and poor balance, so she does a lot of the exercises only halfway. It is aimed more at my age, which is 54, where people are still flexible and capable but might have a few beginning problems.
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
I believe that God is on Earth, in every living being. What we call the "divine" is nothing more than the energy of awakening, peace, understanding, and love, which we find not only in every human being, but also in all species on Earth.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Jeffrey
Re: What my practice is now...
It is true that practice keeps evolving. Yours is a beautiful illustration of that, thank you @johnathan for telling your story.
Jeroen
Re: The Manosphere and it’s anti-women sentiments
@RobinH Your comment actually reminded me of something that happened to me very recently.
My wife and I took her daughter to Disney World for a week. The entire trip was built around her, which was completely appropriate and something I was genuinely fine with going into it. But over the course of the week I found myself getting upset far more often than made any sense given what was actually happening.
I started feeling ignored, unimportant, and at times even unloved.
The strange part was that I knew those feelings weren't true. I wasn't sitting there thinking, "My wife doesn't love me." I could actually see what was happening in my own mind while it was happening. I could recognize that old attachment wounds were being triggered, that I was interpreting things through those old wounds, and that the story my mind was constructing wasn't supported by what was actually happening.
And yet knowing that didn't make the feelings go away.
I could see the pattern and still got caught in it.
That experience really brought something home to me about the difference between insight and actually being free of a pattern. Sometimes we can intellectually understand exactly what we're doing and still be completely caught in the emotional machinery of it.
And I wonder if something similar is happening in what you're describing about feeling useless or fearing that your wife might eventually leave you.
You actually said something really important yourself: you know those fears are baseless, and you know your wife supports you. That's the insight. But the fact that you know it doesn't necessarily mean the fear won't still arise.
I've spent roughly 80% of my adult life as the primary breadwinner. Now my wife makes about three times what I make. So I absolutely understand the ego hit of no longer occupying that role.
But I've had to learn that the feeling of being less important isn't evidence that I am less important.
That's a really important distinction.
And I think this is where Buddhism has become useful to me. The practice isn't necessarily about arguing with the feeling until it disappears. Sometimes the mind already knows the argument and the feeling keeps coming anyway. The practice becomes learning to sit with what is actually happening without feeding the story attached to it.
At Disney, I eventually started using the Great Compassion Mantra while walking. I only knew the first ten lines at the time, so I would repeat those ten lines as I walked. It didn't "prove" to me that my feelings were irrational. I already knew that. What it gave me was something to hold onto while the mind was spinning, until the rumination eventually wore itself out.
That experience actually changed how I understand compassion too. I usually think of compassion as something directed toward another person's suffering. But that week it became compassion toward the part of myself that was hurting, even when the story that part of me was telling wasn't true.
So when you say that you keep coming back to Buddhism because of these feelings, I don't necessarily see that as evidence that something is wrong with you.
Maybe that's exactly what practice is for.
Not to convince yourself that you shouldn't feel what you feel, but to learn how to experience those feelings without automatically believing them.
And maybe your wife making more money than you doesn't need to be solved at all.
Maybe the deeper work is learning that being loved, being useful, and being valuable aren't things that can be measured by your income.
You don't have to become the person who earns the most money in order to become the person you want to be.
And honestly, from what you've written, it sounds like you already care deeply about being useful to her and to other people. That matters. Your art matters. Your writing matters. The way you show up for people matters.
A paycheck is only one measurement of contribution, and probably not even the most interesting one.
I think that's one of the things I'm slowly learning myself: sometimes the thing that needs to change isn't the situation. It's the story the "I" has attached to the situation.
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
@marcitko
Ah, happiness resides in life's small victories.
After all, great victories are the sum of many small victories even as a lake is the summation of so many drops of water.
Peace to you
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: Being a light unto yourself
I've been thinking about this a lot since I responded a week and a half ago and my answer has evolved:
Six years ago, I had created a discussion here about this very question; of refuge and whether refuge necessarily has to remain limited to the Three Jewels. https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/26451/3-jewels-or-4#Item_25
At the time, I wrote:
We take refuge in Buddha,
We take refuge in Dharma,
We take refuge in the Sangha,
We take refuge in the Triple Gem within ourselves.
The passage came from Charles Luk's Ch'an and Zen Teaching, First Series, and it caught my attention because it seemed to offer another way of understanding refuge: not simply taking refuge in something outside ourselves, but recognizing the Three Jewels within ourselves.
I then brought up Huineng's teaching on taking refuge in the threefold body of Buddha within oneself. I was clearly circling around the question of self-refuge, although I don't think I had fully worked out what that meant for my own practice.
I also came across a Kṣitigarbha practice that said:
“I prostrate, go for refuge, and make offerings to the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha…”
That raised another question for me. If a practitioner can explicitly take refuge in a bodhisattva, then perhaps the Three Jewels are not necessarily the only things that can meaningfully function as refuge.
Six years later, I've come back to that question.
And I think I've finally arrived at a formulation that makes sense to me.
My practice now begins:
Above all, I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
I take refuge in Guanyin, my guru, learning to hear as she hears.
I take refuge in the Listening Heart, and kindle the lamp within.
The phrase “Above all” is deliberate.
The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha remain the foundation of my refuge. I am not trying to replace the Three Jewels or create a fourth Jewel.
But I no longer see that as requiring me to stop there.
Guanyin as refuge
For me, Guanyin is more than an object of admiration or a symbol of compassion. I approach Guanyin as a guru; a teacher and exemplar of compassionate listening.
The phrase “my guru” is intentional.
My relationship with Guanyin is informed by Vajrayana practices associated with Avalokiteśvara/Chenrezig, among other Buddhist traditions. So when I call Guanyin my guru, I am not inventing a relationship without precedent. There is an established Buddhist tradition of relating to Avalokiteśvara as Guru Lokeśvara and of taking refuge in the bodhisattva.
At the same time, my overall practice draws from several Buddhist traditions rather than belonging exclusively to a single Vajrayana lineage. The Vajrayana elements are incorporated into a broader practice that also draws substantially from Chan, Theravada, and Pure Land traditions.
For me, Guanyin represents the question:
Can I learn to hear as she hears?
Not merely hearing sounds, but hearing suffering clearly enough that compassion becomes a response.
Refuge in the Listening Heart
The third line is perhaps the most personal.
The Listening Heart is the name I've given to my practice. It is my attempt to bring mindfulness, wisdom, loving-kindness, compassion, and Guanyin-inspired compassionate listening together into something I can actually live.
So when I say:
I take refuge in the Listening Heart, and kindle the lamp within.
I am deliberately invoking the Buddha's teaching about becoming an island or refuge unto oneself.
This is not meant as:
“I trust my ego.”
Nor is it:
“I don't need Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, teachers, or community.”
Quite the opposite.
The point, as I understand it, is that eventually I have to practice.
A teacher can point.
A bodhisattva can inspire.
The Dharma can illuminate.
The Sangha can accompany.
But nobody else can cultivate mindfulness for me, develop wisdom for me, listen compassionately for me, or walk the path for me.
That is where the lamp comes in.
I don't want to merely stand beside someone else's light.
I have to kindle my own.
So what does “refuge” mean here?
This is where I'm interested in hearing what others think.
Does taking refuge necessarily mean identifying something as an ultimate or exclusive source of salvation?
Or can refuge also mean turning toward that which provides orientation, guidance, stability, and a way of practice?
If the latter is possible, then I wonder whether we can meaningfully speak of several dimensions of refuge:
The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
- the foundation.
Guanyin
- the teacher and embodiment of compassionate listening.
The Listening Heart
- the practice I return to.
The lamp within
- the responsibility that ultimately cannot be delegated to anyone else.
Six years ago, I was asking whether the Three Jewels were the only possible objects of refuge.
Today, I think the more interesting question is:
What does it actually mean to take refuge?
And perhaps the answer is not simply about what we take refuge in, but where refuge ultimately has to become real: in our own practice.
I'd be interested in how others understand this, particularly the relationship between the traditional Three Refuges, refuge in a bodhisattva or guru, and the Buddha's teaching to be a refuge unto oneself.