Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Altered perspective
I'm posting this here because I am not too sure how well this idea is going to sit with Buddhist teaching.
A lot of belief systems urge their followers to seek the Universal Force, Buddha, God, Star-stuff in fellow human beings. Good idea. Very difficult in practice.
A thing I do, which is personal but might help anyone getting their hair off with fellow man, is to imagine what animal they might have been in a previous existence. It is much more difficult to get cross with an animal because they can't help it.
So a dear friend eats like a pig, munching and slurping? Well maybe they WERE a pig last time around and can't help themself. So look at them across the table and imagine a nice big ole hog snuffling in the trough and I promise you it won't be nearly so irritating.
I have one very beloved friend who blows on his food. Every forkful is blown upon before he puts it in his mouth and I know it is just a habit but it used to drive me crazy. So I realised that he was a raccoon in his last incarnation and blowing is just a substitute for washing his food. Now I can eat with him, giggling as I see him as a furry bandit critter, scrupulously washing his dinner before eating it.
If everything is illusion and nothing is as we think we see it, maybe imagining our fellow man as creatures in order to feel more compassion and unconditional love for them, isn't so wrong?
A lot of belief systems urge their followers to seek the Universal Force, Buddha, God, Star-stuff in fellow human beings. Good idea. Very difficult in practice.
A thing I do, which is personal but might help anyone getting their hair off with fellow man, is to imagine what animal they might have been in a previous existence. It is much more difficult to get cross with an animal because they can't help it.
So a dear friend eats like a pig, munching and slurping? Well maybe they WERE a pig last time around and can't help themself. So look at them across the table and imagine a nice big ole hog snuffling in the trough and I promise you it won't be nearly so irritating.
I have one very beloved friend who blows on his food. Every forkful is blown upon before he puts it in his mouth and I know it is just a habit but it used to drive me crazy. So I realised that he was a raccoon in his last incarnation and blowing is just a substitute for washing his food. Now I can eat with him, giggling as I see him as a furry bandit critter, scrupulously washing his dinner before eating it.
If everything is illusion and nothing is as we think we see it, maybe imagining our fellow man as creatures in order to feel more compassion and unconditional love for them, isn't so wrong?
0
Comments
And....
I think I said that out loud.....
Yes....:tongue2:
The Buddha when he became enlightened is said to have remembered his (400) past lives, many of which involved a birth as an animal...
So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we were once an animal.
And indeed, who knows?
May be again.....!
Palzang
LOL!!!
Palzang