Posts tagged compassion

The relations which come to obtain between human beings are those manifest of the dispositions which each individual entering into a relationship takes his or her time and effort to cultivate.

Huh?

Let me break that down for you.

If you sit around frequently masturbating, towards the object of your masturbation, you are cultivating a disposition.  There’s a seed (lol, but seriously) in your mind which you are taking the time to water and nurture, and even though you (probably) aren’t going around having sex with the subject of your masturbation whenever you see him, her, or it, that is the facet of your relation to them which you have taken the time to be mindful of while you were on your own.

I’m not saying masturbating is harmful… and this post isn’t even about that, but it serves as a good example.  By contrast, it’s been in the Buddhist tradition from the very beginning that one of the objectives of meditation is to cultivate mindfulness of one’s self and how one lives his or her life.  We didn’t need modern psychology to figure this shit out, Buddha figured this shit out while he was sitting under a tree. 

Similarly, a further aim of some forms of Buddhist meditation (particularly “loving-kindness” meditation, though this isn’t found in all disciplines, particularly not in the schools of Zen Buddhism), is to direct your compassion, consciously and purposefully while sitting by yourself, towards people who you may not even know, or know, but that you don’t like very much.  Once again, the theory is, that if we take the time to sew and nurture these seeds, these dispositions, they will manifest themselves as healthy habits in our relations to one another.

So many of our problems relating to eachother as a society, shit, as a species, stem from this issue of failing to cultivate compassionate, meaningful attitudes towards one another.  I’m not saying we all have to validate and justify eachother’s beliefs, habits, and actions: I’m merely suggesting that we at least build some sort of foundation for ourselves as individuals such that we might enter into a constructive relationship with somebody else, no matter how different they might be from us. 

We don’t have go for walks on the beach with them and shit, but we are all sharing a lifespan and a planet so, it just seems like we should spend more time working on ourselves in this respect, rather than masturbating both literally and figuratively.

I know you all want to feel more meaningful. You want to feel closer to one another, like you belong to something.  But you don’t need clubs and drinking parties to do this.  What you need is to sit down and evaluate yourself and your life in a deep and meaningful way. 

Otherwise, you are just masturbating.  Alcohol does not bring you closer.  Membership in something does not bring you closer.  Only genuinely desiring to be and actually acting to BE closer, will bring you closer. 

What do you want from life and how are you going to think outside of the box your parents, teachers, and society have placed you in so that you might get it?  Do you have the courage to change what you don’t like about the world or are you going to take solace in shallow relationships and petty material bull shit?

Stop masturbating to mediocrity.  Take the time to know yourself and don’t compromise with this artifice of a world.