DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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Even though in today's society you are living together, there is always quarreling, conflict and never being sincere with each other. On the contrary, you still want to suppress and destroy each other. Therefore, your life seems to lose more and more control. With the whirlwind of modern life, many times it seems like you have become a robot, your temperament becomes rough, full of stress and sadness, even cold and very cruel. The main cause of these sufferings is not because of the life of modern society, nor because you have not yet reached the era of happiness, but because your heart is becoming more and more dry, and your energy is becoming increasingly dry, love is exhausted day by day. Instead, the ego citadel is built delicately and firmly. That causes division and fragmentation, and life cannot be completely peaceful.

Society, or human life, is a mixture: Some are good, some are bad... you should not only know the good and ignore the bad. So if you have returned to Buddha, then accept Demons as well. And sometimes when you welcome the warm wind, you also have to open the door of your soul so that the cold wind of winter can enter. You should accept everything and adapt to everything. Don't separate, don't deny because everything is closely related to each other. If you refuse, you unintentionally give up something in your heart. So, face all your situations and share, sympathize, and transform until all are peaceful. Accepting, loving, and applying compassion to your life is the only way to relax. Every day you come into contact with life, you have many opportunities to experience love and apply compassion. Such as:

- Pick up a sharp rock or a thorny branch in the middle of the road,

- Comfort or sympathize with someone who is desperately suffering,

- Share or help a few coins with people in difficulty, and be happy with everyone,

- Be patient when being scolded by others, use peaceful words to exchange and talk, etc.

Those are actions that require your compassion to be used a lot every day. The Buddha's disciples have a tradition of loving people, animals, and plants through acts of listening, loving speech, being vegetarian, releasing animals, spreading loving kindness, cultivating mindfulness, and doing charity... Those are wonderful images beautiful in compassion. So no matter whether you are idealistic, materialistic, conscious, or spiritualistic, if you cannot experience love in life, no one knows whether it is practical for this life or not. Therefore, you are the one who learns the teachings of liberation, the one who will devote his whole sincere heart to the happiness of others. When you become aware of this, it's not somewhere strange but in everyday life, and most of it is created by you. So, you should make an inner revolution to change everything, by applying compassion to your life thoroughly. For you to see the meaninglessness of being conservative and selfish open your heart, and start on the path of dedication, that is opening a compassionate mind, applying a compassionate mind. There is only one meaningful action in this fleeting, dusty world: Open your heart of love and do something to help sentient beings escape suffering. Just a compassionate embrace can help a desperate stranger find a reason to live. Love is very necessary for this life.

To have compassion, you do not need to apply any mysterious or sublime method, you just need to apply your inherent compassion to transform from a polluted mind to a pure mind. Be aware of the life around you and meditate to spread compassion to accumulate loving energy. That is the easiest and most practical way to open compassion.

So thank life, everyday life for giving you so many opportunities to love. Every sadness, joy, sorrow, resentment, and loved one allows you to learn about yourself. Truly, life is a precious gift for those who know how to enjoy and live meaningfully. So you don't need to be afraid of the evil surrounding life, you're just afraid that you won't be able to sanctify life. If you have mindfulness and awareness, when you receive a small favor, you must appreciate it and sincerely thank it.

Once you no longer think much about self-interest, think much about your ego, on the contrary, you know the goodness and beauty of others, then the whole life is a beauty. Thank life every morning when you wake up you have a new day to love. It's also about opening the door and being in contact with life, but people with dark minds and lives, when they open the door in the morning, don't have the feelings you think. Therefore, without the qualities of beauty and sensitivity, there is no reason for you to live happily. Therefore, expanding your heart and applying love completely to life is the door that opens the horizon of happiness.

Every area of life has certain difficulties and crises, but ordinary people only solve them on the external level. Here you try to learn and put it into your heart to solve some problems of modern life. First of all, you are aware that, although society is built on a high level of production, when you live in a communal living society without love as the basic foundation, even if you have love if you don't know how to apply it to life, many conflicts and problems will arise. Such, that society cannot be just and civilized. History has passed with many prosperous and declining dynasties. The most prosperous and peaceful dynasties are those built largely by applying love, solidarity, and justice to life. Each individual is a member of society, no one can live separately. Whether directly or indirectly, the mutual nourishment between individuals and society still takes place. Society has many aspects to help individuals survive and develop. It can be said that love is the most important aspect of human happiness. At that time, Indian society was divided into four distinct classes, but the Buddha believed that it was impossible to divide classes and affirmed:

- Love is the bond between people, no class in tears are salty, in drops of red blood.

This proves to be the number one social spirit of Buddhism. Buddhism has a very strong human nature. Buddhism believes that if you do not live peacefully and happily in this human world, then when you die there will not be a world for you to live happily. Buddhism's ideal social model is to establish a pure land on earth. The pure land of humanity is achieved through transformation from the impure land, it is built on the basic material of selflessness and altruism.

The reason there is conflict between individuals and society is because your individuals conflict with you. Society is your external expression. Therefore, if you want to reform society, the first thing is that each individual must reform themselves. Talking about society means talking about citizens because many citizens form society. Citizens and society are synonymous, good citizens mean good society and vice versa.

Buddhism never advocates having religious authority and never participates in politics with the spirit of control, command, or opposition to anyone. Because no matter who you support or oppose, it's all nonsense. You must fight against yourself first to find harmony between humanity, the individual, and society. Because if you find yourself in conflict with the great community, you conflict with yourself first. If you think like that, then perhaps wars and invasions will not happen, and wars called for justice will not happen either. Buddhism believes that there is no such thing as righteous anger. If you take action, it will only be out of compassion and peace of human to ring the bell to awaken the conscience of the dark forces to change their minds. This is evidenced in the non-violent spirit of Buddhism from ancient times to the present. A typical example is the non-violent spirit of Bodhisattva Quang Duc in Vietnam, and Saint Gandhi in India. Therefore, if the person in power does not have the goodwill to take care of the citizens and lead the country to develop, but only knows how to take advantage of the power and satisfy their animalistic desires, it is very dangerous. Because politics can use all tricks to kill people easily. You should note that in the human world, there is a saying:

- When things reach their extreme, there will be changes

When people reach their extremes of suffering, there will certainly be resistance.

The idea here is that politicians should build peace and happiness on noble spiritual and moral principles. You should not build many prisons but rather build moral and spiritual schools, which is a broad-minded plan for long-term happiness. Because criminals in prison are not criminals but patients. They were mentally ill, their hearts were fueled by greed, anger, and ignorance, so they became criminals. Always thinking about peace and happiness for the people is the great responsibility of politicians. Every citizen is grateful for that effort. Therefore, politicians must know how to reflect, listen to the suffering and difficulties of the people, and know how to apply compassion to minimize corruption, bribery, bureaucracy, and arrogance.

According to the above principle, the value of all living beings is equal in terms of their true nature. Every living being is an element in the common home of the universe. Thus, you must relax and harmonize with the universal rhythm of life, you must see everyone as closely related to each other. No individual can stand alone outside the human world and survive. Because if one part of your body hurts, the balance of the whole body will be thrown off. To misunderstand a separate self is to create an ulcer in the entire universe. The mistake of clinging to a non-entity is the cause of violating all cause-and-effect relationships between things. Once you understand this, you must know what to do to protect the environment most harmoniously. It is natural for you to unite with each other in society. Not only that, you need to protect creatures, animals, and natural resources so that ecosystems can be balanced. Currently, several animal and plant species have become extinct or are in danger of extinction, and resources are nearly exhausted. The air is seriously polluted, and this has reached a red alert level. Humanity, more than ever, must propose a direction for education on environmental ethics and must join hands to jointly preserve the world's home. Otherwise, adverse effects of the earth such as diseases, and natural disasters... will strike humans.

Therefore, love, compassion, joy, and renunciation according to Buddhism are the four strengths that build understanding between people and people, between people and animals. Instead of launching wars to destroy people, animals, and nature, you should love each other. You should apply compassion to treat each other in peace to build a good life on earth, where you live, for now, and for the future.

Nowadays, many situations do not allow you to naturally express your emotions on the outside, instead, you have to be suppressed and forced inside, disturbing your psychology and physiology. Like before a crowd, you're angry but don't dare to scream to relieve your anger. On the contrary, if you swallow your anger inside, you will unintentionally burn yourself and injure your body. The medical industry has found that each type of germ has a unique identity with a certain part of the human body, such as tuberculosis germs that often like to gouge the lungs. On the other hand, psychology tells you that your emotions have a specific sympathetic response to a certain organ in your internal organs. Positive mental health can improve physical health. A refreshing spirit brings a feeling of health and freshness to the body, through which you can see university research:

- Harvard University did a 30-year study and showed that people with an altruistic lifestyle are a factor contributing to a good spiritual lifestyle.

- Surveyor Allan Luks also surveyed thousands of people who volunteer and help others and said that 90% of them are enthusiastic, positive, and live happier...

- Another study by James House of the University of Michigan found that regularly volunteering and interacting with people in warm love will increase people's longevity and vitality.

- Psychologist David McClelland of Harward University concluded that people who are excited by feelings of love in their hearts have increased levels of globulin in their saliva, this antibody helps the body fight against diseases and respiratory infections.

In From Medicine to Meditation, Osho says:

- People who live in a community, with an open and comfortable heart, are less likely to have heart attacks, less high blood pressure, less cancer, less madness, and suicide.

You see this in free societies, when individualism is promoted and protected, the rate of people with heart disease, high blood pressure, and suicide is increasing. But in a highly communal society, you rarely see this disease, only a few who are educated and have a separate, independent lifestyle get it.

In short, no one denies the value of science that people apply to all aspects of life to bring comfort to people today. But here you still find imperfection in aspects, of course not trusting the values of science to find true happiness. The crisis in all aspects of life is largely because you have not yet understood and resolved it originally. Economic imbalance, political bias, buying and selling officials, corruption... are the cause and result of all conflicts in the world today. Most of the causes of conflict, crisis, and imbalance come from initial misdirection. Therefore, ambition, selfishness, prejudice, especially lack of selflessness, altruism, lack of love, and failure to apply love in life, life will become increasingly constrained and fragmented. So the happiness that you are trying to find is just a flickering image amidst countless confusions of reason.

Every crisis problem cannot be solved only externally but needs to be resolved internally. No one can run to find happiness anywhere without stopping all ambitions, without knowing how to listen to the heart, expand love, and properly apply love in life. Expand your love and sharing with people and nature, and then all problems will easily find balance.

So you should listen and contemplate the wholeness of life. Turn to the inner factor, and apply love in life, you will find good harmony between the individual and society, between the individual and the group.

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