DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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Compassion is the source of happiness in life. It is an essential element to ensure your own happiness as well as the happiness of society. Without compassion, there will be no peace and happiness in the family, in society, in the nation, or in the world. Compassion is also the source of a clear mind and a healthy body. Therefore, developing compassion is the most effective remedy to cure selfishness in yourself and other sentient beings.

Compassion is extremely important because it is the cause of happiness, success, contentment, and joy in life. Anyone who knows how to practice compassion means that they never harm others but always want to help others, and helping others is the cause of success. Because when you live with compassion, you tend to bring happiness to others, thus making life meaningful. You will find happiness in bringing joy to others. Therefore, venerable monks often say:

- If you want to take care of yourself, you should act wisely by taking care of others, of other sentient beings. And even without expecting anything for yourself, by bringing happiness and success to others, you will naturally receive happiness and success in return.

A compassionate person will make others their friends. When you have compassion, you see everyone as your brothers and sisters, your friends. You feel close to them, even though they may be far away.

Conversely, if you lack compassion, you will not feel close to people, even if they live in the same neighborhood, the same village, or even within your own family. In your interactions with others, if you lack compassion, you will find it difficult to make friends, and when you try to find a friend, sooner or later, they will become your enemy. Even relatives can become your enemies.

Life without compassion is truly lonely. Those who only care about themselves will feel empty inside, lacking love, and will not find true peace and happiness. You cannot enjoy life. Without love, you will experience loneliness, boredom, and many other problems.

If you lack compassion, no matter how many friends you have, no matter how wealthy you are, you cannot have true peace and contentment in life. Even if you are the richest person in the world, money will certainly not bring you any satisfaction if you lack the precious human quality of compassion. You will not be able to enjoy life because your heart will be like a scorching, barren desert. If you lack these precious qualities and have a selfish attitude, wealth will bring you much anxiety, fear, and disappointment. This is especially true if you succeed in acquiring all the material comforts you desire, because even then, you will never find satisfaction. You will fear your competitors becoming richer than you. Money and possessions can even create instability in life, bringing you enemies and threatening your very existence.

Embracing selfishness and lacking compassion will make the lives of the wealthy unhappy and unfulfilled. They are even more unhappy than beggars, because although they have all the material comforts, they still do not feel satisfied. This exacerbates mental problems, leading to more disappointment and dissatisfaction in life.

Conversely, many people live in primitive conditions lacking material comforts, but thanks to their compassion and kindness, they live very happy and contented lives. Furthermore, no matter how much knowledge and education you possess, you cannot have inner peace if you lack compassion. Even if you dedicate your entire life to learning and research, that knowledge will only create instability if you are driven by selfishness and only care about yourself. Education, which should bring happiness and contentment, instead sows the seeds of arrogance and anger, and allows other evil thoughts to arise. You will not enjoy life and will not find meaning in life. Without compassion, you risk using your knowledge and education to harm others and even destroy yourself and the world.

Your compassionate heart is the source of peace and happiness in your own life and the lives of others. It is the source of happiness for any sentient being, starting with the people and animals around you. You can understand this by observing how your happiness depends on the people and animals around you in your daily life. This dependence can bring you joy or disappointment. You rejoice when someone, even a stranger, smiles at you affectionately or treats you kindly. Conversely, you feel unhappy when someone is unpleasant or treats you badly. Similarly, the way you think and behave will affect the people and animals around you. People and animals around you will feel comfortable knowing that you have no intention of harming them. Even the smallest bird senses kindness and goodwill. The first time the bird sees you, it hesitates, unsure whether to trust you or not. But once it realizes you have no intention of harming it, it becomes reassured and calmly circles you. You might even notice a change in its appearance; it looks more relaxed and peaceful.

The essence of compassion will guide you to here is that the happiness of the people and animals around you depends on you, on how you think and behave towards them. Each of you is responsible for the happiness, not just of everyone around you daily, but of countless sentient beings. That happiness depends on your heart, on your compassion. This happiness is entirely within your reach. Whether you can bring peace and happiness to others depends on what you do with your heart. You are entirely responsible for that.

If you do not cultivate compassion, then with selfish thoughts and other delusions, you will harm countless sentient beings directly or indirectly, generation after generation. And because the lives, happiness, and suffering of others depend on you, if you lack compassion, and if you are someone who can use your power and influence to harm the whole world...

World history has shown many times, in the distant past and even recently, that millions of people, animals, and insects have been killed simply because a person in power acted in what is considered a lack of compassion. If that person in power had compassion, millions of people would not have been tortured and killed, and countless animals and insects would not have suffered. That person in power doesn't need to do anything special to help others; simply refraining from ordering the killing would allow countless beings to live happy, peaceful lives. Thanks to compassion, figures like the Buddha and his holy disciples have been the primary source of world peace. The Buddha's scriptures have brought peace to millions by teaching them compassion and wisdom. If those in power possess compassion, they will use their power to bring happiness to millions, but without compassion, they may use that power to harm the entire world. A person with compassion, no matter how many weapons they possess, is not a threat to others. Conversely, a person without compassion can harm others even without weapons, because they always seek to harm others through their body, speech, and mind.

In exploring the nature of compassion, you've seen that a person in power can bear immense responsibility for the lives of many sentient beings; the peace and happiness of millions of beings can depend on the heart and level of compassion of just one person. And it's the same for each of you. Each of you has a responsibility for the happiness of every other sentient being, whether you can see them or not.

As a practitioner, you understand that the nature of compassion means being responsible for the happiness of every human being, every animal, every tiny insect, every living creature. All living beings are alike in one respect: they desire happiness and do not want to suffer. You have a responsibility towards all living beings, not only your friends and relatives, but also strangers and even your enemies.

When you practice compassion, the first thing you do is stop harming living beings, starting with the people and animals around you. When you do this, those beings receive peace from you. Not causing harm creates peace. But above all, when you have compassion, you feel openness, generosity, and empathy for others, so you strive to help them. When you have intense love for a living being, such as a human or an animal, you not only refrain from harming them but also help them. Your natural reaction is to respond to the needs of the sick, the poor, whether they are strangers or an injured animal. You will help according to your ability and your understanding of the situation. Not harming sentient beings and bringing benefit to all sentient beings encompasses the entirety of Buddhist teachings.

Whether sentient beings are helped or harmed depends on whether you have compassion. Clearly, once you have compassion, you will always be inclined to help others; if you cannot help them, at least you will not harm them. The stronger your compassion, the more you dedicate your life to benefiting sentient beings. And then all sentient beings will receive peace and happiness from you, directly or indirectly. Whether other sentient beings benefit from you depends on whether you practice compassion. Each of you has a responsibility for the happiness and peace of every sentient being. The happiness of all beings depends on your own mind, on whether you cultivate compassion.

If you do not cultivate compassion, if you live only caring about yourself, then greed, anger, envy, and other delusions will quickly and intensely arise. These evil thoughts will cause you to harm other beings, directly or indirectly, generation after generation. The absence of compassion will bring much unhappiness and instability to your life and the lives of other beings.

There is nothing to worry about if someone shows sympathy or pity for you. Even if someone dislikes you, or even worse, curses or hurts you, there is nothing to be upset about, because you are just one person. There's nothing to be upset about, because only one being is involved, and that being is you alone. If you are reborn in hell, there's no need to despair, because you are just one being. And if you attain enlightenment, there's no need to be overly excited, because you are just one person. However, if a sentient being like you doesn't practice compassion, there's a risk that you could harm all other sentient beings, directly or indirectly, from one lifetime to the next.

As I've pointed out, even in this lifetime, you have the potential to harm millions of people. For this reason, cultivating compassion must be your top priority. Therefore, it should be the first thing you think about and strive to do. Countless sentient beings desire you to cultivate compassion towards them, to help them, and not to harm them. Even though you yourself desire love and support, because you are alone, that is insignificant compared to the countless beings whose happiness depends on your compassion.

Compared to others showing compassion to you, an individual, showing compassion to countless other beings is far more important. For this reason, you must proactively practice compassion, regardless of whether others treat you well or show you affection. Because if you practice compassion, you will bring benefit to countless beings, and if you do not practice compassion, you will harm countless beings. Therefore, you should still practice compassion regardless of whether others practice compassion or not. Some people think:

- Why should I practice compassion if others don't practice compassion towards me?

These arguments stem from selfishness, not wisdom. This reasoning is not based on sound judgment, as it fails to consider even the peace and happiness within your own mind. Selfishness argues in this way because of a desire for gain, but in reality, it only leads to loss, because its understanding of gain is incorrect.

The way selfishness perceives gain is by causing others to suffer and taking advantage of oneself; others must be disadvantaged so that you can benefit and be happy. Conversely, wisdom, guided by the Dharma, understands the true process of happiness and suffering, knowing that both happiness and suffering originate from within your own mind. Kind attitudes and actions bring happiness; unkind attitudes and actions bring suffering. Wisdom also knows that deceiving others to gain victory for oneself only leads to harm and loss, because you are creating bad karma that will cause you to suffer harm and loss in this life and possibly for thousands of generations to come.

When you harm others, you create problems and instability for yourself, whether you realize it or not. Happiness and instability both have their natural development. Just as medicinal plants grow from the seeds of medicinal plants, poisonous plants grow from the seeds of poisonous plants. The seeds of a medicinal plant cannot grow into a poisonous plant, nor can the seeds of a poisonous plant grow into a medicinal plant. Harming others will create the cause of problems and instability that you yourself will suffer, while not harming others will create the cause of happiness that you yourself will enjoy.

Selfishness is a mind that only cares about its immediate happiness, but the methods it uses to achieve happiness are clumsy and unskillful. Deceiving others to gain glory and profit for oneself is truly foolish, as the result will be the opposite of its purpose. It's like intending to take medicine to cure an illness but ending up taking poison.

When you act with wisdom and righteousness, you yield the victory to others and accept the loss yourself. However, the loss is only the outward appearance; in reality, you gain unparalleled benefit from this virtuous action, because for thousands of years to come, you can still enjoy the glory of victory. That is why you should practice compassion yourself, regardless of whether others practice compassion or not.

You all possess, to a greater or lesser degree, compassion. You may not yet have compassion for all sentient beings, but you must certainly have compassion for at least some of them. Others have even greater compassion than you. Even in the world, some people have compassion for countless suffering beings. And following this line of reasoning, you know for sure that there must be people whose compassion is fully developed, encompassing all suffering beings.

The main thing that allows you to develop compassion is the nature of your mind. As you know, the true nature of your mind is clear and pure; it is neither identical nor mixed with the faults of the mind. Because the true nature of the mind is not identical with delusive thoughts and afflictions, some people even call this nature of the mind Buddha and consider it perfect enlightenment.

The pure and luminous nature of the mind, called Buddha-nature, gives you the ability to develop your mind in the way you wish, enabling you to generate and expand compassion. You can cultivate your mind and fully develop compassionate love for all sentient beings.

Compassion is not an independent phenomenon. It does not exist on its own. Kind thoughts and peaceful actions, wishing for all other beings to be free from suffering, are given the name compassion by your mind. In other words, compassion is something you create with your mind. Compassion is a dependently arising phenomenon. It arises depending on you. You know that when you feel even a little pity for someone, you naturally wish for that person to be free from suffering, and you will do what you can to help them. As your compassion intensifies, you will take on the responsibility of helping more and more sentient beings to escape suffering. When you fully cultivate compassion, you will dedicate your life to all sentient beings. You live solely to liberate every being from suffering and the causes of suffering, and to bring them happiness. In doing so, you will continuously accumulate merit, the cause of happiness and success, as vast as the boundless expanse of space.

Now you see that cultivating compassion is the most important thing for you, and especially for all sentient beings. You need to develop compassion for each sentient being, helping them be free from suffering and its causes, leading them not only to temporary happiness but also to the eternal happiness of perfect enlightenment. However, compassion cannot magically fall from the sky or be acquired by practicing and repeatedly wishing:

- I need compassion, I need compassion.

Just like in school, you learn one subject after another and progress through the classes, you must develop compassion step by step, starting with elementary topics such as:

- Doing good deeds,

- Chanting scriptures,

- Reciting the Buddha's name,

- Meditation and other practices.

If you don't do this, your compassion will not be stable. You might feel compassion for a person in distress or an injured animal for a few moments, but after a few days, your compassion will disappear. Therefore, you need to develop compassion fully, that is, to have a compassionate heart for every sentient being, like a mother's compassion for her beloved child in danger. If a child falls into a fire, the mother has only one thought: to jump into the fire to save her child. The mother's thought arises intensely and naturally; she immediately stops what she is doing and runs to save her child. When you develop complete compassion, you feel the same as this mother for her beloved child, but for you, it is for the suffering of every sentient being, whether friend, enemy, or stranger.

With great compassion, you not only wish for each sentient being to be freed from suffering, but you also take action yourself to liberate them from suffering. This is called great compassion, because you take it upon yourself to liberate them. When you have great compassion, you bring happiness and peace not only to yourself but also to every sentient being. This gives your life profound meaning. You need to cultivate this compassion for all sentient beings, every one of them wanting only happiness and not suffering. You need compassion not only for the sick and suffering, but also for those who are wealthy and healthy.

To cultivate compassion for each sentient being, you need a deep understanding of all the kinds of problems they endure. Every problem, whether personal, national, or global, is a reason for you to cultivate compassion. Every person, every animal you see suffering, even on television, is a reason for you to cultivate compassion. Every suffering being is imploring you to cultivate compassion. The simple matter depends on a change in the attitude of just one person. If just one person becomes violent, your life is immediately in danger, but conversely, if just one or more people learn and practice compassion, every home and the entire community will be peaceful and happy.

In short, the essence of compassion is to take away the suffering of others and bring them peace and happiness. And individual happiness can contribute to a profound and effective way to overall improvement for your entire human community. Because you all share the same need for love, this shows that anyone you meet, in any circumstance, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the faces may be, or how different their clothing and behavior may be, there is no significant division between us and others.

Ultimately, no matter where humanity may be, you are still living on this small planet, your only home. If you want to protect your home, each of you needs to experience a living sense of compassion. Only this feeling can eliminate the self-centered, egoistic motives that cause people to deceive one another.

If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel confident and worthy, and there is no need to intimidate others.

I believe that at every level of society, family, tribe, nation, and international, the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. You don't need to be religious, nor do you need to believe in an ideology. It is all necessary for each of you to develop your own good character.

You must practice treating everyone you meet as an old friend. This will give you a genuine sense of happiness. It is an understanding of the nature of compassion and also a practice of compassion.

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