What are the thoughts you wake up with? Are they always the same, or in the same lane? Or are they different every day? I woke up with this deep thought in my head: you add suffering to the world when you take on abuse as much as when you give abuse.
Okay, it was not exactly the quote, but this is how I remembered it. The actual quote is “You add suffering to the world just as much when you take offence as when you give offence”. And this is from the book by Ken Keyes, “Handbook to Higher Consciousness,” 1993.
And this is not random; I have come across this idea before from some ancient knowledge I picked up around Indian lectures.
In the knowledge of Karma, things are not that straightforward as we think of them – the idea of sin - punishment, or sin - repenting - no punishment. It is a little deeper and has a few more steps :)
1. One way to explain it is that if you cause offence, you add suffering to the world, and if you take on offence with no attempts for defense, you also bring suffering to the world.
In other words:
2. If you act wrongfully, by the karmic law you get a consequence. You get a consequence when you do not act wrongfully as well, if the situation requires your acting, and you don’t act; in this case, you allow the evil to multiply. Therefore, you get a karmic consequence for both action and inaction if they were wrongful.
This is interesting from the standpoint of how we assume what is our business and what is not. From this perspective, everything in society becomes our business. Cleaning garbage is our business, but stopping those who throw garbage is also our business. Or stepping in for those who do not clean after themselves for various reasons also becomes our business.
By not taking responsibility for various reasons, we allow both ‘wrongdoing’ and ‘wrong-not-doing’ to spread. By doing so, we allow suffering to multiply.
This becomes especially sensitive when we think of those who cannot take care of themselves, like children and the elderly. In a tribal society, children are everybody’s business, and the elderly are everybody’s business. The collective responsibility sustains the community, the society, or the tribe.
I hold a strong belief that things need to be addressed. HOW they get addressed is potentially a long and sensitive discussion. However, if we address things on a smaller level, like with our families, communities, and friends, it would already make a difference, and have a ripple effect. And the simplest level is to just say what is going on out loud. On an even simpler level it is to say what you don’t want to acknowledge to yourself about the things that ought to be done and addressed, and that are not, because we decided that it is all… none of our business.
I am not inviting everybody to stick their nose into everything at all times. No. I am inviting you to contemplate the things that we could address and we don’t. And maybe, just maybe, act on some very small part of it, and see how life improves. Because when we stop passively absorbing suffering in, and start acting against it, life inevitably improves.
Okay, it was not exactly the quote, but this is how I remembered it. The actual quote is “You add suffering to the world just as much when you take offence as when you give offence”. And this is from the book by Ken Keyes, “Handbook to Higher Consciousness,” 1993.
And this is not random; I have come across this idea before from some ancient knowledge I picked up around Indian lectures.
In the knowledge of Karma, things are not that straightforward as we think of them – the idea of sin - punishment, or sin - repenting - no punishment. It is a little deeper and has a few more steps :)
1. One way to explain it is that if you cause offence, you add suffering to the world, and if you take on offence with no attempts for defense, you also bring suffering to the world.
In other words:
2. If you act wrongfully, by the karmic law you get a consequence. You get a consequence when you do not act wrongfully as well, if the situation requires your acting, and you don’t act; in this case, you allow the evil to multiply. Therefore, you get a karmic consequence for both action and inaction if they were wrongful.
This is interesting from the standpoint of how we assume what is our business and what is not. From this perspective, everything in society becomes our business. Cleaning garbage is our business, but stopping those who throw garbage is also our business. Or stepping in for those who do not clean after themselves for various reasons also becomes our business.
By not taking responsibility for various reasons, we allow both ‘wrongdoing’ and ‘wrong-not-doing’ to spread. By doing so, we allow suffering to multiply.
This becomes especially sensitive when we think of those who cannot take care of themselves, like children and the elderly. In a tribal society, children are everybody’s business, and the elderly are everybody’s business. The collective responsibility sustains the community, the society, or the tribe.
I hold a strong belief that things need to be addressed. HOW they get addressed is potentially a long and sensitive discussion. However, if we address things on a smaller level, like with our families, communities, and friends, it would already make a difference, and have a ripple effect. And the simplest level is to just say what is going on out loud. On an even simpler level it is to say what you don’t want to acknowledge to yourself about the things that ought to be done and addressed, and that are not, because we decided that it is all… none of our business.
I am not inviting everybody to stick their nose into everything at all times. No. I am inviting you to contemplate the things that we could address and we don’t. And maybe, just maybe, act on some very small part of it, and see how life improves. Because when we stop passively absorbing suffering in, and start acting against it, life inevitably improves.