Personal Responsibility, Compassion, Service to Others

Thank-you. Thank-you. Thank-you a lot. Is there anybody here from Canada? I just wanted to tell you that your geese arrived safely in Longwood this morning. I was walking to the garden and a large v-formation of Canadian geese were circling low overhead. Honk, honk, guys… It’s ok, we’ll send them home in the spring with T-shirts and sunglasses. Hey! Welcome to the Pro Course! Whoa! I’d like to thank the Qualified Masters for making this the biggest Pro Course ever - so far. Good job, guys. You know, you change enough people and you change the society. The change we are looking for is in the direction of improvement, but it also works the other way as well. This is the basic principle of Star’s Edge politics: change enough societies and you change civilization. And the gentlest way to do this is one person at a time. The Avatar® Course puts happiness and spiritual awakening within everyone’s grasp. The first change that you can expect from your Avatar experience is an awakening of self-awareness. From there you climb a ladder of integration and gaining self-control, and at the top of the ladder is self-acceptance. I’m happy to be me. You have to be a friend to yourself before you can be a friend to others. With self-acceptance you begin to peel back the layers of identity and definition, and discover the truth of who you really are. You’re more than a meat body; you are more than a spark in the brain; and you are more than a backward-thinking, story-telling mind. You’re going to like what you find. Discovering who you really are opens a door to a vast, immeasurable awareness that has been here longer than this whole universe. Now the realizations begin. This is who I am. This is what is happening. This is why I’m here. Making a person an Avatar is a far better approach to improving the world than persuading, or making them believe in some doctrine. It may not solve all of a person’s problems immediately, but it certainly will put their problems in perspective. Societies, particularly those under democratic rule, reflect and shape the general attitude of the individuals that participate in them. Societies that wish to flourish will place a high value on personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others. The prevalence of these three qualities, personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others, will indicate whether a society is expanding or contracting. The same indicators, of course, will tell you whether an individual or a group is on the rise or the decline. If you wish to improve a society, or a group, or an individual, you can do it by improving any one of these areas: personal responsibility, compassion, or the service they give to others. As these qualities grow, they nurture “we-attitudes”. We-attitudes are things like: we can build it, we can do it, and we can succeed. And they are typical of a group that is on the rise. A lack of these three qualities, personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others, results in self-centered “me-attitudes”: for example, I come first, I am going to win, give me some more. These are typical of a group or an individual who has grown selfish and is on the decline. Selfishness destroys groups. It’s an affliction of the mind. Selfish, all-about-me-attitudes are symptoms that the individual, or the society, or the whole civilization, is headed toward separation and conflict. You see, if my concern is mainly focused on acquiring things for myself, or for the group of family and friends that I think of as mine, and your concern is mainly about acquiring things for yourself, or the group of family and friends you think of as yours, we’re going to come into competition, and we’ll probably end up in conflict. And here’s a startling fact, our selfishness will consume at least twice the amount of natural resources that we would consume if we were friends. You want to know how to conserve natural resources, make friends. Friends share. At the root of selfishness is a belief that the only way to achieve happiness and safety is by acquiring: more objects, more attention, more space. This is a bad strategy, because the more things you acquire, the more things you have to protect that you have acquired, and you have to protect them against people that think just like you. And if you can’t trust them, and they think just like you, they can’t trust you. The second reason why it’s a bad strategy is because justification of selfish actions leads to self-importance, and the more self-important you become then the more intense the suffering is from just the everyday trials of life. “Hey, don’t you know who I am?” The character of Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, is an archetype of selfishness. And another archetypal character is the Ferengi, Quark, in Star Trek. One of Quark’s rules of acquisition is “Never place friendship above profit.” See, this is not a code of conduct that I would recommend. And here’s why: whatever code of conduct you use to govern your actions, you need to predict the consequences of the other guy using the same code of conduct. If everyone acts the same way that you act, will it result in harmony or conflict? Act toward others as you would have others act toward you. That is Confucius’s golden rule. People who spend all their energy looking out for themselves, the “it’s all about me” crowd, end up miserable, feeling victimized, and usually living alone. The same goes for groups and societies who focus all of their attention and resources on their own welfare. They end up hostile, isolated, and intolerant; they build walls, they come into conflict with other groups, and they engage in wars. Two groups that are in conflict will consume as much as a hundred times the amount of resources that they would consume if the two groups were friends. Conserve natural resources, make friends. Someone needs to create a T-shirt. Ok, I’m starting to rant. I just saw Avra’s eyes roll. Just let me leave you with this: when you see a street sign that says “Dead End”, think about the consequences of selfishness. On the other hand, personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others are symptoms that a society, or an individual, is moving towards greater happiness and safety. When our concern is with the well-being of others, we create harmony rather than conflict, cooperation rather than competition, and the conditions around us all improve. The mental conflicts that are caused by attachment, arrogance, hostility, resentment, and jealousy, all of those conflicts disappear when selfishness disappears. Occasionally someone will go really stupid about the idea of service to others, and they give away everything they own, and then they just become a burden on other people. And presenting yourself to be taken care of, considering that you’re old enough and able enough to care for yourself, is not really service to others. So, there is some intelligence involved here. Santideva, an 8th century Buddhist scholar, put it very profoundly: There are a number of realizations that will transform a person’s attitude from selfishness to service. One is coming face to face with the truth that we’re involved in a mortal existence. Tomorrow, the treasures that we sort and protect today will belong to others. And the beliefs that we assert to justify our selfishness will chain our souls to future consequences. So personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others are redemptive qualities. In 1871, Albert Pike, a brilliant Confederate General also Sovereign Grand Commander of the Masonic Lodge, wrote a massive book called Morals And Dogma. In it he said, Good quote. And as an aside here, he also said to the effect that, individuals and groups are purified by persecution and thus in the long run their attackers prove to be their benefactors. That’s something to remember when you’re practicing compassion on your enemies. Another realization that will transform a person’s attitude from selfishness to service to others and it’s less dramatic than the specter of death but it’s just that we’re all in this together. We’re much more alike than we’re different. When you stop and really see another person, you see beyond your stories about them, you see that they suffer the same illnesses, misfortunes, and losses that you have suffered, then suddenly there’s this kind of sincere wish to help them. Your help should be empowering rather than disempowering. Teaching a man to fish is better than giving him a fish. And if you can’t solve a person’s problems, at the very least you can invoke blessings on the person’s behalf. Within the feeling of compassion is the wish that someone be spared from suffering, and for people who are far away from you, sometimes the only thing you can do is say a prayer for them. Christians call this kind of prayer an intercession. And it’s kind of in the same category as the serious drill or the compassion exercise. Compassion is so powerful that it is considered by all major religions as among the greatest virtues that you can practice. The Dalai Lama has said, It starts with a feeling of friendliness toward your self (self-acceptance) and then it grows into a feeling of friendliness toward others. You don’t have to find someone who is suffering, to be compassionate. It just begins as an openness, a giving, a non-judging, a no demand, trusting, offer of friendship. Compassion sleeps in everyone’s heart, and sometimes you have to do something to awaken it. One of my favorite stories about compassion comes from a Christian minister named Steven Goodier. Goes like this: there was a family whose dog gave birth to twelve puppies. They ran an ad in the newspaper when the puppies were old enough to be given away, and the ad said, “Free to good homes twelve adorable puppies.” After several weeks only three of the puppies had been given away. So, they thought about it, and they ran a second ad that said, “In desperate need of good homes, eight pretty puppies and one that is hopelessly ugly.” In the next two days they gave away the hopelessly ugly puppy nine times. It just shows there are more caring people in the world than there are selfish people. Compassion can be light and caring, or it can be soul shaking and cause you to cry your eyes out. The tears that you shed in compassion are called “love tears”. And by legend, the revered female bodhisattva of the Chinese, Guan Yin, weeps love tears for the suffering of every living thing in the web of life. That’s ultimate compassion. You open your awareness to the suffering of strangers, to the suffering of animals that are eaten, to the suffering of every living thing in the web of life. On the Wizards Course you will learn that most societies follow a pattern of evolving similar to individual consciousness. Societies began as clans of hunters and gatherers, they evolve into tribal groups that engage in agriculture, and the common experience of these agricultural groups bonds them into political states. And this is where things can go off the road, so to speak. Competition between political states leads to industrialism, industrialism leads to trade economies that can eventually spawn an obsessive pursuit of wealth, of money. And this selfishness will start the society into a decline unless it is checked. Now if the people are able to restore personal responsibility, compassion, and service to others before selfishness collapses the society, they will evolve into a contemplative community of friends. Values will begin to shift from acquiring material wealth to practicing spiritual disciplines. The sangha is born. That’s where we are in this room. Out of the contemplative era will come individuals whose leadership and instruction of skillful spiritual practices will create the foundation for an enlightened planetary civilization®. Change enough people and you change society. In Buddhism the motivation to achieve enlightenment is called bodhichitta, which is a combination of compassion and wisdom. Bodichitta is longing to achieve enlightenment not only for one’s self, but you want to take everybody with you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all beings were free from the causes of suffering? In the book, The Words Of My Perfect Master, Patrul Rinpoche describes three levels of bodhichitta. The lowest level is the way of the King, he primarily seeks his own benefit, but he recognizes that his benefit depends crucially on that of the kingdom and upon his subjects. The middle level of bodhichitta is the path of the boatman, he ferries his passengers across the river, and simultaneously ferries himself as well. And the highest level of bodhichitta is the shepherd, or bodhisattva, who makes sure that all the sheep arrive safely ahead of him. A few years ago the trainers gave me a bronze statue of the bodhisattva, Ji Jang. He’s called the bodhisattva of perseverance because his vow is to wait in hell until the last human awakens and goes to heaven. That’s the highest level of bodhichitta. The Avatar equivalent to bodhichitta is the determination with which we contribute to the creation of an enlightened planetary civilization. I mean, that’s the gold ring of this whole biological experiment. And as soon as we encourage enough people to move up this evolutionary ladder, the values of society will change. And the best way I know of doing this is by staying the course and making more Avatars, Masters, and Wizards. And old professor who I used to eat lunch with was fond of saying, “Start with a trickle.” Well, Houston - we’ve got our trickle. As long as we follow our practice of living deliberately, showing compassion, and strategically helping others, we will turn the trickle into a raging river. Let your legacy be this: founders of an enlightened planetary civilization. May everything you do benefit beings and bring them happiness.