How can Buddhas help you?
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1. Cultivating understanding + compassion allows us to cool anger
At the heart of Buddhism is the practice of realizing a greater understanding of yourself and the world around you.
What many of us don't realize is that it's this very lack of understanding ourselves and the world around us which causes us to suffer so much.
And one of the ways this can manifest is in a deep anger or resentment towards others.
Buddhism teaches us to handle our anger "skillfully" (a word used often in Buddhism), which means many things, most notably leaning in to our anger mindfully simply with the power of our awareness or "presence", which allows us to "step away" from it and view it more clearly so that we can identify its source and then release it.
This leads to understanding, and understanding leads to the cultivation of compassion, the quality of being able to "feel" what others feel and in so being compelled to send our love to them.
Anger is one of two emotions which leads to aggression and war. Most Middle Eastern warfare is based mostly on anger, anger towards the "opposition" because they defy their own beliefs.
But this anger could never survive under the right understanding. It would be cooled like water hitting a flame.
2. We can transcend fear by discovering its source
Much of what we fear stems from our impermanence and the impermanence of all things.
We're afraid of our own death (so much so that it's the greatest fear of all), afraid of losing our loved ones, afraid of losing our possessions, and afraid of our current life being turned upside down by the loss of a job, special position, or war. We're also afraid that we'll fail and afraid that we just aren't good enough.
Whether it stems from an awareness of the impermanence of all things, or our inner dialogue, we can transcend this fear by learning where it comes from (its source).
This is done through following the path of self-inquiry, or introspection- the practice of looking within until we find the source of our suffering.
Fear is the second of the two emotions which leads to acts of war, this one oftentimes leading to dangerous and irrational acts of self-protection without much cause due to paranoia.
Most "1st world" warfare in the modern era has been and is based on fear more than anything else.
Oftentimes, it's the pain that fear makes us feel which makes us want to run from it (the fear of our own death makes us run from it and want to postpone it at all cost). But if we were to look just a bit deeper, and be honest with ourselves, we'd realize that everything isn't what it at first seems to be.
And simply discovering the truth is healing in itself. All we need to do is observe with our mindfulness, to be fully present for the feelings, to transform ourselves.
3. We're perfectly "whole"
The feeling of a "void"- the feeling that something's missing- like there's supposed to be "more" to life, is universal.
Many of us interpret the feeling differently, but we all feel it- we feel like we're missing a piece, like we're one half of a whole (thinking we need "the one" to complete us), like we need to acquire something to be happy, like we're a part of something greater and need to come in contact with that, like we're a shadow of our potential and need to work hard to become the "greatest version" of ourselves or something else altogether.
Ultimately, this is all one and the same thing: it's the feeling that we're less than "whole".
This is unfortunate but arises naturally without any doing of our own, so there's no use kicking yourself over it.
We can, though, do
At the heart of Buddhism is the practice of realizing a greater understanding of yourself and the world around you.
What many of us don't realize is that it's this very lack of understanding ourselves and the world around us which causes us to suffer so much.
And one of the ways this can manifest is in a deep anger or resentment towards others.
Buddhism teaches us to handle our anger "skillfully" (a word used often in Buddhism), which means many things, most notably leaning in to our anger mindfully simply with the power of our awareness or "presence", which allows us to "step away" from it and view it more clearly so that we can identify its source and then release it.
This leads to understanding, and understanding leads to the cultivation of compassion, the quality of being able to "feel" what others feel and in so being compelled to send our love to them.
Anger is one of two emotions which leads to aggression and war. Most Middle Eastern warfare is based mostly on anger, anger towards the "opposition" because they defy their own beliefs.
But this anger could never survive under the right understanding. It would be cooled like water hitting a flame.
2. We can transcend fear by discovering its source
Much of what we fear stems from our impermanence and the impermanence of all things.
We're afraid of our own death (so much so that it's the greatest fear of all), afraid of losing our loved ones, afraid of losing our possessions, and afraid of our current life being turned upside down by the loss of a job, special position, or war. We're also afraid that we'll fail and afraid that we just aren't good enough.
Whether it stems from an awareness of the impermanence of all things, or our inner dialogue, we can transcend this fear by learning where it comes from (its source).
This is done through following the path of self-inquiry, or introspection- the practice of looking within until we find the source of our suffering.
Fear is the second of the two emotions which leads to acts of war, this one oftentimes leading to dangerous and irrational acts of self-protection without much cause due to paranoia.
Most "1st world" warfare in the modern era has been and is based on fear more than anything else.
Oftentimes, it's the pain that fear makes us feel which makes us want to run from it (the fear of our own death makes us run from it and want to postpone it at all cost). But if we were to look just a bit deeper, and be honest with ourselves, we'd realize that everything isn't what it at first seems to be.
And simply discovering the truth is healing in itself. All we need to do is observe with our mindfulness, to be fully present for the feelings, to transform ourselves.
3. We're perfectly "whole"
The feeling of a "void"- the feeling that something's missing- like there's supposed to be "more" to life, is universal.
Many of us interpret the feeling differently, but we all feel it- we feel like we're missing a piece, like we're one half of a whole (thinking we need "the one" to complete us), like we need to acquire something to be happy, like we're a part of something greater and need to come in contact with that, like we're a shadow of our potential and need to work hard to become the "greatest version" of ourselves or something else altogether.
Ultimately, this is all one and the same thing: it's the feeling that we're less than "whole".
This is unfortunate but arises naturally without any doing of our own, so there's no use kicking yourself over it.
We can, though, do
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