Kindness of others

Let’s talk about the kindness of others. If you look at every day so many people are doing so much work just to keep us happy. Think about that, you want groceries. You order it from Amazon. Well, it started out with someone farming the groceries that you want. It goes then to a wholesaler and the distributor and so on. Just to bring tomatoes to your door, more than 25 people have done their part at least. Now you may say well I paid for the tomatoes and they all got paid. True. But they did not have to do those tasks. They could as well have done something else. How did you get money to pay for all this? Someone had to give you a job. You may say, I am good at what I do. Sure you are. Someone gave you those instructions. You paid for your tuition – someone had to give you that money. So if you think long and hard, you will notice that everything we enjoy, a lot of people who we don’t even think about play a role. We must appreciate the kindness of other beings. In our meditation, we will try and contemplate these points and towards the end, we will develop affection towards all beings. This is the focus of our meditation.

What if someone is trying to provoke you to get you angry?

Excellent question. When someone tries to provoke us, we should try and figure our what it is that provokes us. If two people say the same thing to us, one will provoke us and other will not. Why is that? That’s because of our attachment towards that person. This is self-cherishing. As your meditation practice grows, thing that bother you will no longer bother you. And eventually, they will realize that it does not bother you and stop trying to provoke you.

Can I look at a picture to clear my mind?

When we look at a picture our sense organ is active. Our eyes cannot visualize anything without the involvement of our mind. So when we are looking at a picture, we are engaging our mind. As a temporary solution, it is better than having our mind go in 10 different direction. However, ultimately, we want to train our mind to be quiet. Our mind should take instructions from us – which is not happening right now. So this whole exercise is about training the mind.

I wish I spent more time with my family

Most people who are near death almost always express the above sentiment. Why not start today? If we know we are going to die someday, let’s start spending as much time as we want with our families. Your circumstances may not allow you to spend all the time with them, but if we gradually increase the time we spend with our family 2 hours more per week and that will only increase to 4 hours more per week and so on. Point is that we all need to start living today rather than waiting for someday! Let’s start our journey.