EMOTION
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Emotion is an active action of our soul that is so fundamentally essential for everbody. From a fetus in the mother’s womb to a newborn baby, everyone knows how to love, hate or fear. When we grows up, emotion always exists in our mind. Even if we just sitting quietly doing nothing, though we think that we have nothing on our mind, indeed, there are a lot of emotional thoughts that are going through and controlling our mind.
What are those types of emotion: compassion or hatred? Where do they lead us? How should we love and hate appropriately to be blessed and to achieve full enlightenment?
Emotion is an different affective state in our conscious mind such as love, hatred, liking, boredom, anger, desire, wish, hope, respect, contempt, fear… and a lot of other different states of feelings that we have already experienced in our life.
For example, when we meet someone who is kind, and does a lot of charity work, we would naturally have respect for the person.
On the contrary, when we meet someone who often speaks inappropriate language, does bad things, and always is proud of himself, we would naturally dislike this person.
Or, when we meet a fierce, angry looking person, who speaks rudely, bahave violently, we would naturally feel fearful of this person.
In other cases, when we meet a person whose intention is to undermine our country, undermine Buddhism, the feeling of hatred would invade our mind natrually.
Or in relationship, one would miss their loved ones when they are away….
We are always experiencing these types of emotion like these above examples daily in our life.
Instead of spending time on walking in the park, or playing game, or enjoying other entertainment activities… we wanted to even travel long distance to visit different pagodas and listen to different seminars and lectures about the Dharma in Buddhism. Because we love and respect the Three Jewels, we refused to enjoy some entertaiment activities in order to spend more time to understand and learn about Buddhism. When we love one thing, naturally, we will hate another.
There are two aspects of emotion: love and hate. As mentioned above, when we love and respect the Three Jewels, certainly, we would hate something else. We feel that these types of entertainment activities are such a waste of time, hence our action tends towards other things… and in this example, our interest is about Buddhism. This is when emotion is controlling our mind.
During Spring, Tet (Lunar New Year Holiday), when we came to a temple and witness all the monks greet and wish each other best things for the new year, we felt affectionate. This state is yet to be classified as Emotion, but an emotion will come naturally later. And that is our compassion and respect to these people, who live a noble religious life. Then, we will like to listen more and more about the Dharma. Though we don’t know if the preach about the Dharma is interesting or not, but because of our respect for Buddhism, we still want to listen. We give up time of enjoying normal and ordinary life style activities to spend more time to learn more about Buddhism. It is because we believe that we can take refuge to Buddhism as it can help us understand the Truth and we can live better and be a better person. And then naturally, happiness (an emotional state) will be in our mind and spread to everyone else.
Emotion always has two opposite sides, typically: love and hate, hatred and forgiveness, respect and contempt… One is referred to as an attraction state and the other is pushing state. The feelings such as love, respect, like, expectation are attraction states of emotion that drive us towards being close to the others. When we love someone, we would want to see him and want to be close to him. When we respect someone, we would want to listen and learn from him. This is the attraction side of emotion. In contrast, the other opposite state will drive us away from other people. The emotions such as hatred, boredom, contempt… belongs this pushing state.
Emotion always exists in our mind, quietly, but it strongly controls our mind, our behaviours, and therefore, creating the differences in the society. Without emotion, this world will end, and nothing will exist. We could say that one of main causes to create this chaotic society, the whirl of life is emotion.
Simply, we like nice and fashionable clothes, and because of this liking, we want to earn more money to buy these clothes. When we like something, we are motivated to do to achieve the goal. Or when we see that the path leading to our village is so dirty and muddy and we are really annoyed about this. This “annoyed” feeling strongly motivates us to do the right thing by helping clean up the road. Sometimes, hatred also helps make us do the right thing, a good deed.
Both “love” and “hate” feelings drive us to do something. Because of different emotions, causing different behaviours and actions, diversity exists in life, in society. By now, we must know that we only do something because of either love or hate emotions. Without these main two types of emotion, we would not take any actions.
What is the first and basic emotion of an human being? It is the greed to live and the fear to die. When we are just a fetus in our mother’s womb, this emotion already controls us. Although we could not recognise our parents right after being born, the survival instinct always exists in our mind. When we are hungry or fearful, we always cry, this is a signal to our parent that they should feed or protect us. The survival instinct is a important motivation, which forces us to do thing to survive or to maintain our life. Even when we are older, we always have the desire to live longer, and the fear of dying. This emotion is fundamentally basic but very intense.
I like to tell you a humorous story:
A man who often went to the church and prayed that he wished to go heaven when he died. One time when he was praying, God appearred, smiled and softly said that: “Your wish have come true. You can now follow me to heaven”. Immediately, he was terrified and responded quickly: “No, I am sorry that I cannot follow God. I still have my familly, my house, my farm, and my wealth. Nobody can take care them if I leave so I cannot go to heaven with you. I will follow you next time”. Since then, he had never prayed the same thing again, as he was afraid that God may come back and take him to heaven.
Similarly, when someone always faithfully prayed: “Namo Amitabha Buddha” with sincerity and wanted to be reborn in Buddha’s land. However, when Amitabha Buddha appearred to take them to that land, they were terrified and immediately refused to follow Amitabha with many different excuses: their family, the businesses, etc. In fact, in theory, we want to follow Buddha and be reborn in heaven, however, in reality, we always have strong desire to live longer and extremely fear of death. Therefore, when Amitabha Buddha appeared to take us to heaven or to Buddha’s land, we know that it is the time to leave everything behind forever: to die. The emotion of Greed to Live and Fear to Die is always strong in the mind of any human beings.
Even a genuine Buddhist, who understand clearly the Dhrama, though is not afraid of death, he/she is still not courageous enough to end their life, when asked.
This fundamentally basic emotion compels us to do everything to survive and maintain our lifestyle. And then, karma and human instinct creates relationship between men and women; get married; and have children to maintain the human race. The love between a man and a woman is an extremely intense emotion. Thus, many artists have composed a lot of love poems, love songs. These songs and poems are very popular. In contrast, there are not many songs and poems which praise love for family, humanity, environment, world peace and children.
Only few noble people can overcome this type of basic emotion to write songs about other different matters in the society, not about the romantic relationship between men and women.
Until much later I have written a poem
But it is not to praise love
As love is just the image of twilight
Though pleasant but will fall into the darkness of night
As mentioned above, the love relationship between men and women is very intense, except for same gender relationship i.e. gay or lesbian. This exception also has its own karma.
A love relationship between a man and a woman has never occurred without problems. Why? Because the essence of this emotion is selfishness. Asian people has an closed and private culture of life, so we are quite certain that their love relationship is selfish. Similarly, although Westerners have an open and relaxed culture and their relationship can be very easy-going, it is still selfish. Selfishness will always lead to the unexpected actions such as anger, blame, anxiousness, anguish, betrayal, jealousy, which are very common in a relationship…
We once met an American man who was divorced. Someone asked him: Would you get married again? He said that he was afraid of marriage, just a thought about it made him feel that he had entered a fiery furnace. He was exhausted by jealousy, blame, anger, quarrels… and he was very happy to be free from his marriage. However, one year later, he got married again. We cannot understand! The love relationship between a man and a woman is always extremely intense. It makes us tired but it also attracts and motivates us strongly. Thus, we still can fall in love with someone else again, even though we just have been freed from it.
Apart from love/romantic relationship, we also have the greed for higher social status, power, honour and fortune. We need money because money can make our life better. Money allows us to do anything we want. The love for money is also an extremely intense emotion. Because of money, we have to strive and compete to survive. Sometimes we even conspire to kill someone just for a small of amount of money. Romantic relationship and love for money always make us exhausted, and more to that, we actually commit so many sins to have them.
After many years of observing and analysing human emotions, some philosophers had drawn a conclusion that: “All of chaos, disturbance and sins are derived from human emotions”. They concluded: it is very obvious that all different types of love or relationship will cause tiredness, separation, selfishness, fights… The like of partying, entertaining, money, power and lust are always the root causes for all evil acts, and make people lose their principles and morality. Therefore, throughout many years of the human race history, some philosophers had often advised that we should terminate all human emotions to achieve a peaceful life. It means that we do not love or hate , we should have a pure and clam mind.
Is the above conclusion correct? Actually, it is not! If someone thinks the above is correct, then he/she is not a true Buddhist. Most of us are confused about this conclusion. At first, we immediately accepted the above argument to stop love, stop hate to have a peaceful life… but that is wrong.
In fact, Buddhism has never taught us to terminate all human emotions. A large number of people have misunderstood the meaning of Emptiness in Buddhism. Often people thing Emptiness means to feel nothing and to do nothing. This is the misunderstanding about Buddhism. In fact, Buddhism teaches us about the the Noble Eightfold Path.
Those, who just started learning about Buddhism, would not be able to understand what the Noble Eightfold Path is. The longer they learn and practise Buddhism, they would understand more about this path. Only when they are enlightened, they can comprehend completely the Noble Eightfold Path. It is actually the essence of Buddhism.
We often misunderstand that “Emptiness” in Buddhism means “stop thinking”. It is totally wrong. It means we must thing rightly. Buddhism never taught us that we “do not do anything” to “avoid creating bad karma”. Buddha had taught us that we “should do good things and act rightly” to create blessings and merits; we must not do bad things, act wrongly, and create bad karma. Buddha also never taught us that we do not love anybody. Buddha actually taught us that we “should love or hate rightly”, so that our life will be happy and peaceful, our blessings would grow day by day, and we would be able to achieve enlightenment.
If our mind is controlled by the wrong emotion, we cannot be freed from the cycle of birth, life and death. If we do not respect someone, who deserves to have our respect, we would not have any blessing. If we are not strict with someone who needs to be disciplined, we also would not have any blessing. For example, if we met a great teacher who was so exemplary and dedicated his life to build up his knowledge and to teach students, but we did not show any respect for this person, then we would not have any bleesing and we always would be a mediocre person. Similarly, if we disregarded a monk who was virtuous and wise; had the ability preach Buddhism Dharma; practised meditation diligently; and did a lot to develop Buddhism, we also would not have blessing, merits and we would not be respected by others, as the result. If we took any of these disrespectful acts, we would never be able to achieve high level status in the society, and would not be respected by others.
Though it is not the same, but the same principle is applied to discipline someone. If someone behaved badly, but we did not strictly discipline him/her, we also would not be blessed. For example, if one of our friends, who were irresponsible for his family, his actions, but because of our friendship with him, we did not call out his mistakes, and did not advise him to be better, then we would not be blessed later in life, or even future lives.
Therefore, we must act rightly. If we act wrongly, we would always be in the cycle of birth, life and death, and never be freed.
We absolutely have to respect and pay homage to Buddha. We also must have the absolute respect for true monks. We have to have compassion for all other fellow Buddhists. We have to support and help those, who are less fortunate. We have to be strict to teach those who are mean and unkind. However, we have to be tolerant with them, show our compassion and forgiveness. The right emotion will make our life better. Through cycle of birth, life and death, we will gradually achieve the absolute compassion for all beings, no matter in whatever existence they may be. This is a sign of the enlightenment.
It is a completely wrong thinking that Buddhism advises us to be emotionless i.e. no love, no hatred. The right emotion will help us be stronger and be calm. The wrong emotion will make us anxious and worried. Let’s think about this: whenever we dislike someone, we would keep thinking about this person, the feeling of hatred keeps staying in our mind, in our heart, we would not be able to sleep… that means we have the wrong emotion. In contrary, when we like someone, have compassion for that person, our mind is filled with happiness, we feel better, stronger, healthier and sleep better… it means we have the right emotion
A Buddhist visited Phat Quang Pagoda and told us that: “Dear Master, I love to listen your teaching on the tape records. I cannot sleep well without listening to it”. This liking is a type of emotion. This emtion helps this Buddhist sleep well. Indeed, it is certainly the right emotion of love.
However, if someone said that: “Dear Master, I admire and love this singer. I miss her day and night, so much that I cannot sleep”. This love make his mind unstable and disturbed. It is the wrong type of emotion. This type will take us into the cycle of birth, life and death.
According to morality principle, the right and basic emotion is “love the good and hate the evil”. We must act rightly before even thinking about enlightenment. Again, we must behave and act rightly. Whoever badmouths about us, we should ignore. Buddha has clearly taught us that “Cease to do evil, learn to do good deeds, and purify the mind”. Buddha distinguished clearly between the good and the evil. It is not at all ambiguous. Therefore, fundamentally, the first basic level of emotion is to “love the good and hate the evil”.
The second level of emotion is that we have to respect those, who do good deeds and have compassion for those who commit sins. We should never hate the bad guys. If we have that thought, we are wrong. We must not hate or stay away from bad people. We SHOULD have compassion for them. Compassion in this case has a great meaning. It means that even we know about their sins, we should find a way to help them to turn back, be a better person, and learn to do good deeds.
The third level of emotion is that we have to be passionate about doing good deeds, and would never do anything bad.
If we can follow these steps, we will build on the basic and the right emotion and make us stronger.
Let’s list a few right types of emotion:
To respect elders and to love children.
Children are too young to take care of themselves, so we have to love and care for them. Elders dedicate their life to work hard to serve the society, so we have to respect them.
To have filial piety to our parents; to respect our teachers; to love friends, brothers and sisters.
Many charity organisations usually give presents to high ethical and role model students to encourage ethical behaviours at school.
To be strict with bad people; to influence and enforce further disciplines on them to make them better, and do not give in.
Strictness means differently in different context and environment. For example, in a pagoda, a Master sometimes is strict with his disciples by being silent towards his disciples, or scolding at some of them. The Master only teaches the disciples, who are obedient; but he will be silent with those, who are obstinate and do not listen. These disciples will understand the meaning of silence. In society, strictness of the law can be the punishment by money, imprisonment, even sentence to death. The law has to be enforced strictly to keep the stability and safety of the society. In a family, if parents are not strict with their children, they will become disobedient, uneducated and turn into bad people. In a pagoda, if a master is not strict with his disciples, they will be spoilt and do not concentrate on practicing the Dharma and meditation. At school, if teachers are not strict with their students, they will be disobedient, and do not concentrate on their studies. So strictness is required to be at different levels in different circumstances.
Being strict with someone bad is the right emotion, with the right intention to influence them to be better. If we are not strict with childrens, they will be become disobedient and spoilt. Western culture usually does not approve parents to spank their children for punishment, therefore the parents are not too strict with their children. This is one of the main cause of children being spoilt. In contrast, Asian parents can be very strict with their children so Asian children are more obedient, which helps make the society more stable.
Completely stay away from untruthfulness.
There are many aspects of untruthfulness. It could be in relationship, money, business, even in reputation… We must not do anything deceitful. With those, who are not truthful, we must be strict with them, influence them to avoid doing deceitful things.
Be honest.
Life is never peaceful if people betray one another.
Under many King dynasties, people have to be loyal to their king to ensure the stability and safety of their country. If people fought against their king, the country would be in chaos. Nowadays, we have to loyal to our country and if we fought against our own government, it was disloyalty, and it would create chaos. Some would argue that: “this government is so wrong and corrupted so I have to fight against this political regime”. Actually, we did not know that these thoughts, and as the result, these actions have been influenced by other foreign organisations. Intelligence agencies of foreign countries have influenced some corrupted Vietnamese to write articles, reports, and posts that false or misleading information onto the internet. Their aim is to make people panic and lose faith in our government. So they can incite people to rise in rebellion and consequently to overthrow our government.
In a series of Colour Revolution occurred in the Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Governments were overthrown because its people were incited to rise in rebellion. These people were trapped by different country intelligence agencies. They became disloyal to their own country. In any centuries, under any government, loyalty is always treasured and praised. Loyalty of residents of any country can help stabilize and protect for that country.
Loyalty is also a main factor for any business/commercial organisations. Many agencies or companies are growing very well but if only one good employee was disloyal, he quitted his job to work for other company that offerred a higher salary, it would cause disturbance and chaos within this company. Many other people could lose thier jobs if a company collapsed. The employer could be bankrupt. The main reason was due to an individual’s disloyalty. However, if the company wanted to keep this employee, it had to offer a higher salary. It became the competition between the two organisations, which also would not lead to a better outcome.
Therefore, loyalty is extremely important. Loyal employees would always think that “the company gives them opportunities to develop their career goals, to earn money for their family; they have worked in company for a long period of time; and they do not quit jobs even if there is another higher salary offer”. This would help the company and also the society to be more stable. Salary is important in life, but loyalty is much more important. Let’s ask ourselves questions: are we completely loyal to our Master, to our employer or to our country? If we have that loyalty in our mind, in our heart, we would always have blessings, as this is the right type of emotion.
To love our country.
Many people thinks that Buddhism is a religion of infinite compassion, a religion without any borders. Why do we just limit our love for our country? The love for our country though is small but practical. Buddhism is a practical religion. Someone had asked Buddha what the Dharma was. Buddha advised that “the Dharma is logical and practical, and you must experience it to understand it”. The “practice” of the Dharma means “come to experience and to understand”; it does not mean “just listen to believe“.
Firstly, the Dharma is practical. Before we love all living beings, first and foremost, we must love our country. We live together under one political regime, one legal system. We share one economic system. In addition, we speak one language, we have one cultural system, one magnanimous history… So we have to unite, we must love our country, love our compatriots and also to love all beings…
It does not mean that we love our country so we actually invade other countries. The viewpoint of Buddhism is that we love our country so we develop and build our country stronger. It is the foundation to contribute towards world peace. We do not love our country illiberally and selfishly. It must be the right emotion. The love, which is greater than the love of our own country, is the love for all living beings.
To respect national heros/heroines, great men/women, and outstanding leaders.
Thoughout history, many great people had sacrificed their lives for their countries and the human race. They were talented but also were very modest. They were determined to do good things and were willing to sacrifice their lives for the community. We have to respect them. If we cannot do that, we are just as trivial and unethical.
To have gratitude.
We always must have the deepest gratitude to all help and support that we received from others. We must never forget those who have helped and supported us. Though we might never see these people again, we must remember and repay by helping everyone else. Please do remember this!
To love the nature, plants, moon, stars, clouds, water….
Why should we love the nature? … To compose poems or to make music…? It is the right type of emotion. There are some people who live modestly, ethically… so they would appreciate little things such as bright shining moonlight… birds singing… We know that these people always have the right emotion. However, there are people who drinks and thinks that is romantic, then it is completely wrong. We love nature but we must love it the right way.
To treasure artwork.
Again, this is another type of the right emotion. Those who are wise and ethical will love the selective artworks. They do not like chaos. They feel appreciative when they listen to a beautiful song or read a beautiful poem. They also will admire beautiful architecture. Those, who are less intellectual, often compose songs with meaningless lyrics or poems. They do not love the art truthfully. It is not the right emotion.
To be courageous to face challenges and difficulties.
We have to be brave to overcome challenges and difficult situations in our life. Do not be a coward; or do not fear of these types of circumstances. It is the right emotion.
To have compassion for all types of suffering of human beings.
We must have compassion for all types of suffering. We must be kind hearted, and must not ignore these situations.
“Spring does not come to those, who are indifferent. Absence of joy when we turn away from the suffering. Shadow of an orphaned child.
Dedicated monks in their brown robes. Life always has the thirst for love”.
Please remember, we must have sympathy and compassion for those who are less fortunate than us.
Be happy for other people’s success.
Even when we fail in life, we should be delighted and happy with other people’s success with all our heart. If we can do that, we can overcome our own self, have blessings, and deserve to be successful later on in life. If we are jealous of someone’s success, we are annoyed with it, we will become mediocre people and never be successful in life. For example, even if we lived in a poorly structured and broken cottage, we should still be happy for the neighbour, who just built up a beautiful house. If we sincerely and genuinely were happy for them, our living situation would be improved later on. However, if we did the opposite, our life would never be better because of jealousy.
Be happy when our loved ones come home.
In our family, when any of family members i.e. father or mother or brother or sister comes home, we must welcome them graciously and sincerely. Do not greet just for the sake of it. If we do not care about others, we are selfish and indifferent. Or if someone from our pagoda comes home, even he/she was just away for one day, we still must greet them warmly and inquiry graciously about their health. In addition, we also must farewell them in similar manner. By doing that, our family member will feel warm, safe and not anxious even they are far away from home.
We have discussed about the right types of emotion. They are right because they make our life more meaningful; we will have more blessing and our mind will be peaceful and stronger. When we have these right emotions, our mind will be strong and will not be controled by ghosts. Ghosts can control our mind when our mind is weak and we are indebted to them from the past life. Why would our mind be weak? Because we have the wrong types of emotions: we love and hate wrongly. When we have the right mindset, the right emotion, our mind will be stronger and nothing can control us.
Emotion in Buddhism.
We have discussed many different types of emotion in a human being life. Now lets talk about emotion in Buddhism. The first fundamentally basic emotion is to have the absolute and boundless respect for Buddha:
“Buddha is the magic light
Is the love spreading all over the world Is the early morning for birds singing
Is the beautiful cloud flying across the sky Is the river flowing everywhere
Is the big mountain towering vastly We will devote completely
To respect and love you immensely Our heart will be eternally faithful
Though there will be changes and everything can disapprear”.
If we follow and practise Buddhism, but we do not have this right emotion, it is like a house without a roof, or a tree without its root or a person without a heart.
There are two types of emotion in Buddhism: Have boundless and absolute respect for Buddha; and always have boundless compassion for all beings.
There are other types such as:
Forever be faithful and devote to the Dharma.
It means we must practise the Dharma properly and diligently. Eventually, it will be in our mind, and it will lead us to live a better life.
Be afraid to make even small mistakes.
In Majjhima Nikaya, a Buddhist scripture, the second of the five Nikayas, Buddha had taught clearly us that: “We must see the danger in every small mistake”. Buddhist laymen/laywomen (Upasaka/Upasika) are allowed to make small mistakes but monks must be afraid of all mistakes, even a small one.
Respect all true Saints but be strict with all impostors.
We should not mistakenly think that we have to respect all monks, all religious practitioners. That would be wrong. We must not easily accept who they are as it will lead to the fact that many people will become monks for wrong reasons. Some people abuse the situation by becoming monks to get the attention, support and help from others. They become monks to live an easy life and also have respect from others. We must only respect those who truly want to become monks, who live a virtuous religious life and practise Buddhism rightly.
Love to meditate to reach the deep concentration level; and be ashamed of chaotic mind.
When our mind is chaotic and we cannot keep it calm, we must be ashamed of it. When we can achieve the deep meditation state, and when we can keep our mind free from false thoughts of greed, hatred and stupidity, we should feel happy about it. We must not be proud of it though, but must have the passion for meditation.
Devote ourselves to help others.
Those, who follow Buddhism but live passively and selfishly, and do not help others, are lack of this important emotion. Those, who devote themselves to help others, but are worried about if they are bored or not, then this is still not the right emotion. Only those, who forget about themselves, and devote everything for others, then always turn back to live a quiet life, and their mind is always calm, then this is the right emotion.
The right and true emotion in our life and in Buddhism will make our life be better, more useful, our merit and virtue will gradually increase. It will also help us practise Buddha’s teachings diligently, and gradually we can achieve enlightenment. We can only achieve this stage, if we have the right and true emotion. Those who are selfish and indifferent will gradually lose their blessing and never be able to have good karma, and never be able to reach Buddhahood.
The last emotion, but also the most especial and important one, is the religious belief.
The religious belief is a special kind of emotion. We accept and love our religion leaders and our religious doctrine. This emotion is very intense. It could be extreme. There have been many cases in the world, when someone became a suicide bomber to prove the point. They believe that their action is to serve and to devote for their religion. Their love for their religion is so intense and extreme that they are willing to die for their religion. This extermely intense emotion makes the whole world fearful and terified, and the law had to give in.
But why the love for religion is extermely intense? Because the doctrine of these religions always dignify their religious leaders. These religions promise them a lot of good things. These religions promise its followers that they will have a happy and wonderful life after death if they serve for their religion. These promises are beyond their imagination. They absolutely believe these promises. So their love for religion becomes so extermely intense that they are willing to die for it. And the law had to give in and allowed freedom of religious beliefs.
However, majority of current religions in the world are superstitious and obsolete. If we read carefully some other religion doctrines, we will see that many doctrines are vague, mystical, and absolutely unreasonable. Despite of that, millions of people still still believe in them. The law had to give in for these extreme religions. As the result, these religions still can continue building up and attract more followers to grow and develop further their wrong doctrines, wrong beliefs.
The give in of the law is not an advancement, but is the surrender of science and reasoning. In the future, some days, when science is so advanced, human civilization is so far progressed, the society is more intellectual, scientists and sociologists will consider carefully every religious doctrines and filter them through the system properly. Whichever religious doctrines that are true, reasonable, advanced and scientically correct, we must treasure them. We must get it of those doctrines, which are wrong and misleading. Only by doing this, the human race can always have true beliefs.
In the next few centuries, human beings should not have to accept false beliefs and have wrong emotion. It is the responsibility of us and other world leaders during this present time. However, nobody can do that today because a large number of people have believed in the wrong religions. Reasoning still lose to intuition and emotion. Religion is imposed on many newborn children when they are so little and have no knowledge of anything.
In the future, the world will somehow filter all religion beliefs and assess carefully all religious doctrines. So, as we are true Buddhists, we should head towards isright direction. We have to encourage our relatives or our friends to do the same regardless what religions they are following right now. We should advise them that “you should not wallow in the current religious beliefs, you should escape from these emotions and assess your religion carefully and objectively. We should select a true religion to follow and and improve our practice”.
Once, someone asked us that “Should I worship other Gods and Saints?” We answered that “No, you should not do that. Their souls already had transmigrated”. Buddha had stated very clearly that “No God will exist eternally. All living beings, gods and devils have to transmigrate at some point in time”. Buddha also taught that “We should not worship Devil either as they cannot exist eternally in their temple”. These souls would have transmigrated long time ago but we would never know about that. If we continue doing these actions, we would not earn any blessings. We should only worship the Saints, who had chieved enlightenment as they have escaped from the cycle of birth, life and death. They will forever be with us, listen to our prayers and grant us their blessings.
In Buddhism, even there are some people who have enormous respect for their Masters, however, when they are given feedback about their practice to help them improve, they would feel hurt, then annoyed and protest immediately. Human beings emotion can be awfully strong. Only those, whose mind are pure, calm and wise, can distinguish between emotion and reasoning in order to keep their respect and their belief stable and strong. It also means that they are able to escape from their own personal emotion to accept the truth.
To that, our heart are not useless
But we must know to differentiate between right and wrong Wrong emotion makes our lives suffering
Right emotion makes our future lives happy. We are confined to love and hate
To our anxiety and agitation
We live in dreams controlled our emotions Our dreams are like a haze.
According to Buddha’s teachings, we must have compassion for all beings With the great love without any boundary
The infinite compassion spreads all over the world
We have serenity as the sound of the pagoda bell in the afternoon And everyday in the yard with full of sunlight
Life is still happy as a holy gift
For someone who loves songs of meditation
It is very quiet but resounding through the three worlds.
NAMO SHAKYA MUNI BUDDHA
