Thursday, April 28, 2011

Beyond the wave of judgment

"Alan Wallace, a leading Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, puts it like this: "Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground.  

As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot!  What's wrong with you?  Are you blind?'  

But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind.  He, too is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt?  Can I help you up?'  

Our situation is like that.  When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion."  -- Kornfield, The Wise Heart

If we could but see through our own filters -- the rage, the sense of betrayal, the frustration, the sadness, the grief -- all that keeps us caught in ourselves -- we might detect the divine oneness that lies buried within each human heart.  Who would you treat differently today, if you could just see beyond the wave of judgment; see through to their Buddha-nature?

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