In todayand#8217;sFBA Dharmabyte today, and#8220;The Revolution of the Metta Bhavana,and#8221; Khemasuri challenges us to ask ourselves what we can do individually and collectively by taking risks in our community, reminding us that collective change is not comfortable.
Taking a risk herself in the title of the talk, this is an excerpt from and#8220;Building an Ethical Underworld and#8211; Lessons from the Mafiaand#8221; given at the Buddhafield Festival, Devon, 2007.
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] So I'm going to now talk about what we can do on an individual and a more collective level. So on an individual level, we self-development, we go for self-development, we underpin how we are in the world with our ethical practice and clarity of mind through our meditation. So developing clarity and awareness is very important. I think that practicing metabarthana, the development of love and kindness is very important. I actually think of it as a revolutionary activity. It will change your relationships with yourself, with individuals, with your society, a great deal, a lot, and it will change your actions as well so that to come from a place of love and kindness is to dramatically change your intellectual action with the world. And I think it's important that we act skillfully and ethically as individuals because all our actions do have consequences. We may not know what they are, but they will have consequences. So we need to act as ethically and as clearly as we can. We need to act on the knowledge that we are interdependent, that the consequences of our actions are born by others, and born by the planet as a whole, as well as ourselves. So my actions don't stop here. They flow into the world, and I don't know what effect they will have, but I know that they will have an effect. By meditating and acting ethically, we work against craving. We develop lifestyles that encourage low consumption, economic sharing, right livelihood. We learn to be more contented with what we have. We can live and act in the present moment without an attachment to outcome. We can just live freely in the world from what is most important to us. Ethical acts are actually self-validating. They don't need to have an outcome that we know about. They are worth doing in themselves. We can consider withdrawing support from groups and organisations that don't support spiritual values and principles, and in fact, I've done this in the past. I've just thought, no, I can't do this anymore. This is not working in the way that I want it to. And we can just take risks. We don't know what's going to happen. We can just do something. We can be bold. We can speak out. We can be gently subversive. So that's all things we can do as individuals. And there are lots of things we can do as a collective as well as communities. So we can actually be an active part of a spiritual community, and we can do this on all kinds of levels. We can do it on the level of friendship, just in conversation and communication with another person. We can do it in terms of the people we live with and the people we relate to in a very small area of our lives. We can do it in the sangha, the spiritual community in all kinds of ways. I do it as part of the chapter, I do it as part of an order, as part of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Orva. I belong to the network of engaged Buddhists. I have a lot of different kind of communities. I belong to communities of people who will take work that encourages people to engage in the world out into the world. That's an important community to me too. People that I can work alongside in promoting change. And it's not always through personal contact as well. I belong to strong communities that are with people I rarely see by keeping contact with. And at some time in the future sooner or later we will work together or produce something together. So it's not always people I need to see all the time. We also need to be aware that change is not comfortable. So we know it's not comfortable on an individual level. But confusion exists when there's change in our society too. And confusion and doubt and insecurity are part of the process of change. So to belong to a community which understands that and will support and encourage you is just fantastic. To be able to have people who understand what you're doing and will support you through difficult times. I'll be with you through difficult times. It's important to understand that if we experience strong emotions it's because we're really connected to what's happening outside us. We're not ill in any way. It's not a problem. It's not because there is anything wrong with us. It's a communication between us and the outside world based on our feelings and emotions. So we need support to be able to let that sort of thing in freely. And we need to be able to support ourselves to let that sort of thing in freely through our practice. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
