Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Donand#8217;t Leave Your Values at Home,and#8221; Khemasuri passionately shares the case for embracing personal responsibility and community engagement as a way of effecting social change in our troubled world. This track from the talk, and#8220;Building an Ethical Underworld and#8211; Lessons from the Mafiaand#8221;, given at the Buddhafield Festival, Devon, 2007.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Don’t Leave Your Values at Home
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [music] The Spirit of Community 2 is not bound by convention of values and principles, and this is a real strength. We practice thinking outside the box in terms of normal cultural values. We can be subversive in the nicest possible way. I mean, I just think that some ways that I operate as an order member is actually to subvert present cultural values held in our society. It's very important that we recognise it's good to share our knowledge and not to hang onto it, to share our talents and our abilities and skills within our spiritual community. This is the free foam of information and energy that I was talking about, which makes a community alive and connected and effective. So teach others what you know and learn from people who know more than you do. It's important. Understand that the use of symbol and myth to promote internal cultural norms will strengthen the Sangha. We've got loads of these. We're just sitting in the right place to do this. Promote vision. It's very important that we have another vision of the world and speak of it. An open system that is alive and working well will welcome diversity. Backed by common values, diversity will strengthen the Sangha through learning and offer the opportunity for it to evolve. So diversity is changing, enhancing and should be welcomed. We can use the networks that we have to communicate our values, principles and ideas as a spiritual community, to use our centres, to use our retreats and to teach meditation and ethics to others, to encourage others to self-develop. It's all important to work. It's also available to any of us to join other communities to promote our values and principles. Peace groups, anti-globalisation networks, friends of the earth, these are all good outfits, but do take your values and your principles with you. Don't leave them at home. So help the Sangha just step out into the world, interact with the world, promote its vision and its values and challenge cultural norms. And we need to do this in the knowledge that we may never see the results. We may never know what the results are, but know that we are doing this because it's important, because it comes from our hearts and it needs to be done. We just know that we are in this for the long haul. I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, because we are part of what is being called by some people an infinite game, a game that has no end. We need to continue doing it. The personal feedback in acting in this way can be profound. It will increase personal congruency, self-esteem, feelings of being worthwhile in the world, and all of this will release energy. You will have more of a sense of empowerment if you act in this way. So we might as well act with as much integrity and is decisively and with as much kindness, generosity and clarity as we can manage. And then just let go of outcome. Act according to our ideals and principles. Be prepared to be subversive, trust the process, take risks, just do it and do it with others. In the spirit of my understanding, I let these words flow into the universe not knowing what the outcome will be, but may be for the benefit of all beings. Thank you. [Applause] We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] You [BLANK_AUDIO]