In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Cherishing Living Beingsand#8221;, Subhuti tenderly takes us into the meaning of cherishing and#8211; looking after others, caring for them, and engaging in small acts of kindness. From the first talk in the series and#8220;Eight Verses for Training the Mind (talk 1).and#8221;
and#8220;May I always cherish all beings, With the resolve to accomplish for them The highest good that is more precious Than any wish-fulfilling jewel.and#8221;
Talk given at Madhyamaloka, Birmingham, 2004
This Dharmabyte excerpt is part of the series and#8220;Eight Verses for Training the Mind.and#8221;
[Music] Dharma Vites 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] Cherish, I think, is a very beautiful word. It comes from, presumably, from via French, from a Latin route to care. And yes, it suggests a very sort of tender and particular help, not a sort of vague or generalized love for others or, you know, benefit of others. It means really looking after them, paying attention to their specific needs. And that, I think, is also perhaps a danger of the language of the bodhicitta practice and discourse generally. That it can seem so general that you lose the particularity in small acts of kindness and attention to others. I read something recently that suggested when you're doing the bodhicitta practice, and you're doing the exchange of, you know, the giving and taking of unskillfulness from them and your own happiness and benefit. You start with particular people. Don't just sort of have a vague image of golem-like blobs sort of out there. But, you know, think of particular people who are suffering and who suffering touches you, and start with that. And through that, you can include more and more people. You can reach out to more and more people. So, when we're talking about cherishing all beings, what that means is cherishing those who are immediately in front of you. And so that means that this practice is offering us, this text is offering us a daily practice, minute by minute. So we cherish all beings with the resolve to accomplish for them the highest good, that is more precious than any wishfulfilling jewel. Well, I thought I find this very interesting, the idea of a wishfulfilling jewel. It immediately connects you with the fact that people are wanting creatures, that all those beings that you're cherishing, they want things, they wish for things. And what, of course, they all wish for is their own happiness and benefit. And this is a very important aspect of the whole Bodhicitta practice and discourse that you recognize that all beings seek, like you do, their own benefit. Even the evil that people do, even the monstrous acts that people perform, are done because people believe they will give them the greatest benefit, they will bring about the benefits that they desire. For some reason recently, these acts of terror going on in Iraq have been getting through to me. The unbelievable senselessness of killing 200 people who you don't know, you don't know what they think or what they believe, but just setting off a bomb to kill people at random. It's really hard to understand how people can do that. But they're doing it because they believe, they will bring about what they value most highly. They believe that it's the best thing that they can do. And this is what this Bodhicitta practice is really sort of inviting us to attend to. The fact that nobody ever does anything because they believe it will do them harm. Even if they believe it will do them harm, they think that harm is the best thing that could happen to them, if you see what I mean. That everybody does things because they believe that they will bring them the best. And everybody seeking their own best interests, their highest value. Which for me, of course, connects up for those who've been looking at NVC with the NVC idea of needs. Nobody does anything except as an in fulfillment of deep universal needs. That's where this practice connects up, I think, with NVC. By the way, we may return to that theme. But yeah, the wish-fulfilling gem immediately brings us to attend to the fact that everybody's out for their own benefit and happiness. And everybody's acting all the time because they think that that's going to fulfill them. That's going to get them what they value most highly. And I think immediately if you can start to attend to the world around you and the people around you in that sort of way, your attitude begins to change. If you can immediately begin to sense that behind the little acts of unskillfulness that people perform and even the big acts of unskillfulness, the gross and almost incomprehensible acts of unskillfulness lies their belief that this will fulfill, this will bring them their greatest fulfillment. You begin to already begin to be able to move into cherishing them. So I take this idea of wish-fulfilling as bringing us into the whole realm of people as wish-fulfilling creatures. They're trying to fulfill their wishes. And when you think about the wish-fulfilling gem, it's a fascinating sort of symbol, isn't it? Which you find in all cultures. I remember fairy stories where people are given three wishes. And in the fairy stories, they always waste the wishes, don't they? You know, I remember though I was trying to think of one. The only one I could think of was one where an old couple help a fairy. It's a very Irish story. And the fairy grants them three wishes. So the man sits down and he says, "I'd like a really big sausage." And so on his plate appears an enormous sausage. And the wife says, "You silly fool, you've wasted a wish. I wish that sausage was on the end of your nose." I think that's where the sausage is. And then, of course, what can they do with a third wish, but get it off the end of his nose. So wish is gone. And there are many, many stories like that. And what that really sort of teaches us and tells us is that we don't know our own interests. If we had the power to get what we wished for, what we wished for would not give us fulfillment. We wish for things. And they may be temporarily satisfied, but they always have a sting in their tail. The sausage always goes on the end of the nose. So those sort of fairy stories and stories where people find the wish-fulfilling gem are all about that, aren't they? The fact that we're not in control of our, we don't know what our best interests are. We don't know what our highest interests are. This is what Tarkovsky's film Stalker is about. You know, they go into the zone. And in the zone, there's the room. And if you go into the room, all your wishes are fulfilled. You remember the porcupine went into the room and he ended up extremely wealthy. What he'd gone in there to do was to ask for his brother's resurrection. But his own deepest desires were what the room fulfilled. So we're all the time trying to fulfill our own desires. We're wish-fulfilling creatures, so to speak. But we don't know where our highest interests lie. And so this is what's connoted here. Our resolve is to accomplish four beings. The highest good is more precious than any wish-fulfilling jewel. We want to accomplish for people their real best interests. Not just what they might think they want or say they want. Of course, you know, some of what they want is not unskillful and maybe even necessary to them. But most people, you know, if they were given a wish-fulfilling jewel, would not be able to use it satisfactorily or well. So this implies then, of course, that the cherishing of living beings requires us to understand for ourselves what the deepest interests of beings are, including ourselves, and to know how to fulfill them. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
