I’m going to go out on a limb here. You’ll have to excuse me while I do this and hope to your deity that the earth doesn’t split open and swallow itself into a black hole or some mysterious singularity. My friend, Leesa, wrote down a phrase in her blog. What it amounted to was that the world would be a happier place if people lived the way they were supposed to live. My question then is how are we supposed to live?
That’s a pretty thought provoking question I suppose. Christian, I believe would point out that their ‘Good Book’ the Bible tells one how to live. The Bible doesn’t condemn slavery, but that’s neither here nor there I don’t suppose. I just am of the opinion that if we all lived by the Bible then a good portion of our society would be ‘servants’ and that would be perfectly okay. I also think that the Bible would condone quite a few things that I believe go against the nature of man. Clothing for instance, farming, and beating one’s slave (servant as they are named in the Bible and so long as they live 24 hours after the ceasing of the beating you’re not at fault). I am aware that the ‘Good Book’ says that man should love one another as they have been loved by the deity; however, one only needs to read the Bible to understand it’s a very fickle love and wrought with all manner of servitude and conditions. I think it’s not necessary to enumerate.
Thich Nhat Hanh said the following: “A human being is an animal, a part of nature. But we single ourselves out from the rest of nature. We classify other animals and living beings as nature, acting as if we ourselves are not part of it. Then we pose the question, ‘How should we deal with nature?’ We should deal with nature the way we should deal with ourselves! We should not harm ourselves; we should not harm nature. Harming nature is harming ourselves, and vice versa. If we knew how to deal with our self and with our fellow human beings, we would know how to deal with nature. Human beings [and nature] are inseparable. Therefore, by not caring properly for any one of these, we harm them all.”
That is how we should live, but until people come to grips with the oneness of all life and not just the oneness of familial and friendly beings the world is not going to be a better place. How we should live, isin m y opinion “The thought of renunciation, the thought of non-ill-will, the thought of harmlessness. This, monks, is called Right Thought.” –Digha Nikaya
Now, you may be wondering how exactly that translates into how we are supposed to live. I’ll tell you! Well, actually I’m going to illustrate it for you by telling you the pillars of Buddhist living:
Right Understanding
Right Thoughts
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
I’ll probably revisit this shortly, I am fuming still (sadly enough) over the theft of all my physical writing from my car.
