Shared values.

It is difficult and challenging to navigate our world today. Our country is divided, our communities are plagued by inequality and addiction, and even in our own families we may find it difficult to find common ground.

Where do we start to rebuild trust and respect?

We all share core values, values like honesty, integrity, generosity and compassion. As a culture, we value hard work, persistence, and dedication to a cause. Our religious traditions ask us to love our neighbor, help those less fortunate and be of service to others.

These are all points of contact that we share. While we may disagree on many issues, we can agree that values in our life and in our world are important. Start the conversation around shared values, and then listen to each other. Conversations may reveal how much we have in common, and maybe even break down the great divide that seems to keep us apart.

Imagine if we could even take this small step within our own family. If we could each unite the great divide within our family, maybe our communities could start to shift and change as well.

Talk to family and friends. What values do you share and why are they important to you?

What's love?

To love another means to understand them.
To love means to see them for who they are.
To love means to support their happiness.
To love means to rejoice in their growth and development.

We can develop this kind of love for everyone. We can move through the world with this love. In this way, we can love friends, strangers and even our opponents.

I see you. I respect you. I can understand your situation and see why you might think that is in your best interest. I might not agree with you, but I rejoice in your efforts to lift yourself so you can live a better life.

What prevents us from loving others in this way? Our own small mindedness. Our own fixation to our position and place. Our own inability to love and accept who we are, much less who others are.

By supporting and growing our own hearts, we can learn to expand our love to everyone. By understanding ourselves more fully, we become more in tune with others. Expand our self-awareness, and we expand our circle of acceptance.

Forging the trail.

We can give people our respect. We can show them unconditional love and kindness. We can be patient and understanding. We can be generous and lend them a hand. We can give them a break, offer them a second chance and let them start over.

Others deserve this. It's something that we can give.

But it's often not enough. Ultimately, it's not something we can give.

You must do the work, the inner work of recognizing your own self-worth and potential. You need to do it for yourself.

You have to do the hard labor of stopping, looking within and resolving the tension in your own heart and mind. You need to look through your own self-deception and confusion.

Others can help us on this journey. They can point the way, offer support and guidance. But we must do the work ourselves.

We must forge the trail through the landscape of our lives.

Honor.

Not much is sacred anymore.

Everyone appreciates values such as self-reliance, independence, hard work and kindness. We all value honesty, integrity and optimism, whether it is in our homes, at work or in our communities. As young adults we start to explore our values, what impact they have on our lives and which values we want to live by. Our values shift and change over time, depending on the shape of our lives and the relationships that we forge.

I was fortunate to encounter the Dharma when I was in my early twenties. During my formative years as an adult, I experienced and explored values such as honor, reverence and humility. I had the privilege of sitting at the feet of great spiritual teachers; teachers like my own root teacher Younge Khachab Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama, Kusum Lingpa and Lama Tharchin. I practiced a tradition that had a long lineage of reverence towards teachers like the Karmapa, Patrul Rinpoche, Longchen Rabjam, Padmasambhava and all the way back to the Buddha himself. I was able to explore what it meant to be humble in the presence of these teachers, but also recognize a powerful sense of self-worth and innate potential. 

Nowadays, everyone has the right to say what they want. Everyone can choose to have a voice. Everyone can choose to lay out a vision. No one wants to exclude anyone. No one is wrong. There is no authority to be found, authority is seen as anti-egalitarian.

When we don't honor anything then nothing is sacred. Without any sacred values in our life, there is no authority to be found. Without authority, we end up with chaos, indecisiveness, and a lack of action. Without honor, traditions wither and die, movements stagnate, and communities suffer.

Honor gives rise to other values. It gives birth to authentic reverence and humility, which themselves rely on values like integrity, determination, self-respect and service.

I'm glad to have honor as one of my core values. What, or who, do you honor?

If you were to pick one, which would it be?

Imagine a scenario:

You are an enlightened being. You are compassionate and generous. You bear a strong suit of patience. You have cunning wisdom and insight and the strong aspiration to bring benefit to all beings. You effortlessly fulfill the aims of others, simultaneously fulfilling your own aims. 

All other beings are unenlightened. You live in a world in which everyone is suffering. Everyone else doesn't understand the true nature of reality or their own nature. Your job is to tirelessly try to liberate them from their own confusion. You are the only one who has the vision and wisdom necessary to carry out that task.

Imagine another scenario:

You are unenlightened. You know your own suffering. Anger, attachment, frustration and delusion follow you like a shadow. You try to be generous, but end up holding back. You try to be patient, but end up blowing a fuse. You have insight, sure, but there are many days you just don't know what to do. 

Everyone else is enlightened.  Everyone else is trying to wake you up. Everyone is your teacher, a spiritual friend or a guide on the road. Every interaction is an opportunity, every trial is part of the path. Everyone is in on the game. You are the last to wake up. 

Both of these scenarios are unrealistic, but which one do you think would lead to quicker progress on the path?

The student-teacher relationship is not well understood in the west. There is a lot of cultural baggage and misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. There is a lot of gross misconduct and deceit that takes place. You should properly analyze the teacher and the teachings. Once you do though, you should try to generate pure vision in regards to the teacher.

It may not be possible to see all beings as enlightened, to appreciate them all as guides on the path. That would be a stretch. But if we could see one person as enlightened and really be impacted by their teachings, then maybe we would be more receptive to other forms of teachers and teachings as well.

Start with one. One is the minimum. Be willing to be receptive, to generate reverence and devotion, to respect and to serve one being.  If you can do it with one, more will appear. 

Who knows, maybe you are the last one to wake up. 

Do you want to be right, or true?

Right has a position. It has coordinates, you're either with me or your not. Being right, you have something to defend. 

True knows where it stands, but it understands others positions. It acknowledges and respects. Being true, you have something to share. 

Right is often painful. It is argumentative and fraught with conflict. 

True has tenderness and a built in humility. 

Right is full of confidence, which quickly falls to arrogance.

True is full of confidence, while remaining open to diversity, tension, and maybe even being wrong.

I still have faith.

Faith. It's a bit of a touchy word in our culture. It has a lot of baggage. We often look down on faith as a sort of weakness or oddity.

But what is faith?

Mipham Rinpoche says that faith is an admiration for, longing towards, and trust in what is authentic and true. It is a support for determination.

What does faith mean to you?

You could have blind faith. You could believe in a blue cow that grants all of your wishes.  You could have great admiration and trust in that cow.  You could really strive to make sure that it was happy so that he would send down his bounty. (him or a her?)  

That would be a true determination of faith based on your perception of what was authentic and true. I think that this is the type of faith that many of us are wary of, simply because it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't hold up to the facts, to reality. It bears no semblance to our experience and everything else that we hold to be true.  

So if you are one that acts out of reason and logic, does faith play no role in your life?  Can you have faith and still rely on science and philosophy? 

Yes.  An emphatic yes. 

We can have great admiration for what is true and authentic based on reason and logic.  In fact, reason and logic can reaffirm our faith, deepen it. 

We can generate great longing for searching out and discovering what is authentic and true based on reason and logic. We can be scientists and skeptics, philosophers and debaters and still have faith.  The act of searching and analyzing and dissecting can be facets of our faith.

And we can trust in the reason and logic that we have used to come to our conclusions, and to look deeper still. 

The search for what is authentic and true demands faith.  It requires it, because faith supports determination and we need to be determined in our quest for what is authentic and true in order to reach our destination.

I am a man of faith.  Are you?

Objects of gratitude.

Success can take many forms. 

Fancy cars, big bonuses, new additions, first homes, second homes, happy hours and weekend getaways.  Buy what you want.  Build a pile of what you think you need. 

Walk through your area and you are likely surrounded by people living out their success story.  Money and status grant us certain comforts and security, but underneath that success, how many people are really satisfied and content?

A lot of the contentment and satisfaction in our lives comes from being objects of gratitude.  We have been relied upon, trusted, made an impact and been present in someones life and they feel grateful for that presence.

We don't own that gratitude, yet we benefit greatly and derive deep satisfaction and joy from it. 

Instead of chasing success, maybe we should pursue more opportunities to impact the lives of others.  

What do we do when anger shows up?

Anger shows up at a party and starts causing division and tension.  What do we do with anger?

Do we act as a passive bystander?  Maybe if we pretend this isn't happening it will go away.  At the very least this isn't my fault so I am not going to get involved.

Do we rally the troops, barge in and meet anger with anger?  Let's see who wins.  Probably no one.

Not passive, not aggressive.  What others options do we have?

We can practice fierce compassion, which looks like openness and doing the emotional labor of advocating for what is right.

Being open means being fierce, because it is definitely easier to sit in back and not get involved.  Being open also means being willing to listen without bias or judgement, of being able to drop your assumptions and perception in favor of seeing clearly.

Doing emotional labor means doing the hard work of being patient and respectful, acting with kindness and most of all, not shutting down when fear shows up. 

None of this is easy, but it is important.  This is why we have our practice, because we need to learn how to work with our own anger and aggression.  We need to learn how to actually be open and not shut down in the face of fear and uncertainty.

This starts with you, but it affects everyone. 

#DoNoHarm

Remarkable.

I saw something remarkable the other day.

I was walking in downtown Seattle this past week and saw a homeless man up ahead begging for change.  He was holding a sign, “Out of work.  Anything helps.”  In the winter Seattle’s homeless population spikes as people migrate to the coasts for warmer weather.  We are used to seeing men and women standing at off ramps, at street corners and camping out in archways to stay out of the rain. 

The man walking ahead of me approached the homeless man and gave him some change from his pocket.  Then he shook his hand.

He didn’t have to shake his hand.  He could have gave him money and walked away untouched.  He could have avoided getting dirty or having to worry about what germs the homeless man carried.   He could have made the exchange a simple, clean transaction. 

But he didn’t.

He made it human.  He extended his money, which I am sure the homeless man appreciated.  Then he extended his respect, kindness and dignity, something that is invaluable to someone who doesn’t feel like they are worth anything. 

We have a tendency to think big.  We think in systems and projects and data and financials.  All of that is important if we want to fulfill our aims and the aims of others, we need to go through that process, but if you are wondering where to start, start here.  Start with extending kindness, respect and dignity to those in your family and your community.  Start with our real world problems, with where we are right now.

It might be dirty and you are going to have to work hard, but if you are able to impact a human life, you are doing something remarkable.     

Privilege.

You have an opportunity available to you.

It may not always appear to be the case.  You may look around and wait for others to go first.  You may think that your situation is too hard, too unique. 

But that is the thing about privilege, when you have it you should take advantage of it and advocate for those who don't have it.

You have the privilege of being able to be generous and kind.  You have the privilege to treat others with respect and honesty.  You have the privilege to do the right thing, to be a good person.

You have the privilege of being able to help others- Don't waste it.

You can't own Happiness.

Yet that is what we often try to do. 

Once we have it, we try to hold on, prevent it from slipping through our fingers.  But you can't own happiness, you can only be happy.

So rather than trying to hold onto something that is always fleeting, better to cultivate that which supports happiness.

Be mindful.
Appreciate simplicity.
Rest in openness.
Practice generosity.
Share love.
Lend a compassionate hand.
Respect others.  Everyone.
Look people in the eye.
Be fully present.

Here is to a happy New Year.