Peace Builds Strong Bones.

It’s peace that build strong bones and its compassion that strengthens the heart. 

We don’t need more money, we need more compassion. We don’t need more vitamins, we need more peace. All the Yoga and all the strength exercises and all the positive affirmations in the world will prove to be meaningless if we don’t learn to have a quiet mind and a compassionate heart.

This is why a meditation practice without a fundamental change in how we view the world is meaningless. We have to reverse the thinking of the world entirely. We have to stop our grasping, ego-defending mechanisms and work to cultivate loving-kindness and compassion.

We’re totally predictable as human beings. We can’t help it, it’s how we’ve been conditioned since the time we were born. We’re conditioned to avoid pain and defend ourselves, and lash out at those who hurt us. Every circumstance in life seems to teach us this reactivity. From television shows to sports, to playing with our siblings as children, everything we learn is basically based on a “defend ourselves first” system. Fortunately, we do have systems of religion and morals that help give us teachings to offset some of this defensiveness.

But for the most part, our basic reactivity is so deeply ingrained, that we’re totally predictable. If someone compliments us, we respond with ego inflating joy. If someone criticizes us, we deflate with bone-crushing depression. Basically, we shouldn’t take anything personally. If someone compliments us, it’s not really about us. It’s about them. We’re just the mirror to something they see inside of themselves. Likewise when someone criticizes us. So we needn’t be so predictable. Instead, we could stop defending ourselves. When we’re criticized, instead of clamming up, and retreating into our armor, we could open our hearts. We could understand where the other person is coming from. We could respond with love, empathy and compassion instead of hatred or rejection. Likewise when we’re complimented, we can say thanks without having our ego get all inflated. We can remain humble and grateful. We can keep in mind at all times that most of what happens is never really about us at all.

We need to remember that other people are simply a reflection of ourselves. In truth, we can’t see anything in anybody unless we can first see it inside of ourselves. So this horrible thing we’re thinking about the person we’re reading about in the news who did such a terrible thing? Remember that it could be us we’re reading about. It’s so easy to malign and scapegoat others. We’re always putting other people down. We do this in so many subtle ways. We don’t like the way someone looks, the way someone talks, the way someone thinks. Most likely, it’s the people closest to us that we malign. This is because the people closest to us are in our personal orbit. We have more time just to study them and nit pick at them. Some days we don’t even like the way they breathe.

The easiest people of all to malign are the people we feel have betrayed us. We turn these people into thieves, robbers and criminals. Maybe all they did is look at us cross-eyed, or give  us an order we didn’t like, or maybe they really did cheat us. We’re not going to waste an opportunity to tell our sad story about how awful they are. This malignancy is going to grow into a cancer. It’s bad for us and its bad for other people and its bad for the fabric of our life. It rends the very fabric of civil society. Mostly maligning others comes from an ego-based point of view. So as soon as we catch ourselves in an ego-based narrative putting down someone else, we should become aware of this and stop ourselves. Just nip it in the bud. Remember this and stop yourself dead in your mental tracks.

Contempt for others is ruinous in a marriage or partnership.  Sometimes listening to couples argue is painful. It’s like listening to enemies locked in mortal combat the way each person is putting the other down. This contemptuous malignancy is the outgrowth of nothing but a massive control and power struggle to see whose right. In the end, nobody wins. Each person walks away in agony, defeated, and families get torn apart. Love is murdered. Looked at this way, we’re all murderers. A simple Buddhist slogan from the Lojong, “don’t malign others”, is the instruction that can root out  such ego-based, murderous malignancy.

Remember that peace builds strong bones. Compassion strengthens the heart.  Solve all your problems by practicing loving kindness and compassion. Namaste.

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