Hello,
Good morning,
Good afternoon or good evening,
Wherever you may be.
I wanted to share a little snippet or nugget of an insight that came to me just a few moments ago as I was here doing a live session on Insight Timer.
We were reading the Diamond Sutra and one of the words that is.
.
.
Said or spoken quite a bit is the word goodness and it got me reflecting on goodness because for me personally my journey is a lot about finding kindness true kindness and also healing some of the ill will that has formed as a result from my own traumatic childhood.
There has been some ill will and so kindness is really,
For me,
A beautiful path and treasure.
So goodness is interesting and it got me to think again as I have been recently.
Contemplating quite a lot the two wings of Buddhism.
As you may or may not know the two wings of Buddhism are insight or wisdom or you might call it clarity and compassion or kindness or And to kind of frame what I want to share a little bit more poetically is to also invoke Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who I really love.
He was a teacher based in Mumbai in India in the previous century and his satsangs were very powerful and they were transcribed into the book I Am That.
And one of the things that he said.
.
.
Was,
And I'm paraphrasing a little bit.
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
Between the two,
My life flows.
So I find that extremely beautiful and there is for me also a connection to nonviolent communication,
But I don't even need to frame it in nonviolent communication.
But what did come to me in the past,
Let's say 10 years,
Is the growing insight that you do need the two to kind of function in a healthy way in life.
And what it comes down to on a very practical level is that You want to be able to distinguish clearly between yourself and others.
And one kind of phrase to capture that is everybody's living in their own world.
Everybody's walking their own path.
And this also means that whatever somebody does or says is actually never personal.
And to realize that is a huge liberation.
That even when people treat us in a way that we might call unkind or rude or crappy,
It doesn't say anything about me.
It's these people having their experience and they're living their life in their hall of mirrors in a way,
We all do,
And they're reacting mostly to their own reactions.
And this is also,
Again,
Already here is the compassion,
Because you can disidentify from taking things personally,
You can distinguish,
Oh,
They're having their life,
I'm having my life,
And because of that,
Immediately compassion is there,
Because it's no longer about me,
I can just see that they're suffering.
And so that's a bridge that.
.
.
That shows you how beautifully these two dance indeed,
Because then comes the part of compassion.
You know,
So we're all living our own lives.
We have the clarity to distinguish,
Discern and see the difference.
That makes us able to not take things personally.
That lets us see clearly.
That gives us a space to give feedback to each other from that non-personal space,
But just to share our experience.
And then there's the sameness.
So we all suffer all living beings i think the buddha once said all living beings tremble when faced with violence You know,
We all die,
We all suffer.
That's why we're on the spiritual path,
Mostly.
And to see that sameness,
You know,
We all in NVC we all have the same universal human needs.
So you need both.
You need the clarity to see not the separation but the distinctions.
There's ultimately no separation.
And you need the kindness to see our togetherness,
To see our shared reality.
And this gives a wonderful balance.
So I just wanted to kind of bring that.
I love how in NVC,
In what Nisargadatta said,
In what the Buddha said,
And in Buddhism itself,
There's this beautiful balance between compassion,
Or kindness,
Or sameness,
And wisdom,
Or clarity,
Or discernment.
And you need both wings to fly.
So that's my little two cents.
I hope it's useful to you and I wish you a beautiful rest of your day.
