DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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Mental balance and physical health are closely related. Agitation and anger easily lead to illness. Conversely, if the mind is peaceful and filled with positive thoughts, the body is less susceptible to disease. Therefore, to have a healthy body and a truly happy life, you need a peaceful mind, and to achieve peace of mind, you need compassion. However, simply thinking about compassion isn't enough; you must transform your thoughts and actions in daily life. Therefore, acts of compassion in daily life become commonplace and largely overlooked.

First, you must understand what compassion means. Compassion takes many forms, and sometimes you easily confuse it with attachment and desire. For example, parental love for children is often tied to their own emotional needs, so that love is not entirely compassionate. Similarly, in marriage, the love between husband and wife, especially in the early stages, when they are not yet fully aware of each other's personalities, is based more on attachment than on genuine affection. Because your desires are so strong, even if your spouse has flaws, they appear perfect in your eyes at that time.

Furthermore, you tend to exaggerate small good qualities. Therefore, when one person's character changes, the other feels disappointed because their own character has also changed. This shows you that love is driven by individual needs rather than genuine affection.

The tendency to cultivate true compassion is not a reciprocal love, but a firm commitment based on wisdom. Therefore, even if you receive unkind treatment, a truly compassionate act will not change anything. Of course, developing genuine compassion is not an easy task. When you begin practicing, you should look at the following points:

- Whether beautiful or ugly, kind or destructive, you are all human beings.

And because you are human, you all want happiness and do not want suffering. Moreover, each person has their own freedom to avoid suffering and enjoy happiness. Now you accept that everyone wants happiness, and therefore you will naturally empathize with everyone and feel closer to them. Practicing this will make your spirit feel altruistic, and you will develop respect for those around you:

- Wanting to help them alleviate their suffering.

As human beings, we all experience joy, sorrow, happiness, and suffering; therefore, there is no reason why you cannot empathize with those who act selfishly. To practice and develop compassion, you need patience and time. Deep within your subconscious, the ego always prevails, and it is this ego that limits your compassion.

In reality, true compassion is only manifested when the ego is eradicated. This doesn't mean you can't do anything, because everything has a beginning, practice, and progress. It's something each of you can do. Start today, in your thoughts, words, and actions, especially those inclined towards the path of liberation, because loving-kindness and compassion are not only essential for enlightenment, but they also serve as a reminder and awakening of the Buddha-nature within each person. When you become aware of the deeper forms of loving-kindness, you discover that it is one of the elements of the true nature of the Buddha-nature, because the more you develop loving-kindness and compassion, the more you relinquish negative emotions.

If the purpose of your life is limited to your own peace and liberation, you will never fully realize your Buddha-nature. According to Mahayana Buddhism, limiting yourself to your own liberation from the suffering of birth and death is not an excellent path. You need to develop loving-kindness and compassion, because it is your true nature and the only path to complete self-development and awakening. Therefore, you need to distinguish loving-kindness from the concept of romantic love. Loving-kindness tends to be expressed through wishes:

- Wishing all sentient beings happiness.

Especially for a Bodhisattva, loving-kindness is the desire for happiness for all, for oneself as well as for others. The starting point for developing loving-kindness is realizing that if it is right for you to feel happy yourself, it is also right for all other beings. Although the two concepts are very close and share the same nature, the insignificant differences demonstrate their uniqueness. So how can you begin?

According to the teachings of the venerable masters, you should begin by eliminating the greatest obstacles to loving-kindness, which are:

- Anger and hatred.

As you know, these are extremely powerful emotions, and they can completely overwhelm your mind. You can control them. But if you don't control them, these negative emotions will disturb you and hinder your mission for the happiness of a loving soul. Therefore, cultivating compassion as a starting point is very helpful for reflection, whether anger is present or not; it still has value. Sometimes you feel discouraged by a difficult situation, and anger seems justified; it appears to give you energy, confidence, and determination to do something. However, you also need to carefully examine your mental state. While it is true that anger carries a great deal of energy. If you discover that the nature of this energy is blind, you cannot be sure whether its outcome will be positive or negative. Anger obscures the best part of your brain with its rationality. Therefore, the energy of anger should rarely be trusted. It can cause a huge multiplier of destructive and risky behavior. Furthermore, if anger grows to an extreme, you become like a madman, acting in ways that harm yourself and others. However, it is possible to develop an equally powerful capacity but with greater energy control to handle difficult situations.

The ability to control anger stems not only from a compassionate attitude but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite is true, as they are genuine signs of inner strength.

Compassion is gentle, mild, peaceful, yet incredibly powerful. Those who easily lose their patience are insecure and unstable. Thus, irritability is a sign of weakness. Therefore, when a problem first arises, try to be humble and maintain a sincere attitude and consider the resulting outcomes as fair. Of course, others may try to exploit this resentment to retaliate against you, and if you don't maintain composure, you'll only encourage swift attacks. Adopt a firm stance; however, this must be done with compassion, and if necessary, to express your point of view and use strong countermeasures, act without resentment or malice. You should realize that although your opponent may seem to want to harm you, ultimately, their destructive actions will only harm themselves. To examine the selfish conflict of revenge, you should remember your desire to practice compassion and take responsibility for helping to prevent others from suffering caused by their actions.

Compassion is one of the most important principles of Mahayana Buddhism. A Buddha, an enlightened being, has developed compassion and wisdom to the highest degree. Compassion is one of the most important elements for achieving Buddhahood. Without compassion, enlightenment is impossible. To understand what you must do, and how many forms of compassion exist, you must recognize the relationship:

- Towards sentient beings

- Related to the nature of reality, and

- Not related to any specific object.

1- Related to sentient beings:

Compassion related to sentient beings is what you commonly call loving-kindness. You might ask yourself if it is possible to cultivate compassion?

The answer is:

- You can always cultivate compassion.

Because even though you may sometimes feel hatred or anger, you always feel loving-kindness, and compared to feeling hatred, feeling loving-kindness is much more pleasant and natural. You feel hatred when you are disturbed. You feel loving-kindness when you are not disturbed; loving-kindness comes more naturally. Bạn don't always feel anger, because loving-kindness and hatred are mutually exclusive. You should try to prolong the moments you feel love and compassion. If you succeed, eventually you will feel nothing but loving-kindness. Because loving-kindness and hatred cannot coexist, the growth of one is enough for the other to disappear. Therefore, if you don't allow negative emotions to manifest, they won't develop. At the same time, if you become accustomed to feeling loving-kindness, you will feel it more often.

If Buddhism defines loving-kindness as the desire for all beings to be happy, then the starting point for developing this loving-kindness is realizing that:

- If you do not love yourself, how can you develop love for others?

- Resentment and blame do not solve problems but only deepen the divide.

- Blaming oneself and others hinders the awareness of compassion.

Therefore, the way to cultivate loving-kindness is to confront hatred through methods of calming hatred, which is the first stage in developing loving-kindness. To succeed, you must first fully understand that feeling hatred is irrational. You hate someone because they harm you, whether they intend to or not, and you feel hurt. However, they hurt you because they are not truly free to choose. In some cases, they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. They allow events and circumstances to control them, or let strong, uncontrollable emotions dominate them. They are not in control of themselves. Some people are completely overwhelmed by emotions like a madman or a drunkard, who cannot be considered fully responsible for their actions. You should not take the words of a drunk or madman seriously or treat them too harshly. You should treat those who harm you in the same way.

Perhaps you are hurt by unpleasant words or actions, but the person who will suffer the most from the consequences of these things is the one who harmed you. Indeed, this is the person who, under the influence of negative emotions, will accumulate negative karma that brings about negative consequences. If you believe in the law of karma, you understand that those who harm others will suffer painful consequences, not because of external intervention, but because of the power of their own actions. Therefore, such a person is more pitiable than hateful, and you have no reason not to forgive them. On the contrary, you have every reason to feel compassion for them. From this perspective, hatred almost becomes irrational. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to prevent that person from harming you or themselves, but you don't need to hate them.

Hatred signifies failure, while compassion is a victory. When the Buddha was alive, on his path of teaching sentient beings, a wicked Brahmin tried every way to insult him. The Buddha did not respond. When the Brahmin grew tired of insulting him, the Buddha asked him:

"If someone offered you a gift and you refused it, who would receive the gift?"

The Brahmin replied: "That person would receive it."

Then the Buddha said: "I do not accept what you say."

Not responding to hatred with hatred is a victory, because hatred breeds tension and unpleasant emotions, while compassion brings peace. Free from hatred, envy, greed, and dissatisfaction, you find happiness, peace, and comfort in the warmth of kindness. Compassion is peaceful and develops a positive attitude. When negativity doesn't bother you, you feel light, free, and serene. Those around you will also feel this warmth and recognize your kindness. Warm-hearted people, those with kind hearts, make everyone want to talk to them, want to be near them.

In cultivating compassion, when faced with difficult and conflicting situations, you are often overwhelmed by negative emotions to the point that you have no time or clarity to think about loving-kindness. Then you must remind yourself:

- Simply listening to teachings on loving-kindness and compassion will not instantly transform you, or turn you into a perfect Bodhisattva. Especially if you tend towards anger, you will become angry and will not feel guilty, or even worry if this happens. However, attachment to anger and the desire for revenge is truly terrible and can harm you greatly. You should consider what benefit there is in maintaining this anger, in clinging to it.

And you answer yourself:

- Nothing at all, it only harms me and others.

By developing loving-kindness, you can gradually change. By maintaining mindfulness and awareness of the futility of anger, you will gain better self-control. Gradually, you will become less and less angry about small things, and the intensity of your anger will decrease. This doesn't mean you should suppress and hold back all angry emotions, but simply that you should redirect your mind. Emotions are like waves; they are always calm. Whenever you become aware that you are angry, you should try to shift your attention to something else that can replace your angry feelings.

There are many excellent methods to help you process and transform negative emotions, and we will go into detail later. There are three different levels in dealing with emotions:

- The Śrāvakayāna Path,

- The Mahayana Path, and

- The Mantrayana Path.

1. The Śrāvaka Path:

The path of the Śrāvakas teaches how to deal with a negative emotion by thinking of the opposite emotion. When you feel anger, you think of something that gives rise to loving-kindness and compassion, which will replace the anger. You don't suppress the anger; you just try to feel loving-kindness and compassion instead of anger. In this way, you forget the anger and only think of loving-kindness and compassion. Anger is no longer present. That is the method of the Śrāvakas, the Buddhist path in general, the first level.

2. The Mahayana Method:

This method focuses on its essential point, which is the understanding of emptiness Śūnyatā) combined with the Śrāvaka method. In other words, if you understand the true nature of anger and the true nature of the mind, when anger arises, all you have to do is contemplate that there is nothing that angers you, no angry person, and no anger within you that exists independently. To reach this understanding, you have two methods:

- Analysis and meditation.

- Analysis to determine the cause and meditation to quiet the mind.

- In this way, you can approach emotions by analyzing them intelligently, or you can contemplate them through meditation: you let anger overwhelm you, and you look at it. Then you will discover that the anger does not exist independently.

3- Tantric Method

This is about completely accepting anger as it manifests. You see anger appear and you let it come without resisting it. Then you release the anger; anger will disappear on its own. It can no longer affect you because you have no negative feelings towards it. You neither support it nor oppose it; you are aware of its presence but not attached to it. You simply allow yourself to rest in this anger; it dissolves and transforms into wisdom.

Through this practice, you gradually learn to live without feeling hatred, even towards your enemies. You develop genuine compassion more and more. Then, whatever you feel towards all beings, you also use boundless loving-kindness and compassion. If you no longer care about personal gain and your only concern is the happiness of others, then you have developed perfect compassion. Whether you want it or not, the eight positive results of cultivating compassion will come to you:

1- Loved by gods and humans,

2- Protected by gods and humans,

3- Possessing a joyful mind,

4- Encountering favorable circumstances,

5- Not being a victim of poison,

6- Not being harmed by weapons,

7- Being able to fulfill most wishes,

8- Being born in a holy realm.

These eight results extend until you are certain of liberation from birth and death.

Meditation on loving-kindness protects and helps you like a shield against all negative influences. Even better, this meditation allows you to help and be helped. When you feel well cared for, assisted by what you might call positive energies, it is not external energies but your own loving-kindness at work. Healing through loving-kindness is an incredibly effective traditional method!

Compassion is the core, the essence of the entire Buddha's teachings. If you understand what compassion is and practice it, then you are practicing Buddhism. Without compassion, you are not practicing Buddhism. The Buddha also said that if you have compassion, you possess all the Buddha's teachings and practices. If you lack compassion, then you understand nothing. To fully grasp the concept, you need to see three forms of loving-kindness:

1- Concern for Sentient Beings:

This type of compassion arises when you see the misery, problems, and suffering of sentient beings. You feel moved, touched, and wish to help them escape their suffering. You want to do something for them.

2- Concern for the Dharma:

This is the growth in your level of understanding. The first stage is full of emotion, and you yourself are pained by the sight of the suffering of sentient beings. Entering the second level of compassion shows your understanding of the Dharma and the Four Noble Truths, and therefore your compassion deepens.

3- Perfect Understanding:

This is perfect understanding, the complete realization of the true nature of things, of emptiness. Then, you clearly see that those suffering beings are not necessarily suffering. They suffer because of delusion, because they think and see things in a wrong way. If you can look at things differently, without conceptualization, then you can escape all suffering.

In short, all sentient beings seek pleasure, happiness, peace, and security, but because of ignorance, they do the exact opposite of what guarantees the lasting happiness they seek. They have accumulated negative karma and continuously gathered the causes of the suffering that follows, like blind people wandering around in a scorching desert, not knowing how to get out.

You also yearn for happiness and fear suffering, and in this respect, other sentient beings are no different from you. When you realize this obvious fact, you naturally desire to help them. The more you develop compassion, the more natural it becomes. When you contemplate deeply and continuously on compassion, you reach a level where you are compassionate, and all selfishness, all egoism, will disappear.

If you have developed loving-kindness, the desire for happiness for all beings, and compassion that motivates you to liberate all from suffering, you may no longer be concerned with liberating yourself alone, and automatically, whether you want it or not, you have in fact become a Bodhisattva.

To become a fully enlightened Buddha, you first need to become a Bodhisattva. Therefore, developing loving-kindness and compassion is the true, direct path to enlightenment; it is the path you must take.

Even on a relative level, having a heart full of loving-kindness and compassion can help you resolve your temporary difficulties. If you are only kind and compassionate, how can you have mental or psychological problems? Such problems arise from selfishness, from clinging to your ego, and fear is the result. Without clinging, there is no fear, and without fear, there are no problems!

Tolerance can be the first step toward compassion. Tolerance means forgiveness, not holding grudges, striving for a deeper understanding of the motivations of others, and not seeking revenge, a fundamental attitude from which compassion can arise. Compassion attempts to resolve issues on this fundamental basis. This means that if someone wants to harm you, you don't respond to hatred with hatred, and at its highest, you wish to help your adversaries escape hatred and its causes.

However, you shouldn't confuse tolerance with passivity. Tolerance doesn't mean enduring everything, allowing yourself to be exploited and beaten. You should be compassionate and do good things for others and yourself. There are also some things you shouldn't tolerate, such as poisons in the mind. Tolerance is incompatible with your anger. You shouldn't let anger grow and control you. Tolerance is incompatible with those who kill and oppress others, and you shouldn't let them do that. You shouldn't resort to violence, weapons, or conflict, but you also shouldn't passively accept everything. You should firmly defend what you believe is right, but avoid harming others as much as possible.

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