lifesamaze

Another Sunday dawns. I haven't gotten a single thing finished for my classes.

I am thinking about the paper I have to write on Buddha. It is one of the few papers I will enjoy writing. I don't mind explicating my knowledge of religion.

Buddha's thoughts are quite interesting...

There is a legend that when Siddhatta Gotama was still young, his father had taken him to watch the ceremonial ploughing of the fields that took place before planting the next year's crop. Gotama was left alone under a rose-apple tree, since all the men of the area took place in the ploughing. Gotama watched as the young grass was torn up and all the insects and eggs they had laid in the shoots were destroyed. Gotama looked on with sadness, feeling for the grass, empathy akin to what one might feel for his own family. Gotama was sorrowful; but suddenly, a feeling of pure joy arose in him. He was outside of his own body, in a short moment of exstasis. This was Gotama's first indication of a world outside of that which he was born into.

I found myself wondering about the joy Gotama felt. The empathy he had for the grass was born of his selflessness. He was happy that he might feel such compassion for something that he had no prior or future relation with. It freed him, if only momentarily.

This is... the ideal humanity, I think. If we are only to feel for others that same compassion, without condition, we are to make their lives, and our own, easier. There is something weighted about a conditional empathy, for both persons.

I never understood the carelessness of people who might look past complete strangers without thought. It was not the carelessness that mystified me, but the ability to be so careless. But I suppose it is easy to maintain some semblance of the world, your own personal experience, set aside from reality. But your own personal experience should change. It should be constantly added to, with new and insightful thoughts and experiences. And if you are only to push through your own small worldview, you might begin to see how blind you were before. If only for the advancement of yourself, is it not, then, sensible to consider others? As you validate another's existence by acknowledging him/her, you enhance the quality of his/her life and also your own.

If you can feel this compassion for others, you can experience the exstasis. You can take joy in simply feeling. As we are given this unique ability, we should fulfill its purpose.