Thought for the week ahead

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the Chicken Soup for… series. Yes, some of them were a bit naff but for a teenager searching for something more substantial than the feel-good stories in Reader’s Digest, they were perfect. Anyway, in one of the books, I read something that has stuck with me throughout the years. It was a piece written by a camp counsellor to one of his charges and it basically ended with the lesson that you have a choice with your life: to do good or do bad (I’m paraphrasing! It was much more poetically expressed in the book!).

Over the last few weeks, I have become acutely aware of the things people say about Rinpoche and Kechara online and suffice to say, it has been upsetting. No, scratch that – about Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve seen comments about Zong Rinpoche, about Pabongkha Rinpoche, about the Dalai Lama and good Lord, people can be nasty.

Free speech and all that, but here is what confuses me about these Internet trolls – why get so personal? Most justify what they do as their attempt to counter wrong view which is fair enough but when you label someone a “champion momo eater”, what purpose does that serve? Does it make you seem bigger? More intelligent? The better practitioner? Do you get extra points for putting other people down, so people don’t follow the Gelug lineage and follow yours instead? Well, whatever your reasons are, it certainly does not make you seem braver; perhaps rather unsurprisingly, a large number of these commentators have chosen to remain anonymous.

What is frightening also, is the capacity of the mind to hate something or someone they’ve never even met, or have had no experience of. To do that would require one to conjure up reasons which do not exist, to see things that are simply not there and draw conclusions that have no basis. If they can do that for something / someone they have never met, where does it stop? Who or what is beyond their reproach?

Click above to expand the image!

So it goes back to what I read as a teenager – we all have a choice with what we want to do with our lives and, on a micro level, our actions on a moment to moment basis. Do you really want to spend this moment spreading negativity and hate on social media? No matter what you believe, whether it’s reincarnation or YOLO, why not use this moment to create something positive instead of contributing to the destruction that is already rampant in the world?

It’s just something for you to think about as you go into a new week – what choice are YOU going to make right here, right now, in this moment in time?

Reflections and Teachings