Practices of Peace To Awaken Mind and Heart
1. TRANSFORM OUR MOTIVATION
- Recognize our mistaken ideas about what brings happiness (money, possessions, praise, power, sensuality and prestige)
- Relinquish attachments
- change our minds about what we think we need
- (“What destroys cravings?” asked Shankara, “Realization of one’s true self.”)
- Recognize and seek what truly fosters happiness
Buddha – “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts With our thoughts we make the world.”
HIGHER MOTIVES – The more mature motives include the desires for truth and justice, kindness and altruism, beauty and the sacred
FIND YOUR SOUL’S DESIRE: REDIRECT MOTIVATION
Jesus- “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
2. CULTIVATE EMOTIONAL WISDOM
Maomonides – (12th century Jewish sage) “It is well known that emotions of the soul affect the body and produce great, significant and wide-ranging changes in the state of health. Emotions of the soul should be watched, regularly examined, and kept well balanced.”
HEAL YOUR HEART AND LEARN TO LOVE.
Confucius – “Love all people and draw near to humanity.”
THE GIFT OF LOVE
- Master and reduce emotions, especially fear and anger
- Cultivate attitudes such as gratitude and generosity that foster love
- Cultivate love itself
The Desert Fathers recommended: “Malice will never drive out malice. But if someone does evil to you, you should do good to him, so that by your good work you may destroy his malice.”
Mohammad urged: “Forgive those who wrong you; join those who cut you off; do good to those who do evil to you.”
Forgiving does not mean condoning harmful behavior. Forgiveness is a relinquishment of one’s resentment, not of one’s ethics.
Forgiveness is most powerful and encompassing if it extends in three directions:
- the request for forgiveness from those you have hurt
- forgiveness for yourself
- forgiveness for those who have hurt you
Buddha made clear: “Hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law. Ancient and inexhaustible.”
Ramakrishna- “The supreme purpose and goal for human life…is to cultivate love.”
Mature love is based more on sufficiency and wholeness than on deficiency and fear.