What is Buddhism and Ambitions - New Buddha Quotes
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| What is Buddhism and Ambitions - New Buddha Quotes |
So let's start Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes
this is something that we'll look into it today's article Buddhism in a way wastes human potential or Talent it seems to me that people give up all their passions and ambitions.
I've somehow the feeling that Buddhism could kill all my pets and passions all my ambitions and all my curiosity I have and want to have.
I simply don't want to accept a belief system which would force me to become a passive quote/unquote ordinary person my question is how compatible is Buddhism with scientific curiosity and artistic creativity.
what is Buddhism and nd ambitions is I mean by that not just minimalism now David asks a huge question here that are going on to at length and I have earlier articles Buddhist art in particular and also how Buddhism relates to minimalism this kind of philosophy of life that has come up in the last few years.
What is Buddhism and Ambitions Descriptions - New Buddha Quotes
I'll put links to that article down below in the show notes in case you're interested so as I say this is a big topic before I delve into it though.
I just want to spend a second just to mention Patreon is the way that you can help support this channel and the work that we're doing together and get fun things in response and I have articles there that a sort of a behind the scenes article.
where we've even started a book club recently where I've talked about some books we can read together where there are ways for you to get audio-only editions of this article that.this is the reason to think Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes
I'm doing and you can have early access to the article before they're released to the general public things like that so take a look if it interests you I'll put a link to it down below in the show notes so now on to David's question about passions and ambition, to begin with, there is absolutely nothing wrong in early Buddhist Dharma.
Indeed any Buddhist Dharma about laypeople having jobs having great ambitions for themselves even for them to make money that's part of what a layperson is supposed to do the the the Buddha, in fact, extolled the idea of what he called a righteous wealth righteously gained the layperson is supposed in a sense to pursue righteous wealth righteously gained through Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes.
In other words wealth, it is it has gained ethically without any kind of deviousness by our own hard work without theft without any kind of underhandedness without lying and so on as long as we're pursuing this kind of these kinds of ambitions ethically and pursuing ambitions that are themselves ethical there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing.
Buddhism and Ambitions for practices - New Buddha Quotes
So indeed for the Buddha, you could even argue that pursuing this kind of righteous wealth is part of the point of being layperson know that as the layperson really their life is one of gaining wealth a righteous wealth that is ethically gained wealth that we then use to distribute to worthy people in our lives and to make our lives happier and the lives of people around us happier this may seem surprising.
I actually have a course on this over at the online Dharma Institute in case you're interested but that this is one of the features of early Buddhism and now if we can see that even gaining wealth is not a problem for the Buddha as long as we're laypeople then so too are such things as scientific or artistic kinds of aims.
If we have the ambition to be a great scientist or a great artist there's nothing wrong with that in early Buddhism the point of Buddhist practice is never to kill our passion or our curiosity and certainly never to become passive it's not the point but passion itself can be for good or for ill we it passion is simply a kind of a strong desire to do something about Buddhism and Ambitions for Practice- New Buddha Quotes.
It's like the power it can be used for good or ill and there are many ways many of us who have passions to do things that are helpful we can have passions to help our neighbours indeed one of the ways we can understand a business both nowadays and in the past is that many ethical businesses exist and when we might even say that business in general insofar.
as we look at the ethical part of it exists in order to help people everything that we have around us comes from a business of some kind now the clothing we wear the books that we read the furniture in our houses themselves our transportation our internet service phone service cell sort of everything all of it comes or almost all of it much of it comes into one degree or another from businesses that are constructed in order to help people.
Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes
So to that degree to the degree that we're involved in something that's helping others, there's nothing wrong with that but we can also be passionate in other ways in let's say selling snake oil things that don't work trying to trick people in perhaps distributing misinformation about climate change in order to deceive people in perhaps trying to take wealth from the powerless who are less able to resist our wiles our attempts there are ways of course of being passionate that are harmful to others and the basic aim of Buddhist practice.
Buddhist Dharma in general is is to begin to allow us to see more clearly the differences between helpful and unhelpful passions like these passion is basically emotional energy or enthusiasm and like any energy, it itself is a moral it can be used for good or ill.
Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes
So the main issue with our passions is to figure out how they're being directed and to try to nudge them to be directed in ways that are skilful for ourselves and for others indeed we can even be passionate about something such as attaining awakening.
I did an earlier article on that because we might think that in early Buddhism passion is always a problem that certainly is how it's described sometimes but it's not necessarily a passion particularly for awakening can indeed get us very far along the path and David mentions curiosity and curiosity is very much the same curiosity is sort of an emotionally.
Intense interest in things and indeed it's even the second stage on the seven factors of awakening I did an earlier article on the seven factors of awakening which I'll also put a link to down below in the show notes.
If you don't know that it's known in the seven factors of awakening as the investigation of states that's what it's how it's termed but this investigation of states which comes after mindfulness first we become mindful and then we start to investigate states.
Buddhism and Ambitions for the passionate thing - New Buddha Quotes
we, in other words, we become curious as our mindfulness grows we become curious about ourselves we become curious about the world in certain ways how it manifests itself in our experience.
we become curious about the interrelation the interplay between ourselves and the world and our progress along the path would not be possible without this kind of curiosity is essential to progress so there's nothing wrong with curiosity itself in fact curiosity with Buddhism and Ambitions for passionate things. - New Buddha Quotes
As I say is absolutely essential we need it similarly though is with the case of passion curiosity itself can be for good or for ill in other words we can be curious about things that will make our lives better curious about things that are skilful for us to pursue and we can also be curious about things that don't we can really essentially waste our time being curious about things that really are not worth our effort now are not worth our attention and part of the point of practice is to understand this distinction curiosity itself, in other words, is amoral it doesn't really it can be for good or for ill the main point is to direct it properly now some of the nuances here with curiosity comes that for some of us.
As we progress along the path our passion for that path our passion for practice may turn our curiosity away from some of the more ordinary parts of life towards the path itself, in other words, we may come become more and more curious about the path and that may draw our attention away from more of the ordinary features of life and indeed for some of us this kind of change in perspective.
May even lead us to become monastics, in other words, we may decide to give up much of our ordinary life in order to pursue the path completely because we're so curious about it but I would submit that that's true of not very few of us it may be true of some of us but very few it's not something.
Buddhism and Ambitions for Interest- New Buddha Quotes
We have to get into if we don't want there's no pressure here there's nobody standing behind us telling us we have to give up our ordinary lives or anything like that's that's not the case at all and indeed the monastic Sangha itself the group of monastics require lay support.
So it's not as though we could all become monastics tomorrow I mean that's not even a possibility so we have to keep these things in mind I mean it's rather like I've known mathematicians in my life a people who pursued mathematics at University who had very broad interests at one point in their lives.
that's why Buddhism and Ambitions for Interest matter a lot - New Buddha Quotes
But then as they were drawn into mathematics as a profession that in that broad interest basically narrowed into their interest was almost exclusively about things having to do with mathematics now there's nothing wrong with that that simply is a change in perspective as people grow and change all the time.
We have to remember that we ourselves are always changing and so, in the same way, our interests our curiosity may get redirected as we become more interactive or more aware of what's going on in the path and that but we may not we also may decide that the path as it fits very well with our ordinary life and that's fine.
But whatever the case may be it none of this would happen because of passivity on our part it happens rather because of an active interest either an active interest in the path and the Dharma that leads us towards let's say giving up some of our prior interests finding them less important.
Because we find our present interests with the path leading towards such great happiness in our lives that we want to pursue it further or we may find as I say that our passion for the path is perfectly compatible with our ordinary life and that we can do it all together it just depends on the person.
Everyone is different however I think what would happen as we progress along is that as we get farther we will find ourselves I think disentangling or ordinary passions or ordinary ambitions from let's say a more closed down conceit about ourselves with Buddhism and Ambitions for Our Self - New Buddha Quotes
Because I think an ordinary life if we're not familiar with Buddhist practice what can happen is that our passions our ambition gets caught up with conceit get caught up with a feeling that we are special that we're different that were somehow unique that were somehow doing this all by ourselves that it's who we are as a self as a person that makes us greater than others this kind of that puts ourselves up on a pedestal.
Buddhism and Ambitions Summary - New Buddha Quotes
This is oftentimes what happens I think with people who become successful in their lives is that if they don't have a strong kind of let's say wisdom upbringing this can go to their heads and they think that it's all done by themselves that it's that makes them special in some way and part of our progress.
Along this path is learning that that kind of ambition that that kind of conceit is not really an ambition for true happiness it's an ambition that leads to our own attachment to things in the world that's going to make our lives more difficult in the long term and certainly that's going to make the lives of people around us in the greater society more difficult in the long term.
Because if we put ourselves up on a pedestal we're liable to push everybody down and that's not to our own benefit nor to the benefit of others so what we would begin to understand I think as we progress here is that the path is one that leads towards happiness and that other kind of more conceited or selfish understandings of ambition and passion are not really the ways towards true happiness I did an earlier article on Buddhism and happiness and how Buddhism talks about this issue and I'll put a link to it up on the screen I'd recommend taking a look at it
So i hope you like Buddhism and Ambitions with buddha quotes knowledge and still if you want more article then you can go here or in the google here to find out buddhism and ambitions related article along with new buddha quotes.
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