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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Values in the context of Buddhism PART 2 of 2


 

When you have the idea that VALUES are actually driving us in doing the things we do. You can then change VALUES, hence changing your beliefs about those VALUES and changing your behaviour towards things/people and anything that you come into contact with in your reality.


This explains why someone who love to eat meat, may suddenly becomes a full time vegetarian. Many type of experiences could have contributed to it. For example, they develop certain health issues and decided to become vegetarian, because they value HEALTH more than personal food satisfaction in their VALUES hierarchy.

Whereas for some people, they may have terminal disease, but would not even consider changing their diets. For this type of people, they would usually say “If I could not eat what I wanted to eat, life would be meaningless”. You can then know that they VALUE the taste of food more than survival itself. Because they have a high VALUE that Life Must be Meaningful. And for that to happen, they have a governing belief inside their head that says ' eating what you want to eat at any time is giving my life its meaning'.

Literally they would rather die than not being able to eat what they want to eat. BUT this beliefs about achieving the VALUE of Life Must be Meaningful is not helping them in this situation. You want to know a big secret? They also don't know that they have such damaging beliefs, sometime they pick it up when they are small and don't understand much. Yet slowly it becomes an important part of their life. If they are able to change their beliefs from Life Must be Meaningful WHEN I am able to spend more healthy times with my love ones – IMMEDIATELY this person can change their diet preferences with no regrets, hang ups or any chances of reverting back to their original way. All it takes is a shift of beliefs to fulfill the VALUES that they hold.

Now comes the ultimate question, how do we view VALUES in the context of Buddhism. Buddha in his ultimate quest towards reaching enlightenment, is about how humans can be free of suffering and be happy.

Teachings of Buddha often mention how humans create suffering for themselves by clinging on towards what is not real in their emotions and also physical things that we view as permanent.

If we are ask enough questions to find out about a person's high VALUE and what it ultimately means to them. We will often discover one common word and emotion. And that is being HAPPY.

For example, when you ask a person who has a high VALUE on MONEY in their life, what does it mean to have money in your life? They would answer something like ' so that I can feel secure', 'I can do whatever I want , with whomever I want, at any place I want' , ' so I can be free' . Then if you probe further, 'What does it mean to be free? ' What does it mean when you can feel that sense of security?' What does it mean to be able to do all these things?' Finally they would say that ' then I would feel truly happy!'

Buddhism mentioned that all sentient beings wants to be happy and to be free of suffering. And Buddhism went a step further.

For all the VALUES that you may have and fulfilling those values, some of it are base of a 'false' perception. VALUES and BELIEFS based on material things, ability to evoke emotions, and people will not make a person happy forever. They will ultimately be causes of suffering for you. Because life itself is impermanent, material things, emotions and people will also one day be lost through time or separation upon your own death.


Because of the existence of Karma and Reincarnation, you may have already experience many lifetimes as many different people with different values. And because of attachments towards those various false perceptions, the mind takes on reincarnation again and again in hope to search for something that provides ultimate happiness. But each time, we view those material things, people, emotions as the source of our happiness, those in the end will become our suffering and hence the cycle is unending.


To be free of suffering and be happy, one would need to realized that the unending cycle itself is emptiness. Emptiness here does not mean that it does not exist, but realizing the sense of meaningless of attaching to things that are not permanent if we look at it from across many lifetimes.

Then you may ask what are the VALUES of Buddhism? Reducing attachments towards all things, in this sense even reducing attachment towards the SELF. Without the SELF, there is no EGO, hence no attachment of any kind. Meaning, SELFLESSNESS is one of the higher VALUE in Buddhism. Why Selflessness? Because when we don't think about the SELF, thinking about the happiness of others, the welfare of others, then Compassion develops naturally and happiness is realized automatically.

Buddhism encourages as human beings, we need to collect more merits, do more good deeds in order to have the wisdom to realized full Selflessness. Collecting merits and do good deeds itself is an exercise towards being selfless. It is those merits from the good deeds, that propels each rebirth to have a much better chance of realizing the Values of Buddhism and finally being able to achieve Enlightenment 

Values in the Context of Buddhism, needs a person to have a realization of how values actually governs our life. And whether those values and beliefs are actually giving the real happiness that we seek for not only in this life but in all our future lives as well. To check on what are our current values, whether they are aligned towards being more selfless or actually our current value is aligned towards the self. If it is aligned towards the self, we can never achieve lasting happiness. As most likely it is only temporary.

A lot of people go through life, behaving the way they behave without actually knowing what are the things that are driving them. They often think, it is their birth 'gift' which sometimes can be a curse in disguise. The important realization to have, is that we all have the power to change our values and beliefs. Nobody is a victim of circumstances, all are only victims of their own values and beliefs!

My short article here on VALUES and also BUDDHISM will never be extensive enough for you to know all about it, but if reading through this article creates enough curiosity in you to start searching for answers, then I would have achieve what I set out to write. And most likely it is written for you.

May you be Happy !

 **Those who like to know more about Feng Shui, please visit my blog at http://gkhamconsulting.blogspot.com