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Be grateful to everyone |
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mystic light
Administrator
Posts: 6815
Registered: May 2006 |
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 Posted March 7th, 2009 11:27 IP   
"Be grateful to everyone" is getting at a complete change of attitude. This slogan is not wishy-washy and naive. It does not mean that if you're mugged on the street you should smile knowingly and say "Oh, I should be grateful for this" before losing consciousness.  This slogan actually gets at the guts of how we perfect ignorance through avoidance, not knowing we're eating poison, not knowing that we're putting another layer of protection over our heart, not seeing the whole thing.
"Be grateful to everyone" means that all situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you the best. There may be a Juan or Juanita in your life, and Juan or Juanita is the one who gets you going. They're the ones who don't go away: your mother, your husband, your wife, your lover, your child, the person that you have to work with every single day, part of the situation you can't escape. There's no way that someone else can tell you exactly what to do, because you're the only one who knows where it's torturing you, where your relationship with Juan or Juanita is getting into your guts.
When the great Buddhist teacher Atisha went to Tibet... he was told the people of Tibet were very good-natured, earthy, flexible, and open; he decided they wouldn't be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along with him a mean-tempered, ornery Bengali tea boy. He felt that was the only way he could stay awake. The Tibetans like to tell the story that, when he got to Tibet, he realized that he need not have brought his tea boy: the people there were not as pleasant as he had been told. :lol:
In our own lives, the Bengali tea boys are the people who, when you let them through the front door of your house, go right down to the basement where you store the things you'd rather not deal with, pick out one of them, bring it to you, and say "Is this yours?"
From - Start Where You Are - Pema Chodron 
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bigyouth
Global Moderator
Posts: 910
Registered: Jun 2006 |
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Posted March 11th, 2009 13:10 IP
I've got a brother-in-law that could teach a 'bengali tea-boy' how to be professionally unpleasant.
Smug insulting pushy and condensending.
One day I figured out how he was helpful....in offering a counterpoint to fellowship he made everyone else look good.
(Edited by bigyouth)
(Edited by bigyouth)
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"love and you will be open
seek and you will find
wisdom is found in the simplist of places
in the nick of time" |
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Lotus Buddhism Forum :: :: Tibetan Buddhism :: Be grateful to everyone |
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