How to Be Compassionate: A Handbook for Creating Inner Peace and a Happier World by His Holiness The Dalai Lama & Jeffrey Ph.d. Hopkins

Author:His Holiness The Dalai Lama & Jeffrey Ph.d. Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Religion, Buddhism, Inspirational, General
ISBN: 9781451623918
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

AFFLICTIVE EMOTIONS ARE BASED ON A MISTAKE

Impure states of mind such as desire and hatred are not part of the basic nature of the mind, and must be produced with the assistance of ignorance. All faulty states of mind are mistaken at their root. Ignorance is a form of consciousness mistaken with respect to the object of its attention; it is wrong about it. But valid consciousnesses—the opposites of lust and hatred—operate even when there is no mistaken belief in independent existence.

Valid cognition supports love and compassion, for instance. These positive qualities need no assistance from the ignorance that misconceives objects as existing in and of themselves alone, whereas nonvirtuous attitudes, such as hatred, pride, and so forth, are generated only with the assistance and support of ignorance. Without this misunderstanding of the nature of things, there is no way that lust and hatred can operate.

Sensible desires draw favorable things to us, but lust fails at this task because at its core it is biased and therefore clouded. With lust what seems to be affection for another is prejudiced, so that even the slightest interference allows hatred to set in. Altruism, on the other hand, is supremely effective at drawing beneficial factors together, because its unbiased nature will never spur us to do irrational harm.

Similarly, although hatred is mistaken to be integral to the mind, it is not; it is an attitude without valid support. Compassion, however, is founded in truth. When, over a long period of time, an attitude that has a valid foundation competes with an attitude that does not, the one with the valid foundation will overwhelm the other. This is why when you become accustomed to correct attitudes through practice, faulty states of mind naturally diminish, until finally they are extinguished.

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