Apr 26, 2020
By making cherishing others our main daily practice, we will discover a real source of happiness in our lives. Cherishing others means acting to make others happy. It opposes selfishness. As we deal with the challenges coming from the Coronavirus pandemic, practicing cherishing others will give us some immediate relief from our problems. Below are the some of the results of cherishing others, but we should discover them ourselves!
The Benefits of Cherishing Others
- Is the cause of happiness.
- Solves all problems
- Makes relationships harmonious and stable
- Is the cause of success and happiness in this life
- Leads to all good qualities.
- Leads to the lasting peace and bliss of full enlightenment
How is cherishing others the cause of our own happiness?
When an action is motivated by the intention to cherishing others, to make them happy or help them, it creates good karma. Good karma is the root cause of every moment of pleasure or happiness, from health and harmony in relationships to a moment of joy. For example, we gave to others in the past and that created the karma for us to have enough resources in this life. Why did we give to others in the past? Because we cherished them and felt their happiness was important.
In the past, we gave to others to alleviate some need they had--like hunger--or to give them pleasure. Later we experience a similar result: we have delicious, plentiful food or we have a mind predisposed to happiness. Every positive action we undertook in the past was motivated by cherishing others in some way. Thus, every happiness we enjoy comes from cherishing others. Even a sky filled with diamonds is not as valuable as this mind of cherishing others.
**In our meditation we come to this object: a heartfelt conclusion and intention, “I must make cherishing others my main practice in daily life.”
“Whether or not we are aware of it, from the day we are born, the need for affection is in our very blood. I believe that no one is born without this need for love. And contrary to certain modern schools of thought, this demonstrates that human beings are not limited to the physical plane alone. No material object, no matter how beautiful or precious it is, can give us the feeling of being loved, because our deeper identity, our true character, is rooted in the subjective nature of the mind.” —Dalai Lama, My Spiritual Journey
References:
Dalai Lama (2009). My Spiritual Journey. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Harper Collins.
Je Tsongkhapa. Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 2. Pages 181-208. Translated by the Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee. Joshua Cutler, Editor-in-Chief, and Guy Newlan, Editor.