Why is it important to have harmony?

[dharmacrazy79]

Harmony is crucial for anything to strive and grow and flourish. It is clearly reflected in Nature and how the vast diversity of flora and fauna live in complete harmony, building the perfect and sustainable ecosystem that lasted billions of years.

The Buddhist teachings often refer to Nature for lessons of compassion and wisdom. We should step back and connect with these lessons once more.

[Andrea Keating]

The origin of the word harmony was derived from "harmos", which meant joint in Greek. And joint means shared, held, or made by two or more.

It is then obvious that we should all think of others before ourselves in order to have harmony regardless of where we are. Because if we only think of "me" and how important the "i" is, no harmony will be achieved as it requires at least 2 to do that   

[Tracy]

It is important to have harmony if we want to progress. Imagine there is a boat, if we have 2 rowers rowing in 2 different directions, will the boat move at all? It will not. But if the rowers are rowing in the same direction, the boat will move to where the rowers want it to go.

If we still wonder why the Tibetans are still fighting to free Tibet after 60 years, it is because there is no harmony in the Tibetan community! The Tibetans are divided into different groups. For examples, the Dorje Shugden group, the anti-Dorje Shugden group, the Tai Situ Karmapa group, the Sharmapa Karmapa group, the Middle Way Approach group, and the Free Tibet group, etc. With so many differences still exist, it is impossible to have harmony.

As long as there is no harmony, the CTA will not be able to fulfill their promise of free Tibet. But it seems like the CTA wants to keep the status like this, they don't want the free Tibet movement to be successful. The reason is very simple, they want to continue to use their plight to ask for money to fatten their wallets.

[SabS]

Harmony takes a lot of effort. It is especially important to have harmony within a Buddhist organisation. First, it will encourage others to enter this path when they see the good qualities of the practitioners within the organisation which they aspire to. Having harmony in a Buddhist organisation shows strongly the practice of the practitioners within. After all, they will have to make the effort to be kind to each other, to be accepting of each other, to lower their egos in deference to the other, and all that promotes the harmony. Also, the harmony reflects the respect and gratitude of the practitioners for their Guru and his teachings. If they care for their Guru and know the value of his teachings, then they will be practicing to transform their minds to effect the harmony within their Buddhist organisation. These are some of the points that I think about why it is important to have harmony.