How to make other people spend time more meaningfully?

[yontenjamyang]

Thanks to Positive Change highlighting how people spend their 24 hours, I thought perhaps we should do something about it.
So, I would like everybody to come up with ideas to make others, not necessarily Buddhist to spend their time more meaningfully ie to create merits for themselves. I would everyone to post 5 ideas. Please give a short explanation on the ideas. Then later I can tabulate the top 5 ideas. We must get the best ideas implemented.

Cheers!

[Big Uncle]

I think the spiritual journey is a unique and individual experience. I don't think I can dictate ideas of how to enforce our spirituality on others without repelling them. The best way I know is to practice it ourselves and gain understanding, compassion and realisation from it so others are inspired and naturally will be drawn towards it.

Therefore, it is not what we can work on others but what we can work on ourselves. Hence, things we can do for others is to check ourselves in these areas :-

1. Has our spiritual work increased over time? A bad sign of our spirituality would be to have it decreased over time. So we should work to increase it.

2. Have our main delusion lessened over time? If we are an angry person, we should find that the time it takes to let go of our anger decreases over time. In other words, we find it easier and easier to forgive.

3. Do we find it easier to give up time and resources to benefit another person?

4. Do we find it a joy to study the Dharma so we can share it with others even when we already know a lot.

5. Do we have devotion to our Lama and are we consistent with our daily meditations/prayers?

3.

[diamond girl]

I like this... As we travel our own personal spiritual journey, which is to benefit others, we should focus on how to "influence" people to start doing good. I think that this will help all especially when we can cover many different ways for many different types of characters. The 5 ideas I have to contribute will be:

1) Social work - most people like to do things which can help people and by doing social work they can see the results immediately and thus immediately have a feel-good feeling. It is good that when people start focusing out onto others that they see immediate results like a smiling face in appreciation.

2) Consistent Donations - this is very suitable for the "i do not have time" people. By making donations they can support those people who have the time to contribute to others. I would like to stress that these donations I do not mean millions, I stress this because I know people who tell me, "What I can give is too little to make a difference" - this is so wrong. Everyone's little contribution accumulates to a lot!

3) Volunteering Consistently - make a commitment to volunteer at centers, example Dharma centers. And consistently too. Take responsibility and contribute consistently through time and effort. Make something grow. Find an area of interest and get committed to it. If not a Dharma center, then a help group.

4) Be compassionate - whatever it is we do, be mindful to be compassionate in our speech and actions and of course thoughts

5) Be Good with Your loved ones - no matter what, practice at home. Bring family and friends closer together in harmony. If you are volunteering gather all to join in. If donating, get the family to donate to the same cause. Get our friends and families involved in what we do.

[pgdharma]

I do agree with Big Uncle. It is not how to make other people spend more time meaningfully but how to make oneself spend more time meaningfully. Our best ideas may not be suitable for others as each individual is different. Hence, I have to work on myself first. If we want to improve ourselves we have to check on how we have progressed:

Has our dharma practice increase through time or decrease? Are we still as laid back as before we met the dharma?

Is our dharma practice consistent or dependant on our mood swing? Are we selective in doing dharma work?

Are we more able to sacrifice our comfort zone to benefit others?  Are we willing to let go of our attachments?

Do we look forward to doing more dharma work when we are pushed to do so? Is our faith and samaya with our Guru getting stronger or do we still have negative thoughts of our Guru when we are pushed to do more?

Are we happy doing dharma work? Or are we still complaining and bitching why we need to do so much?

[Klein]

I like this... As we travel our own personal spiritual journey, which is to benefit others, we should focus on how to "influence" people to start doing good. I think that this will help all especially when we can cover many different ways for many different types of characters. The 5 ideas I have to contribute will be:

1) Social work - most people like to do things which can help people and by doing social work they can see the results immediately and thus immediately have a feel-good feeling. It is good that when people start focusing out onto others that they see immediate results like a smiling face in appreciation.

2) Consistent Donations - this is very suitable for the "i do not have time" people. By making donations they can support those people who have the time to contribute to others. I would like to stress that these donations I do not mean millions, I stress this because I know people who tell me, "What I can give is too little to make a difference" - this is so wrong. Everyone's little contribution accumulates to a lot!

3) Volunteering Consistently - make a commitment to volunteer at centers, example Dharma centers. And consistently too. Take responsibility and contribute consistently through time and effort. Make something grow. Find an area of interest and get committed to it. If not a Dharma center, then a help group.

4) Be compassionate - whatever it is we do, be mindful to be compassionate in our speech and actions and of course thoughts

5) Be Good with Your loved ones - no matter what, practice at home. Bring family and friends closer together in harmony. If you are volunteering gather all to join in. If donating, get the family to donate to the same cause. Get our friends and families involved in what we do.

I like what diamond girl wrote. I'd like to add that in order for us to "make" other people spend time more meaningfully, we, ourselves have to also walk the talk. We need to spend time doing what's listed above so that people around us will become inspired and follow our footsteps.

[Dondrup Shugden]

I also like what Diamond Girl wrote, simple steps to follow and within anyone's means to act on any one of the activities.

However, I wonder if just sitting around planning ways to "make" people spend their time more meaningfully and then activating programs to promote such activities is also making other people spend time more meaningfully?

Your contributions to my question is most appreciated.

[negra orquida]

Yes I also agree that we can't "make" people spend time more meaningfully, but we can attract or inspire them to share our view on what is spending time more meaningfully by walking the talk and showing results. 

There are many ways to "spend time meaningfully", not necessarily through charity work, and there are  different types of target audience.  For example, listening to Dharma teachings or chanting mantras while driving is a more meaningful way to spend our travel time compared to listening to pop songs or singing in-car karaoke, what could be the 5 things we could do to promote this idea to a non-Buddhist?

Dondrup Shugden, I think brainstorming/ planning (and getting others to chip in) ideas on how to educate people on ways they could spend time more meaningfully is just as important as executing such ideas.  Everything we have today (except for naturally occurring phenomena of course) sprouted from an idea by someone who sat down and thought about it.  So the people who are brainstorming are also spending their time meaningfully for the benefit of others.

[vajraD]

Well we can’t really make other people how we want them to be. It is we that have to make the different in within ourselves and influence others.

1)   Love people around us (families and friends)- if we can’t even create harmony and help our family first or serve our family well, how do we or what are we talking about giving love to others.

2)   Do charity (if one does not have the finance to donate the best thing is to donate time) or doing dharma work- serving others help one to grow inner and outer differently. When we see other happy, these are happiness that is very special.

3)   Transform or lessen our delusion- example if I have a bad temper, then I should work to reduce my temper.

Everyone have a different perception of how things should be or can be. But in reality a lot of things are easy said than done because we all have our own different experience of life.

[hope rainbow]

I'll say this from experience, having seen people around me really change through their practice and pushing themselves to spend their time more meaningfully.
I have seen people become stronger, better speakers, more convincing, more mature, more kind, more attentionate, more compassionate, more altruistic, more involved, more dynamic! I have seen them becoming INSPIRING!
These people are an inspiration for me to spend my time more meaningfully FOR I HAVE SEEN THE RESULT IN OTHERS around me.

So I say there is one thing that can propel people to follow your footsteps and spend their time more meaningfully:  BECOME BETTER, SHOW QUALITIES THAT THEY WANT TO HAVE AND THEY'LL FOLLOW YOUR FOOTSTEPS, they'll want to be around and get your recipe!

I have had the privilege to meet very dedicated Dharma practitionners and witness them improve, and I see how this inspire many more in turn to do what they do: SPENDING THEIR TIME MEANINGFULLY.

[Tenzin K]

This is what I think:
1)   Do your prayer. One of the ways that purify our karma.
2)   Involve in charitable work to help/benefit people. Make sure our motivation set correctly whereby it’s purely for the benefit of others.
3)   Learn up the knowledge that brings us to become a better person. The more we learn the more we understand and know the right purpose of life. The earlier we start the faster we are able to benefits more people that are suffering.
4)   Contribute in spreading the spiritual knowledge. How we become a better person is through knowledge that we contemplate and put into practice. Be it in building a spiritual institution, printing spiritual text, sponsoring the teachers and etc……every single contribution with strong and pure motivation make us a better person.
5)   We learn up and share with others. Be the teacher and walk the talk. People convince when we do what we said and the outcome of our action is what people always watch because we we can show the result how do we expect others to believe.

By saying so, consistency is one of the major things that we should focus and emphasize in carrying out the above mentioned. The success is not just to take the first step but the continuity until the result shown.     

[Rihanna]

I think each one of us has our own way of expressing our spirituality. The actions may seem different but if the motivation is to benefit others then the time is spent meaningfully. Like what Big Uncle say is true; the measurement is in the results, not the method.

We can check the result by:

1. Have our feelings and energy increased, developed in a positive way and become more stable?

2. Do you have more joy and bliss?

3. Do you have clearer visualization, inner peace and a stronger wish to help others?

4. Have the blockages, sickness and negativities of your body and mind decreased or not?

5. Has your transformation influenced people closer to you in a positive way?

If you have more YES than NO, then whichever method you are using to spend your time has been meaningful.