Uniting in Harmony

[Helena]

These 6 Things Uniting in Harmony are to be Remembered :

The Blessed Buddha once said:

These six things are to be remembered in order to Unite any Community in Harmony:

They are :-

1: Friendly Behaviour (metta-kaya-kamma=friendly bodily action) both in public and in private.
2: Friendly Speech (metta-vaci-kamma=friendly verbal action) both in public and in private.
3: Friendly Thought (metta-mano-kamma=friendly mental action) both in public and in private.
4: Sharing of Gains (sadharana-bhogi=common wealth) even down to any single lump of food.
5: Moral Harmony (sila-samannagato=uniform morality) all respect the same ethical rules.
6: Harmony in Views (ditthi-samannagato=uniform attitude) all share the same general views.

These 6 things are to be considered & remembered both for individual & social Harmony...
      Source (edited extract):
      The Numerical Sayings of the Buddha. Anguttara Nikaya.
      The Book of Sixes 11: To be Remembered... [III: 288-9]

This is something I found over the net which inspires me a great deal on a daily basis.

This is a reminder for me to act, speak and think with awareness.

As all of you would probably know, one of 5 heinous crimes listed is divisive speech.

I never thought much of it before as I did not think that speech was such a big deal.

However seeing how some have written in this Forum alone, I am more convinced that divisive speech among Sangha is the worst and the negative consequences is tremendous.

If we are sincere practitioners of Dorje Shugden, we will work very hard to FIRST question our own thoughts and speech before we even put in on paper or utter it out.

We would ask ourselves, what benefit are we giving or bringing with such actions or words.

I am very grateful for this Forum and the friends who have shared much valuable information here.

While the world outside of here is still embroiled in hatred and schism of Dorje Shugden, we should not mirror such actions - even if it is done in a different context.

They may have started the fire with instilling the ban, but we can pacify and promote peace and harmony with our actions and speech. We seriously do not need to add fuel to that fire for it may end up engulfing all of us - them and us.

Then what would be the point?

Where would the real benefit lie at the end of the day?

We have chosen to continue practising Dorje Shugden to become better people and not worse.

So, let us all do just that.

Thank you all and wishing all a very lovely weekend.

[hope rainbow]

Dealing with the controversy is our practice,
and doing it while keeping by the 6 principles or harmony from The Buddha makes it so.

We learn to sail in difficult waters and harsch weather, so that we can lead others in any weather.

[triesa]

As all of you would probably know, one of 5 heinous crimes listed is divisive speech.

I never thought much of it before as I did not think that speech was such a big deal.

Thank you Helena for sharing.

Many including myself would not think of "divisive speech" as one of the 5 heinour crimes. Well if one wants to see the magnitude of divisive speech compared to the other 4 heinous crimes, which are :  killing one's mother, killing one's father, killing an ahrat, drawing blood from a buddha, then one would start to realise the impact and consequences of "divisive speech".

Speech or words have a lot of power..........

  Words can bring people together or set people apart.
  Words can bring doubts to people's mind or clear any mis-understanding.
  Words can break people's heart or heal the mind and soul.
  Words can jump start a war or bring peace to the world.

And I guess the worst of all in divisive speech is to create doubts that set people apart from one's guru, the Dharma and the Sanga. It is worst, not only it is against Buddha's teachings, but if we do this, we are actually cutting off the possibilities of others to be able to receive teachings and blessings from their gurus, to receive the precious Dharma for their journey to enlightenment.

Speech come from thoughts, for some people, it is from habituation. They may just utter the words out without even processing through their brains.

Like Helena said, whatever we say, we MUST have awareness of others and the circumstances. But this does not mean we should act up and make a fairy tale speech. We should not say things that will have the implications of creating the wrong doubts in people's mind or with the conscious intention of dividing and breaking up people apart.

Than, how many words does a person say each day?

The only place I have seen documented research on this is http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.html and they say Inferred female and male daily word totals:

male = 6073 words per day
female = 8805 words per day

So make every single word you say a beneficial word that unite people in harmony rather than dividing people in anger and fear.

[Helena]

Dear Triesa,

Thank you for sharing and posting such meaningful information.

I really appreciate what you wrote below especially.

Speech or words have a lot of power..........

  Words can bring people together or set people apart.
  Words can bring doubts to people's mind or clear any mis-understanding.
  Words can break people's heart or heal the mind and soul.
  Words can jump start a war or bring peace to the world.

So make every single word you say a beneficial word that unite people in harmony rather than dividing people in anger and fear.

May we all use all your gifts, talents and especially, our speech to promote peace, harmony and unity.

May we use all our actions of body, speech and mind to do more good and benefit others.

If we can remember to use what we have and are given to benefit others most of the time, we can definitely change the world into a much more caring and kinder world.

[WisdomBeing]

This is an interesting discussion. i think that as divisive speech is singled out as a heinous crime, we should really contemplate it. Many people are careless with words because its effects are not so obvious. When you say something that hurts someone else, it's not like you're hitting them with a stick, which would produce visible bruising or even a cut. However, gossip - true or false - tends to divide people, and cause people to think negatively of someone. It could be a fellow Dharma brother or sister or worse still, one's Guru, and a thoughtless word or deliberately malicious word could separate someone from the Dharma. The amazing thing is that the karmic effects of this is similar to drawing blood from a Buddha or killing our parents! Scary.

Agree with what Helena and Triesa said earlier. May we all have more awareness of everything we say or do as to whether it is positive or negative so we can stop piling more negative karma on ourselves. We have more than enough already, don't we.

[hope rainbow]

gossiping, taking "sides", wanting other to take "our" side and gossiping again, wasting time and hurting others, pulling others away from their spiritual paths by instilling wrong views, being manipulative, iddle, iddle, iddle chatter..
It is in the lamrim very clearly indicated: one of the qualities of a Dharma student or disciple to a Guru:

-to not be attached to one group or hostile to another.

And what is gossip if not stemming from being attached to one group or hostile to another... AND even if it would be plain useless chatter, we could think that it is innocent because it hurst noboy,but that is wrong, it is harmful because it is not inspiring and engaging people to live by Dharma, it is inviting people to WASTE their time in a completely useless habit of useless chatter.
every minute passed is a minute gone, GONE!

[WisdomBeing]

Yes i think that the fact that we should not indulge idle chatter is mentioned as one of the refuge vows is how harmful it is, yet so many people do not realise it. I don't think that Christianity addresses idle chatter either.

The danger about idle chatter is that it's so easy to lapse into it without realising it. If you want to physically hit someone, you can stop yourself from doing it, but with chatter, it is seamless with our everyday speech, so it requires much more awareness. Interesting.

[hope rainbow]

Yes i think that the fact that we should not indulge idle chatter is mentioned as one of the refuge vows is how harmful it is, yet so many people do not realise it. I don't think that Christianity addresses idle chatter either.

The danger about idle chatter is that it's so easy to lapse into it without realising it. If you want to physically hit someone, you can stop yourself from doing it, but with chatter, it is seamless with our everyday speech, so it requires much more awareness. Interesting.

Idle chatter is a daily activity, constant ativity for most of us, this is important to realize, for:
-by doing it all the time, its karma becomes very heavy
-by doing it all the time we create the habit of indulging in it.

Idle chatter is not only a "chatter", it is everything we engage into that does not participate to a Dharma practice (equating with waste of time and waste of opportunity).
Thus it also is:
-TV
-gossip magazine
-video games
-business meetings
-etc...
Unless of course, one has found a way to re-conciliate these activities with Dharma practice (but let's not fool ourselves here...).

[triesa]

Idle chatter is not only a "chatter", it is everything we engage into that does not participate to a Dharma practice (equating with waste of time and waste of opportunity).
Thus it also is:
-TV
-gossip magazine
-video games
-business meetings
-etc...
Unless of course, one has found a way to re-conciliate these activities with Dharma practice (but let's not fool ourselves here

We can't fool ourselves that we can totally avoid TV, Gossip magazines, video games( not an issue for me), business meetings in what we are doing on a daily basis. But rather since these are not avoidable, what we can do is to generate the awareness of not engaging in any idle chatter or divisive speech in meetings and when we watch TV or read any gossip magazines, we adopt a different attitude of looking at the gossips, that we do not become another relaying trumpet for those gossips. Or better, we use those gossips or juicy news as a teaching to ourselves.

Everyday is a learning and everyday.......some realisations can be achieved..............

[Helena]

Many people are careless with words because its effects are not so obvious. When you say something that hurts someone else, it's not like you're hitting them with a stick, which would produce visible bruising or even a cut. However, gossip - true or false - tends to divide people, and cause people to think negatively of someone. It could be a fellow Dharma brother or sister or worse still, one's Guru, and a thoughtless word or deliberately malicious word could separate someone from the Dharma. The amazing thing is that the karmic effects of this is similar to drawing blood from a Buddha or killing our parents! Scary.

I can really relate to what you wrote here, WB.

Many people do not see the wounds and damage caused by negative speech - that is, until it is too late.

As much as I would like to say that I am aware of what I say, I really can't. At least, not all the time and it does not meet the criteria of what Buddha taught as RIGHT SPEECH.

In Magga-Vibhanga Sutta, the Buddha says, “And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter: This, monks, is called right speech.” Therefore, right speech is that which is honest, healthy and filled with compassion for the other person.

According to the Buddha, there are five factors of right speech. Right speech is:

Spoken at the right time;
Spoken with affection;
Spoken honestly;
Spoken for the good of others; and
Spoken with the intent of doing good.
When one speaks keeping these five factors in mind, speech automatically is filled with goodness and compassion.



Source: http://www.suite101.com/content/understanding-the-buddhist-concept-of-right-speech-a280211

Many a times, we do not speak for the good of others or with any intent of doing good.

I think this is the difference of whether we speak with care or without care.

[beggar]

What an interesting topic, thank you dear Helena for posting this!

Interesting also that the dialogue has shifted specifically to the destructive / powerful effect of words and speech in destroying or creating harmony. As has been mentioned or alluded to already, in many ways, speech is far more harmful than physical negativities - often the physical comes first from the speech. We hit someone often because there has been some form of verbal disagreement / argument leading up to the hitting; wars are begun by someone's speech convincing his/her whole nation to go to war or by speaking offensively against another party or country.

It is especially apt to be discussing this here also as Dorje Shugden, as the buddha of wisdom, is so closely related to all matters to do with speech and creating or developing powerful speech THAT WILL BENEFIT. I have been advised that Wangse's practice (his mantra and serkym) is especially powerful for helping us to develop convincing, powerful, beneficial speech that tame difficult people's minds, turn them onto the dharma and help them to gain understanding of the teachings.

So next time you feel like gossiping, please recite his mantra instead...!

[pgdharma]

Negative speech, idle chatter..... Where does it come from? ......When we  have negative thoughts, we will have negative speech. Thus we must trained and arrest our mind when negative thoughts arises. It is through wrong views, wrong speech that causes disharmony and war.

Right speech, spoken with the right intention can and will benefit all around us. Instead of always harboring negative thoughts and speech which will not bring any benefit whatsoever, we must  start to train ourselves to generate good thoughts and speech.

It may not be easy in the beginning, but it is worth a try!

[shugdenprotect]

Thanks Helena for always finding inspiring subjects to engage discussion in.

Also: Thanks Beggar! I like the little "antidote" you presented for us to prevent ourselves from engaging in  idle chatter and divisive speech! Such ways are pretty effective as they are tangible, i.e. one can actually redirect our power of speech from saying something harmful to saying a mantra...which can only be beneficial.

Today, speech has certainly reached greater heights of influence and impact. It is boundary-less through the satellite and internet. It is seamless and the direct impacts is not immediately visible to the naked eyes. Therefore, if used constructively to form RIGHT SPEECH as posted by Helena, spaces to share like this forum is created and flourishes. However, if used to create WRONG SPEECH, great sufferings can be caused. For example, a harsh scolding by a parent leaves a much deeper and lingering mark on a child than a beating. Additionally, idle chatter contributes to something as basic as pollution of our environment besides physical and emotional pains.

Ironically, although we have said to ourselves more than once "how sweet is this silence", we seem to craftily orchestrate an environment of constant noisiness around us. Making the situation scarier is the fact that there are so many tools like gossip TV, magazines and (even) SOCIAL GRACE ETHICS that have been fabricated to enhance the habit to chatter idly.

So far, the all-in-one solution that can be adapted to various "users" is the Dharma. From a simple one-line mantra to teachings on the 5 heinous crimes and refuge vows, we can finds ways to breakthrough our old habit of engaging in non-constructive speech. Therefore, once again...as always, I thank my Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha and my dear Dharma brothers and sisters for your kindness in providing, sharing and encouraging the growth of this comprehensive solution.