What is inside you?
The following story is taken from The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, by Ronald Rolheiser. If you are looking for a great book, you may love this one!
One day the Buddha, badly overweight, was sitting under a tree. A young solider, trim and handsome, came along, looked at the Buddha, and said: "You look like a pig!" The Buddha replied: "Well, you look like God!" "Why would you say that?" asked the surprised soldier. "Well," replied the Buddha, "we see what’s inside us. I think about God all day and when I look at you that is what I see. You, obviously, must think about other things…"
What is inside you?
What do you see?
I hate to think that what I so easily dislike in another person, what I see on the outside of others, or see as another’s weakness is something that is colored by my inside, but it is too often the case.
Inside Jesus was a concept of God that allowed Jesus to see others through the eyes of love. Jesus had within him the God of love. Perhaps is it our own hate that allows us to see others with the eyes of hate. Perhaps it is our own dishonesty that allows us to see the dishonesty in others. Is it our hypocrisy that allows us to see the hypocrisy in others? If Jesus can see others through the eyes of love, why don’t we?
We have to give up our power to hate in order to experience the power of love.
Like the Buddha, today I am going to try to think about God a little more.
5 Comments:
Great, great post. Very funny, and very true.
1) That must be the "happy budha" variety - the historical founder of Budhism (Prince Gautama) was never overweight.
2) There is no God (creator) in Budhism.
Thanks Bumble, you are right, it is a contemporary story! :) I appreciate your mentioning this.
Like the Bible or other spiritual stories, I am interested in the meaning and spiritial truth found in the story.
It is such a good query to ask, "What of me is what I see in another?"
Re: "We have to give up our power to hate in order to experience the power of love." It seems likely that hate will just naturally fall away the more we see others through the eyes of love.
Like the Buddha, today I am going to try to BE about God a little more.
Thank you, Rick, for these wonderful contemplations.
Great post, as usual.
A few weeks ago, I remember experiencing a day where I saw the worst in everyone and everything. Partway through that day, I realized that everyone else around me was *fine*; I needed to look inside myself to figure out where all the negativity was growing! I'm getting better about it, but still not (and likely never will be) perfect.
There's a part of me that doesn't *want* to give up the negativity...that's where some of the best humor is born (d'oh).
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