Buddhists understand that you can hardly help another before you help yourself. But this isn’t referring to you gaining power or riches before you can help others, or living in a way that you ignore others.
This is mostly referring to the fact that because we’re all interconnected, by you helping yourself you create an exponentially positive effect on the rest of the world.
If you want to make an impact on the world, don’t falsely convince yourself that it’s “you or them”. You don’t need to drag yourself through the mud to help those around you. If you do this, you’ll greatly hamper your ability to create a positive impact.
At the deepest level of understanding, by making it about you you’re also making it about them because you know there’s no separating “you” and “them”.
Take care of yourself and seek to be more than just a help, but an example of how to live for others to follow and you’ll create waves of exponential possibility that inspires others to do the same.
Embrace death
Death is an often taboo topic in Western society. We do everything we can to not only avoid the subject, but pretend that it doesn’t even exist.
The reality is, this is really unfortunate and in no way helps us lead better lives. Becoming keenly aware of your own impermanence and deeply understanding the nature of death with regards to our interconnectedness are both things which can help us find great peace.
In Buddhism, students in many sects at one point or another “meditate on the corpse” as it were (a practice which is said to have originated at least as far back as the Buddha’s lifetime).
This is literally what it sounds like. They meditate on the image of a corpse slowing decomposing and imagine that process through to its end, eventually resulting in a deep and profound realization on the true nature of death.
That might sound a little intense to you, but the truth is, if you live you’re entire life acting as if you’re never going to die or ignoring your own impermanence then you won’t ever be able to find true peace within yourself.
You don’t necessarily have to meditate on the image of a corpse, but simply opening up to yourself about death so that you’re no longer shielding it from your mind (which you’re likely doing unconsciously, as that’s how most of us were brought up in the West) can begin to be a great source of peace and help you appreciate the many joys in your everyday life.
A true appreciation for life can never be fully realized until you come face-to-face with your own impermanence. But once you do this, the world opens up in a new and profound way.
Your food is (very) special
Meditative practice offers the ability to transform every experience in your everyday life, which I discuss in my forthcoming book Zen for Everyday Life, and food is one of those everyday experiences which is greatly transformed and often in very interesting and rewarding ways.
Buddhist meditative practice, particularly mindfulness and contemplation, helps you realize the precious nature of the food in front of you. Indeed, with how integral a part food plays in our lives,to transform our relationship with food is to transform a key aspect of our entire lives, both now and in the future.
By contemplating on the food in front of us, for example, we can come to realize the vast system of interconnectedness that is our life, and how our food coming to be on our dinner plate as it is depended on numerous elements coming to be.
This helps us to deepen our relationship with food, cultivate a deep sense of gratitude before each meal, and learn to respect the delicate but ever-pressing balance that is life.
Understand the nature of giving
Giving is more than the act of giving Christmas and Birthday gifts, it’s also about those gifts which we give each and every day which we don’t typically see as gifts at all.
Buddhists hold a very deep understanding of the nature of giving, particularly in that life is a constant play between the act of giving and receiving. This doesn’t just help us find peace in understanding the way of the world around us, but helps us realize the amazing gifts we all have within us that we can give others in every moment, such as our love, compassion, and presence.
Work to disarm the ego
The easiest way to sum up all “spiritual” practice is this: spirituality is the act of coming in touch with the ultimate reality or the ground of being, and as a result spiritual practice is the act of overcoming those obstacles which keep us from realizing that.
The primary obstacle in our way? The ego.
To put it short and sweet, the reason the ego is the major obstacle in spiritual practice, or simply the practice of finding true peace and happiness (whatever you choose to call it, it’s all the same), is because it’s very function is to pull you away from the ground of your being by convincing you that you’re this separate self.
The process of unraveling the ego can take time, as it’s something which has been with us, intertwined with us, for years. But it’s infinitely rewarding and altogether necessary if we want to realize our best life.
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