Tucked in the pocket of my three-ring binder journal has been a piece Dad handwrote around 1960. It is titled “Returning Good for Evil.” I don’t know from where he took the piece but it was clearly important to him.
Dad had written:
A foolish man, learning that the Buddha observed the principle of great love which commands the return of good for evil, came and abused him. The Buddha was silent, pitying the man’s folly.
When the man had finished his abuse, the Buddha asked him, saying “Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?” And the man answered, “in that case, it would belong to the man who offered it.”
“’My son,” said the Buddha. “If I decline to accept thy abuse and request thee to keep it to thyself, will it not be a source of misery to thee? A wicked man who reproaches a virtuous one is like one who looks up and spits at heaven. The spit soils not the heavens but comes back and defiles his own person.”
The abuser went away ashamed but he came back and took refuge in the Buddha.
I am not sure whether or not Dad ever developed a sermon from this. But he could have done.
If the news is to be believed, the world in 2019 has lots of people hurling abuse at others, across political, societal, and ethnic lines. There being few Buddhas, the abuse seems accepted and returned in kind. That’s a lot of spitting going on even if it is not always aimed at virtuous ones.
The popular novelist, Jonathan Kellerman wrote, “Life is like a prism. What you see depends upon how you turn the glass.”
The editor of the Christian Science Monitor recalled last month a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that became the words to a popular Christmas song, “Christmas Bells.” The last two stanzas are:
“And in despair I bound my head,
There is no peace on earth, I said.
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
God is not dead nor does he sleep.
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
People of a Certain Age, do we really believe “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail” and that “good will to men” is still possible?
I do.
These are a few of the things that shape my prism on the matter.
- Across the country, there are people solving problems in their own communities, ignoring political party labels, class, racial, and even immigration distinctions to collaborate for the good of the community. You cannot read the Fallows’ book, Our Towns, and be unmoved.
- Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Haifa, Israel have figured out a way (according to a recent Monitor article) to live together peacefully, for the benefit of all, without letting religious differences impede cooperation.
- Our local newspaper gave over 50% of its editorial page on the Sunday before Christmas to print a few of the many pieces submitted by readers describing simple acts of kindness, which Dad believed to be a most powerful force in life.
- Hawaii Revised Statue 5-7.5(b) codifies the Aloha Spirit. It is “the coordination of mind and heart within each person. It brings each person to the self. Each person must think and emote good feelings to others.” The statue expects people to show kindness, harmony, pleasantness, humility, and patience.
- The club of billionaires pledged to divest themselves of at least 50% of their wealth to the benefit of others grows. They have Andrew Carnegie, who gifted American cities thousands of public libraries, as a role model.
- Jenova Chen has developed a phone-app-based game about “spreading light” in which generosity and compassion are keys to finding the right path. (Again, from the Monitor)
- Research has established that most people would rather be happy than sad. (Or it should have done.) Being kind to another person creates happiness for two.
Hope is the base of my prism. My niece, Hope, sent around the following reflection on hope by Victoria Safford:
Hope is the Place Where Joy Meets Struggle.
“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope—not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense: not the strident gates of self-righteousness which creak on shrill and angry hinges; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of ‘Everything is going to be all right,’ but a very different, somewhat lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the places of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be, the place from which you glimpse not only struggle but joy in the struggle, and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.”
Telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see; no abuse being hurled, no spitting at the sky. There are signs everywhere that people are finding refuge, observing the principle of great love, trying to replace evil with good, acting like the wrong shall fail.
It all depends upon how you turn the glass.
Happy New Year!
Daniel E. White
January 7, 2019
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