Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [94]
The capacity to trust, to believe, and even to surrender to something greater than ourselves is a wonderful quality that we need to cherish. Yet naive, overly credulous seekers can be especially vulnerable to exploitation by charismatic leaders, sometimes even leaders who are unscrupulous charlatans and megalomaniacs advocating inverted values and actions difficult to reconcile with humane ideals. We must regularly remind ourselves that the shadow side is never as far away as we would like to think.
DON’T TAKE WHAT ISN’T FREELY GIVEN; GIVE; TO OTHERS
This teaching is frequently translated with only two words, “Don’t Steal,” thus interpreting the word “steal” in a very literal narrow sense. When we do this, we may fail to see the broader social and psychological implications. The Buddha recognized the many ways that we humans try to take more than is given, thus stealing from each other, day in and day out. Maybe you and I don’t consciously or intentionally steal, but let’s think about this together for a minute. Do we cheat on our taxes? Do we misinform our insurance companies in order to save money? Do we invest in companies that steal? Do we buy products made by companies that steal from the local population, destroy the environment, exploit workers, or violate human rights—robbing adults as well as children of their innocence and freedom, thus causing the world to be a more benighted, unhappy place?
The Buddha warned his followers of the danger of taking too much from the environment and told them not to pollute lakes and streams, not to hoard wealth and resources. Some 2,500 years ago, monks were encouraged to give something back to nature by planting a tree each month. The nobly born Buddha set an example of simplicity for his monastic disciples. He often wore a robe stitched together from different pieces of cast-off clothing, an example still symbolized today by the multipieced yellow monastic robe of the fully ordained monk and nun. He encouraged members of his sangha to have only one change of clothes so they wouldn’t use up more than their share.
That’s the point, isn’t it? Whenever we use up more than our share, we are taking from somebody else. And it’s not always material objects or goods; perhaps we are stealing the center of attention or using up more than our share of time, but the underlying issues, which are very similar, speak to the fundamental core of Buddhist teachings about the defects of clinging and grasping. Gandhi once said, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
To live simply and with purity of heart, without grasping, as the Buddha and almost all spiritual sages have instructed us to do, seems to become more difficult every year. Our grandparents didn’t deposit radioactive wastes underground or in our oceans; they used waxed paper on their sandwiches and brown paper bags in the garbage can rather than mountains of nonbiodegradable plastic and styrofoam. Now every load of wash has some potentially lethal chemical components. What happens to all that chlorinated water?
Think about all our CD players, cameras, TVs, computers, printers, and phones. That’s a lot of excess, particularly when we know that millions of children die every year from malnutrition. Think about all the forests that are being wiped out throughout the world. These natural forests are like a gift, a miracle; they make it possible for us to breathe good air. If they are destroyed, what will happen to future generations—perhaps even this generation? Populous China used up its own vast forests; now it is deforesting previously unspoiled Tibet. The powerful often exploit the weak, with far-reaching results. Isn’t this grasping akin to stealing? If lofty teachings that stress ethics