A Simple and Pristine Lifestyle, Part III

This is the third translation installment of the Chinese article entitled A Simple Life Is A Beautiful One, by Venerable Hung I that appeared in the May 2007 (#153) issue of Dharma Garden. Parts I and II can be viewed here and here.

B) A simple and pristine inter-personal ethos

Unless we lead the life of a recluse, we will always interact with people and handle inter-personal matters. I believe we all wish for as simple a human relationship as possible but contrary to our expectations, we usually struggle to live and work in a complicated environment, finding ourselves ill at ease and things going against our will.

On reflection, are we truly behaving simply to begin with? Probably not. We too are guilty of complicating matters, bringing chagrin upon people around us. Often I rationalize that a person that has no malevolent streak in him would likely not hurt others purposely. Maybe our actions at hurting are just manifestations of habits, without ill-intent. Here by habits I mean a natural response that follows from our thoughts, our feelings, our preferences and personal likes and dislikes, without inhibition. Our typical response is often predicated on our reasoning, that we are properly motivated; however, it often spawns discomfiture and worry in others.

How do we foster a simple attitude toward others? I feel that firstly, we must not change ourselves on account of others' mood swings. Secondly, we must abide by our principles of engaging others, regardless of whether the response from others is friendly or otherwise. We need to uphold these principles at all times.

In this regard, we need to come up with some methodology of addressing inter-personal matters. As the saying goes, each of us looks different, so is our mind thinking differently. Some people are rational, some aren’t; some people choose their words, some don’t; some people are affable, some are downright arrogant. Regardless of whom we meet, the best approach is to attempt to understand the truth, and then to adopt that which is meritorious and discard that which is unwholesome. Discarding here implies letting go of our dissatisfaction and sense of outrage, but not giving up on others. Then we have to ask ourselves whether we would like to continue to network and cultivate positive relations with others. If the answer is affirmative, then we need to nurture compassion and forbearance, and continue establishing good contacts with others. Once we are able to understand the likely changes of inter-personal relation to some extent and prepare ourselves accordingly, we will become steady and forthright. Similarly, when we are sure of our principles of engaging others, we will be focused, marching forward with an even keel, and not lose our purpose in life due to complications in inter-personal matters.

Stay tuned for the fourth and last installment of the translation on a simple and pristine Buddhist practice, followed by conclusions.