In this way everyone you meet, even if you do not especially think of it, will be benefited and become happier (or at least less depressive or angry, etc. ) by your mere presence. You can do it.
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(Ethics)
Ethics
Ethics is the highest science. It is the understanding of the spiritual and eternal laws of the universe, and the study of the practical implications for life and society.
The Law of laws is Compassion. Every being has a heart and in that heart he has a feeling that goes out to every other being. It expresses itself in nature in the interconnectedness of helpfulness. You have it and you receive it. Plants produce oxygen and purify the air, give fruits and leaves for others to eat. For humans they have an extra dimension: they teach beauty and respect for nature’s beauty – because they too have Adi’s heart as their essence. Flowers, and many insects, have the power to evoke a feeling that says: ‘Yes, I am sure that God or the divine, or the buddha-nature really exist. Human thoughts, if beautiful and true, have that power even more.’
But only in humans and gods this feeling is self-conscious. In humans and gods it is the actual awareness of the suffering and struggle and ignorance in others. And naturally we all wish to perform our utmost in the great web of helpfulness and kindness. In human beings this particular self-consciousness is only just awakening, but even since the beginning of humankind, everyone has been helpful to others: some grow wheat or rice or barley or cassava, others bake bread, some build houses, others collect or make stones for it. Again others work wood and make furniture. Some cook food for many others, others clean, again others hold administration, some become doctors to cure pain and disease, and others become nurses to support sick and old people and sometimes animals. There are those who become monks to purify their hearts and minds, so that they can become helpful in thinking deeply and can convey spiritual understanding. Again others became priests in thousands of different cultures, with the purpose to maintain and transfer contact between gods or spiritual beings and humans.
If humans become self-consciously compassionate, they can specialize themselves in acquiring the best skills to help. As every good thing in the existing universe necessarily has an opposite – we call it ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ – which is only relative to the good: there exists selfishness, and cruelty: those who deny the network of compassion and altruism, and try to make themselves happy regardless of others.
Another great universal Law is Love. Love is the feeling that very human being and god has in his consciousness for the higher aspect in others. It is a universal feeling that everyone has to a certain extend, and which can extend to every living creature. If one sees the beauty in nature in the mineral, plants and animal kingdom, such as the good qualities in the character of a dog or a camel, or a horse of an elephant, or of human minds, or the clarity of gems, of the sublime wealth of the plant kingdom, and at the same time is aware that he looks at living hearts, that person feels love. One can feel love for a human being who is particularly courageous in something good: a politician, an environmentalist, a philosopher, an artist, a social worker, a friend. By recognizing the good and true and beautiful in beings one develops love, and this can grow in universal love for all beings. The very energy of love, either expressed or silent, helps them to feel strengthened and more self-confident in pursuing the right path. Some say that even a plant feels consciously happy when we admire its flowers or physical beauty. Love is the art of being happy for others, for the successes of others, for their courage and all other high characters, their accomplishments. Love, like compassion, is a state of spirituality, of pure unselfishness.
Of course, love too has its opposite. It is the desire for selfish satisfaction – seeing the beauty in another in relation to a selfish desire. It is the recognition of and desire for some of the material, physical properties, not in the first place the noble properties of others. Strange enough this is often mentioned by the same name. For example we can ‘love’ a person because he has a lot of money – hoping that when we maintain close contact, we will acquire a handsome portion of it. A hunter also ‘loves’ animals. A man ‘loves’ a woman, or a woman a man, out of sexual desire, physical desire, taking the other’s character for granted. The girl then is not interested in anything in the whole world except in her boyfriend, and vice versa. It is the natural, inherent desire in your of his or her body which nature needs to assure procreation and the continued availability of physical bodies for souls and heart to make use of. It is common in all animals and humans. It is an inbuilt instinct, an aspect, a reflection of the great desire which moves nature. And it is the most delightful and strongest feelings they can have. It is so all important that all beautiful things in plants and animals are serving that feeling: colorful feathers, flowers, smells, butterflies’ wings. However beautiful it is, the drive is self-satisfaction, reaching an orgasm, the ultimate contact is an interchange of feeling with another being. In fact ‘love’ is not the right word for it. It is rather passion. Passion is a separate thing, and can co-exist with true love, like in a good marriage. Because genuine love is a fine feeling for others, without expecting anything back – the feeling of love in itself is worth more than any reward. It is therefore that gods do no longer experience the passionate possessive or physical ‘love’, nor do the noblest of people, and even for humanity in general it is only a phase in evolution which will be abandoned in its physical aspect in the future.
Another beautiful instinct or passion we find in animals and humans, which reflects universal love strongly, is the mother instinct, the lovely feeling of care for one’s own children, and the little smiles and cooing she gets back, and the wish of seeing one’s child happy and developing. It is an inbuilt feeling that mothers experience and is so good; but it not a self-conscious universal love, because that would be equal for all children. On another level, fatherly love, which is more rational and in the first place directed to the mental development of his progeny. If it is not the father’s pride which motivates the feeling, it may be an aspect of genuine love – more than an instinct. Of course fathers have ‘motherly’ feelings also, and human mothers have ‘fatherly’ feelings and love also. Men and women are not so very different or not different at all, apart from their gender related organs and psychologies.
Ethics is the direct energy which flows forth from universal understanding – it is the application of spiritual wisdom. The ‘universal laws’ have been made by no one. They are always true in the universe, in the past, now and in the future, and wherever in space. Therefore these ‘laws’ or universal ways in which the universe works could only be recognized and understood fully by divine beings, gods, and increasingly by their pupils. Normal human intelligence as we have it now is not enough to fully appreciate these ways in which the cosmos works. It is an ever deepening understanding. The human scientific mind has discovered some ‘by-laws’, valid in the realm of physical matter. For example gravity, electricity and some other forces, entropy (which is not correct from a spiritual point of view), the apparent duality of wave and particle, and, strange enough, selfishness as the basis of nature’s workings and evolution – just the opposite of the spiritual teachings. Such ‘laws’ or ‘findings’ or ‘mental constructions’ are only temporary products of particular cultures in particular times – our own dominating culture serving as an example. No doubt people will have forgotten about such ‘laws’ after a few centuries, once it has been clearly established in the human mind that physical matter is no more that the outermost garment of the universe, and that there are many other forms of matter which are not physical. The ethical consequences of such would-be understandings is dire: We should all be selfish and greedy and competitive in material matters to cooperate with nature: and we should create chaos and destruction rather than order, if we want to apply thermodynamics ethically.
