Honor Others. . .

The Buddha always taught and encouraged us to embrace others and hold them in high esteem – “Whenever I come into anyone’s company, may I regard my needs as less than everyone else, and, from the depths of my heart, value others in this moment more highly than I do my own needs.” – The Buddha. There are two ways of understanding and interpreting or translating this verse. First, when we think of the advantages of helping or cherishing others, as opposed to the disadvantages of only thinking of and cherishing ourselves, then we will naturally think less about our own happiness. We will also value and cherish others more highly. The other way of understanding this is through translating the line as, Whenever I come into anyone’s company, may I regard myself as the guest of all, and, from the depth of my heart, value others needs in this moment as higher than my own. If we take this very literally, in a Western psychological context it could seem to be just reinforcing low self-esteem; but that’s not what is intended here. What is meant by the verse is the developing humility and overcoming arrogance. When we are with others, if we are only thinking of and cherishing ourselves, then of course we just consider our own point of view: “What would be of benefit to me? What do I want?” We tend to talk just about ourselves, for example, and think only of our own comfort. This of course leads to all sorts of problems and suffering. “I wanted it to be like this and then it didn’t work out like I wanted.” We get all upset because the other person wanted something else, and so on. However, if we cherish others and think of them as being more important than ourselves in this respect, then we don’t get so upset. Of course, we need to have a balance between taking care of our own and others’ needs. But, as His Holiness always points out, if we think in terms of numbers, then certainly others are almost infinite in number and we’re only one. If we look to see what would be fair, then obviously working for others is far more important than just working for our own selfish aims. Remember, we inevitably go from a higher positions to a lower positions, and back again. We need to bring to mind the teachings on death and impermanence. These teachings help us to overcome our pride and arrogance – which are very often behind self-cherishing – allowing us to have the humility to be able to serve the world.