Poison to Medicine. . .
We all want to be happy. Whether we are conscious of it or not, almost everything we do is motivated by that desire. Yet, despite our best efforts and intentions, our actions and the ways in which we respond to situations can end up having the opposite effect.
From a Buddhist perspective, it is the negative tendencies within our lives, such as egotism, greed and cowardice, which are the root of the problem. These distort our ability to clearly perceive our reality, causing us to respond to our environment and circumstances in ways that compromise our own happiness and lead us to become entrenched in negative patterns of behavior.
When we are rooted in a sense of the expansiveness of our lives, we can face our circumstances squarely with confidence and an embracing spirit. This unleashes innate qualities of courage, wisdom and compassion, enabling us to steer the situation toward a more positive outcome. Wisdom enables us to choose the kinds of responses and courses of action that will lead to positive change, while courage gives us the ability to confront situations and persevere until we create a breakthrough. Compassion expands and deepens our motivation by making us aware of the suffering of others, including those involved with us in a challenging situation.
We each can turn any situation no matter how bad on the surface into a learning experience and grow from it – As The Buddha stated “turning poison into medicine.”
In the context of our daily lives, the process of changing poison into medicine begins when we face difficulties with the confidence that we have within us the full resources to overcome them. Problems are problems precisely because we doubt our ability to surmount them, but when we confront challenging circumstances with faith in the unlimited potential of our innate Buddha nature, we change our life state and transform our deluded responses into amazing actions.
Peace and Love, Jim
#medicine #thedailybuddha
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