The Wisdom of Compassion

I started out in life as a mystical Christian. Though I can say I still am a mystical Christian,  God has seen fit to show me much more than I started out knowing. As I grew up I saw, "God is where you find him, her, the Being". I also saw that "If an ant is your Guru Feed him". All these are incredibly useful and powerful ways at looking at all life. And whenever possible, "See no Man after the flesh", which to me means seeing God in everyone. As I reached 32 I realized, "The path of compassion is the most powerful and useful one for me". This likely is true for all mankind if they have common sense and are logical in their processing and reasoning.

My wife bought me a book with the Dalai Lama on the fronts piece and about him and showed it to me today. It is "The Wisdom of Compassion" by Victor Chan. I opened the book and was immediately impressed. You will see why: Begin quote from the preface xi 'What the Dalai Lama knows for sure':
Every morning for more than half a century, the Dalai Lama has woken up at three-thirty a.m. After a quick shower (he is not one to use excess water by taking a bath), he settles down into a well-ordered routine of prayers and meditations that last for five hours. He uses some of this time to "shape his motivation" for the rest of the day. He is grateful that he is alive, and he sees each moment as a precious opportunity to open his heart and to do everything within his power to be of service to others. And he reminds himself that he will hold only kind thoughts to all."

end quote from xi in the preface of the book.

If this isn't impressive I don't know what is. Though I likely wouldn't do this because I often don't even go to bed until 1 or 2 am because I can't always go to sleep on cue I still am very impressed by this regime. I especially see the usefulness of "shaping one's motivation". This saves health (personal and others) and saves lives by "shaping one's motivation". It is all in how one perceives reality in the end whether we make good choices and live or make bad choices and die young in our teens and 20s like many you and I have met or known over the years. Watching people make bad choices in movies might be entertaining but in real life people often don't survive bad choices. This is just the way it really is.

So, learning to make good choices not only for yourself but also for every life form around you changes everything forever in your lives and their lives.