Friday, July 21, 2023

I thought I would try to list some of the qualities an "Enlightened person" has

Compassion: Compassion for oneself and all other beings in the universe is the single most important quality an enlightened person has.

Practicality: This may or may not be the 2nd most important quality but without it no one survives very long unless someone else is taking care of them financially and physically.

Pragmatism: Pragmatism is a lot like practicality and could almost be a part of practicality. From my personal point of view Pragmatism is doing whatever one can to survive and to help all others survive too if possible.

Right mindfulness: An Enlightened person is right mindful. What does this mean? It means that one is very careful what one says and does for oneself and all other beings. It is a part of being a parent or grandparent or both to all living things in the universe. Right mindfulness might mean something different to each enlightened person depending upon what culture they grew up in and what culture they are living in now.

Kindness: One could say that kindness is a part of compassion for all life in the universe and one would be right to say this. However, each of us might have a different definition somewhat of what kindness is.

However, if one is not first kind to oneself one cannot really be kind to others too. So, forgiving oneself as a key to forgiving all others is one of the first steps to enlightenment.

Understanding: When I found the 8 fold path of the Buddha I found it very useful to me personally because seeing that all people basically suffer with the same basic maladies like trauma of birth, trauma of death, trauma of illness. It is much easier to forgive others if we see that all of us are suffering with the same things. We are not alone in our suffering, we are together in our suffering. we all suffer together the difficulties of trying to stay alive here on planet earth. This feeling of togetherness in our suffering helps us to have compassion and kindness not only for ourselves but for all beings throughout the universe also suffering wherever they are too with trying to survive in a body somewhere in the universe.

By God's Grace

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