"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" - an interesting Orkut fortune and I thought I'll make it a little boring.On one hand if you think Buddha preached renunciation, on the other hand you can argue that Buddha himself wanted people to not have wants. Charles Darwin could tell that adaptation is the cause of the origin of new species, but Bernard Shaw would say that all progress depends on the unreasonable man who adapts the world to him and not on the reasonable man who adapts himself to the world.
Here is my take. I can surely say that the worst of my growths have happened when I egotistically convinced myself that I was right and that the best of my growths have happened when I listened to people who told me I was wrong. An unemotional example would be the way I walk. In school, I used to have a funny stoop in my gait until people pointed it out to me; It took me two years to correct it. I no longer walk the same way, so am I no longer the same person? I would say "No, I'm still the same person who walks better."
Was Buddha selfish? I don't think so!
looks like most ppl with funny gait are those who egotistically convinced that they were walking fine :P and then reached a stage where they can no longer change their gait :)
ReplyDeleteBuddha taught what he learnt with his hands open, without holding back anything, and left it to people to follow. Buddha was not selfish - Ayya Khema
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