Don't React Negatively to Others Who Mocks Us

Every religion praises their respective God everyday. Same for Buddhists. We chant, "O - The Blessed One, the Supremely Enlighted One, Leader of Gods and Men, Arahant, etc etc". There is always this tendency to defend our religions at the expense of others. We think that it is our duty to do so, otherwise we will be punish to hell later when we die. Many times we have seen crime being committed in the name of defending the sanctity of our respective God. The fact that others are kidnapped, killed, stabbed, or whatever does not matter to us. We feel threatened when we see other religions start spreading their "gospel" or some of our members got converted. Sometimes we feel we need to amend the laws of the nation to protect our own religions, at the expense of others. But all these crime and hate cannot be accepted, even if it was to protect our own.

 

What believers do, it actually reflects upon his or her God. Buddha is only as enlightened as our Buddhists' actions, speech and thinking. If we commit killing or hurt others, even though we do it for the sake of our religion, in actual fact we are belittling our own religion. We will be making a mockery of our own religion. Due to our silly, impulsive and emotional actions, we will make our religion seems like it never teaches us the way of patience, tolerance and wisdom. What wisdom? The wisdom to forgive those who mocks us. The wisdom to guide those immature people who makes fun of our religion. The wisdom to provide the true picture of our religion to those who cannot yet see it. But only to make them understand and not to convert them. I truly believe that only when our actions are virtuous and holy, are we truly praising our Lord. This is something many don't understand. They don't get it. So people get into conflicts over religions. If people want to burn in hell, there is not much we can do. So why try to convert others so much? Give them time to believe what they want and if our Lord is that great, he will know what to do. We don't have to decide for Him and take the law into our own hands. People are not as compassionate as they think they are. The moment someone says something against what they want to hear, they easily get agitated and angry. Then they feel they want to take revenge. This "revenge and punish 'em" attitude is very bad and shows that we never practice our own religions properly.We should not react negatively to others who ridicule us. Have patience. Instead of anger, show them mercy and compassion. Instead of urging the authorities to put them in jail, try instead to put them into good institutions under the guidance of proper mentors or counselling where perhaps they can learn something about citizenship, nation building and harmony. Try instead to turn them into good model people. You try to push them more, the more they will hate you. So that is not the way to transform people. If we want to be saints and bodhisattvas, we need to have the wisdom in knowing how to guide stubborn, immature persons into good, positive persons. Only if that does not work out, maybe you need to be a little bit hard on them. Just a little. If that still does not work out, then a little harder. In this way, we give chance for people to transform themselves into better persons. We should not straight away punish people very harshly without first trying the soft way (of changing their wrong attitudes).

 

So what I suggest above, may it serve to truely praise The Lord, if what I say is true! May the Buddha continue to turn the wheel of dharma! So, to those radical Buddhists in Myanmar, Sri Lanka or elsewhere, I pray that they think it over before they do anything negative against others. Same for the other way around. We try to live in harmony with all kinds of sentient beings! May there be peace!