Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva and Earth-Holding Bodhisattva

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes healthy, energetic bodhisattvas, like Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva and Earth-Holding Bodhisattva, wear ragged clothes. Earth-Holding devotes himself to rebuilding roads and bridges in order to restore communication and contact. In today’s world, there are countless broken bridges and innumerable Earth-Holdings devoting their bodies and minds to rebuilding bridges of communication and understanding among individuals, nations, and cultures. Wherever Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva goes, he offers words of encouragement: 

“You have the strength to go forward. 

Believe in yourself. 

Don’t succumb to low self-esteem or passivity. 

You will become a Buddha.”

His message is one of confidence and self-determination. I think about the peasants in the countryside of all the poor countries of the world. Do they have someone to encourage them to believe in their own abilities so they can build a future that they, as much as anyone else, have a right to? Our world needs millions more bodhisattvas like Never Disparaging.

Excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh's book "Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals, 1962-1966

“You have the strength to go forward. Believe in yourself. Don’t succumb to low self-esteem or passivity. You will become a Buddha.”

~Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva~

Selfless & Deserving

By Pamela J. Wells
Published: January 29, 2012

There is your true nature and there is your false self (your ego). When I say selfless, I mean egoless. Your true nature is interconnected to everyone and everything. It is absent the ego, absent the identification with the body-mind, which creates an illusory appearance of a separate self. When I say deserving, I mean deserving a great life that you create. It does not mean demanding others give you what you deserve. It has nothing to do with anything external to you. You create a great life, which can only be achieved when you remove all of the obstacles that you have put before you, that hide your true nature of joy and peace, which has no feelings of lack.

It is possible to be both selfless and deserving. How can you be selfless and deserving at the same time? Being selfless is about listening and giving unconditionally, not thinking, “What’s in it for me?”

READ MORE

Copyright © 2012 Pamela J. Wells. All Rights Reserved

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.