Treat people as if they matter

There's a story that comes from a monastery. There's a monastery that's in decline and the abbot of the monastery has just seen the monastery reducing, the number of monks reducing, deteriorating. Uh and he's really concerned with the future of the monastery. And a local guru comes by and the abbot of the monastery asks, "I need your help. The monastery is in decline, the community's reducing, we've stopped being excellent in studies, we're losing something here. " And he asked the guru "What what can they do? " And the guru says, "Don't you realize the Buddha is already here, but he's hiding. " And the abbot of the monastery starts to think, "What who is the Buddha? Which of the people here, which of the monks? " And the guru told him he's in hiding. So the abbot starts to think that maybe it's some of the least engaged monks that could be the Buddha in hiding. And instead of treating them as he had treated them up to that moment of almost ignoring them because they weren't important, he started to think, "Well, maybe that's the Buddha. " He treated everyone as if they could possibly be the Buddha in disguise. He treated the cleaning people as if they could be the Buddha hiding out in the monastery. He treated everyone who came near the monastery as if it could be the Buddha in disguise. And very quickly the community started to grow again. The travelers, the pilgrims started to come back to visit the monastery. And the community became a thriving monastery again. And this story of if you wait for the world to change or do you change the way you engage with the world. There's an idea that you know, a lot of people are treating the world as if it's a fire and the person is saying to the fire, "Fire, I need you to give me more heat. Fire, why don't you give me more heat? " And the only way you can get a fire to give you more heat is to go get a log, put it on the fire, and when you give to the fire, the fire returns the heat to you. And I think these two stories go to we're often waiting for others to respond the way that we expect that they should. And very often the greatest way of changing your life is just beginning to show up and treat others as if they were the Buddha in disguise, as if by giving you trust that the universe will give back. And uh you know, I've just finished a class here at the SA and had a conversation with a group of the professors about what it feels like when you come to the end of a program, when you finish and people head out into the world. And it's with a great sense of believing that everything we've given, these people are going to go out and put it into practice in their families, in their lives, in their companies, in their communities, and it will all make sense. But uh the reflection now, don't wait for the world to give you heat first, put the log. Don't wait for your friends to be good friends. There's a beautiful saying, "The best way to have a friend is to be one. " The one. And that's, you know, maybe there's someone that you're waiting for them to come back to you. Well, reach out. Maybe there's someone that you feel that you've given more than them. Well, give that extra bit. Uh it's by giving into the world and giving without expectation that there's something guaranteed to come back that the world's magic really works. So on that note, Saturday afternoon here at the SA, have a good one. Thank you for your likes, your comments, your shares. Uh motivates me to pull out this camera, think about what I've been living through, what I'm reading, what I'm hearing from people around me. Uh but this idea of an attitude of generosity towards the world. Have a good one.