perfectbite

Who gives, his virtues shall increase.
Who is self-curbed, no hatred bears.
Whoso is skilled in virtue, evil shuns
and by the rooting out of lust and hate,
and all delusion, comes to be at peace.

Digha Nikaya, 16

Chili

Sounds like the Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Peace

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is dispair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and there there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Philippe*

Realizing it implies a process of resolution of our knots in the consciousness, to resolve and dissipate the samskaras (tendencies in our consciousness) feeding the functionment on an ego mode. Our sensitivity increases bit by bit with the feeling of a massive force "behind" as if there was a part of us who was a silent witnesser in this phenomenal world and we realize how we are interdependant with our environment. It is not always a peaceful process since we have to realize our own mud and chaos to clear it. It is not an analytic mental process and every event of life becomes an opportunity to work towards more clarity, serenity and bliss.

Philippe

P.S. : Chili, very nice prayer. It has been a daily one for me for months. Saint Francis was indeed one of those catholic saint I thought of yesterday in a previous post.

Chili

It shows Philippe! It shows.

This "force behind" creates perplexity and makes us wonder who we really are. From there only an honest and sincere person can procede.

mksmothers

How?

Chili

Because the major premis is always based on an opinion. After this we supply the minor premis and take credit for the conclusion as if the entire creation was one of our own (ie. we did it all by our self). This would be called a 1st order enthymeme wherein full credit is given to the scientist, let say, but this same is true for every learning experience as well, according to Plato's theory of recollecting -- but that may not be what you would like to know.

The point here is that there is 'two of us' in everything we do, wherein our subconscious mind works from behind the scene and we are our conscious mind performing the task at hand and will always take full credit for our achievements . . . until, finally, and in all honesty, we recognize a superior force, as Philippe put it, working on the same project with us (of course it helps if we are achievers or have a courageous nature and dive headfirst into the project and hope for the best --this would come later with at least some experience).

What Philippe is doing here is trying to zero in on the supplier of the major premiss who really is the originator of our [life] story in supplying the major premiss for everything we do, everything we have learned and everthing we have come to know as our own (and it doesn't matter here if Buddhists belive in our soul or not because that is where our intution originates from in our mythology).

In Catholicism you may find some prayers to Mary in this genre since she is our seat of wisdom and therefore all we have and that we are, etc.

Sorry I forgot the punch line.

The supplier of this major premise (with whom we now admit we are co-creator), is our true nature (or Buddha mind, or mind of Christ) that we are trying to get to know better and thus also will understand ourself better = who am I? It brings peace of mind, naturally, and may or may not end in a full blown vision wherein we find favor with God as his beloved son.

lenrek

I prefer this prayer:

From: http://www.budsas.org/ebud/whatbudbeliev/198.htm

Chili

I fully agree and see that as an anti protestant prayer who are constantly telling God what to do as if he is doing it wrong.

We have repetitious prayer to evoke contemplation (the beads) and Latin to avoid literalism (mass).

Dharma

er, yeah Chilli, you really ought to look more into the Buddhist influence on Christianity.

perfectbite

I see the Buddhist 'prayer' as courageously independent (no mention of a divine presence, such would be an insult both to the divine and to human understanding) and the Prayer of Saint Francis, benign as it is, as eminently dependent, possibly claiming an untoward familiarity with the divine. There is no 'Please help me to be .. ' or even 'Please allow me to be ... ' but a 'demand' that 'I be made into ... ' On the whole, as I said, benign as it is, there is a lot of 'I' and 'me' ego involved with that prayer and very little of 'Thy will be done.'

Buddhism is a rubber crutch that forces us onto our own two feet.