#resonsibility

Mr. Rodgers Was Usually Correct!

me: *psyching myself out* Oh man,  can’t do this. She will say no. this is the second time this month I’ve asked for money.

me: *prepares three page mental essay on exactly why I need money, how I will spend it and how much i need*

me: second guessing if I really need money

me: “Mom? Um, so I kind need money. I’m so sorry its for-

Mom: Go get it out of my purse.

Me: wait, don’t you need to know how much?

mom: no

Me don’t you need to know what its for?

Mom: I trust you.

‘The potential for realization is universal and present for all of us. True benefit will come from your own efforts and realization. For your efforts to bring benefit, you must take your life into your own hands and examine your mind and experience.

From this point of view, nobody could be kinder to you than yourself. Nobody could have a greater effect on you or actually do more for you than yourself. The Buddha said, “I have shown you the path of liberation. Now liberation depends on you.” This is really true. If you don’t take your life into your own hands, not even the buddhas can make a difference. It’s up to you.

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now”.

This maxim is little bit complex to grasp in the abstract. It, along with its aim--to stimulate a person’s sense of responsibility--is better understood with the following somewhat dated example.

I should like to cite the following instance: Once, the mother of a boy who had died at the age of eleven years was admitted to my hospital department after a suicide attempt. ... At the death of her boy she was left alone with another, older son, who was crippled, suffering from the effects of infantile paralysis. The poor old boy had to be moved around in a wheelchair. His mother, however, rebelled against her fate. But when she tried to commit suicide together with him, it was the crippled son who prevented her from doing so; he liked living! For him, life had remained meaningful. Why was it not so for his mother? And how could we help her to become aware of it?

[In a group discussion with the woman whose boy had died] I asked another woman in the group ... how old she was and she answered, “Thirty”. I replied, “No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your death bed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige”. And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. “What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?” Let me quote what she actually said ...”Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure!”

I then invited the mother to the handicapped son to imagine herself similarly looking back over her life. .... “I wished to have children and this wish has been granted to me; one body died; the other, however, the crippled one, would have been sent to an institution if I had not taken over his care. Though he is crippled and helpless, he is after all my boy. And so I have made a fuller file possible for him; I made a better human being out of my son”. At this moment, there was an outburst of tears and crying, she continued: “As for myself, I can look back peacefully on my life; for I can say my life was full of meaning, and I have tried hard to fulfill it; I have done my best--I have done the best for my son. My life was no failure!” Viewing her life from her death bead, she had suddenly been able to see a meaning in it, a meaning which even included all of her sufferings.

‘Nobody is going to save you from your own mind. Nobody can get into the heart of your experience and fix anything for you. If you want to make your own internal experience more hospitable, only you do that work. others can always support and guide you and spark insights, but ultimately you are your own boss and the agent of understanding your mind and opening your heart.’