As you leave home for work, reflect on the meaning of your life— your universal responsibility to bring happiness to all sentient beings. If possible, generate bodhicitta consciously, by thinking, ‘‘In order to bring happiness to all sentient beings, I must achieve enlightenment, therefore, as a service to all beings, I am going to do my job.’’
If, for example, you’re a secretary, think as you do your job that you are fulfilling others’ wishes for happiness, that you are offering them happiness. If you are building a house, think that you are offering its future inhabitants, even the pets, the happiness of enjoying shelter, protection from the elements, heat and cold; helping them to have a long life. If you’re a hairdresser, think that you are offering your clients the happiness of having the beautiful hair they want.
Whatever work you do, you can think in the same way. If you’re a comedian, singer or musician, think that you are offering others the happiness of enjoying your performance, distracting them from sadness, depression or perhaps even anger. Also, it is not enough simply to motivate with bodhicitta at the beginning of an action. As time passes, you have to check again and again to make sure that you are still working for others and not for your ego. If you find that you are motivated by the desire for your own happiness, you have to transform this negative attitude into bodhicitta again by remembering the kindness of other sentient beings, thinking, ‘‘I have received all my past, present and future happiness from other sentient beings; there is nothing more precious than them. The only thing to do in life is to work for their happiness; to do anything else is meaningless, empty. Even Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, my holy objects of refuge and prayer, come from sentient beings—how could anything be kinder or more precious than others?’’ Thus, every hour that you work with this attitude—feeling that others are extremely precious and wanting to benefit them in the highest way—becomes Dharma, the true cause of happiness, the cause of enlightenment.
Also, from time to time, rejoice. Fill your heart with happiness by thinking, ‘‘How fortunate I am that I can serve others completely, that I can offer them much happiness, that they can use me for their happiness.’’ Taking care of your child with bodhicitta
If you have clinging attachment for your child, everything you do to take care of him or her becomes the cause of samsara. Instead, think, ‘‘I am taking care of somebody who is the source of all my past, present and future happiness, all comfort and enjoyment, including the supreme happiness of enlightenment. Therefore, this child is a very precious person in my life, one of the numberless kind mother sentient beings. Moreover, this being’s mind is obscured, under the control of delusion and karma and experiencing samsaric suffering, and completely dependent upon my help. Therefore, I am responsible to take care. Just as my own temporal and ultimate happiness depend on me, so do my child’s.’’ This is the attitude with which you should take care of your children. From time to time, rejoice: ‘‘How wonderful it is. The purpose of my life is to serve all sentient beings, and here I have an opportunity to serve at least one of them completely. I am so fortunate that my body, speech and mind can be useful in bringing happiness to at least one sentient being.’’
This is how to make taking care of your children into a sincere Dharma practice. This way, even if you don’t have time to do formal practice or retreat, you will never feel regret that you have completely wasted your life.
Otherwise, your reason for having children is the same as that for keeping a pet—your own comfort. The ordinary attitude is selfish pursuit of enjoyment for yourself alone, obsessively thinking, ‘‘This is my child; this child is mine,’’ as if your children existed simply for your own use. You are motivated by clinging to the object and cherishing your I.
The most important education that you can give children is in ethics and the development of a good heart. Without this, they will have suffering lives, becoming, for example, unkind, violent, and disobedient, not only to others but also to the kind parents who provided them with a precious human body and took care of them in many other ways. Such children will have neither love nor compassion for others, and may even regard their parents as their worst enemy. Additionally, they can be easily influenced by wrong views and taught that these views are reality, for example, that their parents are responsible for all their problems. As a result, they can grow up hating their parents and regarding them as enemies. Because of their uncontrolled minds, such children’s lives may fill with crime, relationship problems and depression, and instead of finding peace, satisfaction and fulfillment, they just feel that their lives are utterly without meaning.
The best way to be healthy and to avoid all sickness, even AIDS, is to have a good heart and pure ethics. This is also the best way to protect your life and live long. It enables sons and daughters to live in harmony with the rest of their family, especially their parents, and to be kind, loving and compassionate to all other people as well. At the very least, it reduces the suffering of relationships. Actually, whatever torture people experience is not inflicted by somebody else. It is caused by the person’s own concepts of hatred, jealousy, dissatisfied desire and, especially, ignorance, the foundation of it all.
Ethics and a good heart make life much simpler, less complicated. If children are educated in this way, their lives will be peaceful, their hearts will be fulfilled and their deaths will be happy and controlled. Ethics prevent you from harming others, while a good heart makes you benefit them.
It is the responsibility of teachers and parents to give children this most important education of all. Moreover, parents and teachers themselves have to serve as both example and inspiration. Of course, they are limited in what they can do for a child by that child’s individual karma. Therefore, everything that they wish for that child may not happen; the children themselves also have to make an effort. Nevertheless, parents and teachers are extremely important influences, and there is responsibility on both sides. If children grow up with ethics and a good heart, they will not give harm to others, and as a result, others will love, support and not harm them.
Therefore, the way in which parents and teachers educate and influence children determines how much they harm or bring happiness to many other living beings. Your child can destroy the world or bring it peace and joy. And, of course, the way you bring up your children influences how they bring up their own.