For each of us, you’ve got to be very quiet to hear your unique dharma, your unique way of expression.
Somebody comes along and their major thing in life is to regain the rights of indigenous peoples.
Someone else comes along and their major thing is to awaken people to environmental degradation.
Someone else comes along and their major thing is to clean up the incredible oppression of women.
It isn’t a question of which thing is worse, or which is more worthwhile. Each person has to hear what is their part in the whole process of how their compassion expresses itself.
I am doing this gig. This is my part. It’s no better than your part, it’s just my part. I’m not under some illusion that I have a different part and I honor everybody else’s part, I just have to constantly keep listening to hear what my part is anew.
There is no rule book about this.
We are all on the edge of having to listen freshly all the time. When your children are little you hear the Dharma one way, and as they grow you hear it another way, because you listen freshly. The plane at which all the dualities exist is relativity real, and the plane in which they don’t exist is relatively real, and that’s equally relatively real, so you can milk it any way you want to… We all need a gig.
-Ram Dass
Photo via Flickr