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15. The Beautiful Doctrines of Buddhism in Asian Developing Countries
The noble spirit of Buddhism is expressed through restraint. Control the bad desires to live morally.
Have a thought, and you get an act. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Own a habit, and you have a character. Sow a character, and you receive a fortune. Buddhist ideology has a certain influence on people’s thinking, such as: One good turn deserves another, a humanity, virtue and benevolent life for merit for grandchildren. Restraint also helps achieve a peaceful mind.
It is expressed through controlling bad habits and leaving only good ones that are valuable to our society.
Another advantage of Buddhism is showing through patience, steadiness or determination. Patience helps people feel the value of success when reaching the destination. Fire proves gold, adversity proves men. Consistence and patience help you not give up and complete your goals. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. More haste, less speed. In addition, meditation is another great method of Buddhism for our fresh mind.
Yielding or making concessions and avoiding are the admirable values of Buddhism. Avoiding negative things, people who harm you. A bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit. Do not kill life of others, what goes around comes around. It is the law of cause and effect of Buddhism. There’s no smoke without fire.
Buddhism eliminates self-esteem, envy and selfishness, upholds humility or modest and selflessness. Limiting ego and thinking for others, is the fine spirit of Buddha.
Buddhism has a saying that life is suffering. Human suffering is caused by too much desires. Therefore, we need to accept the law of birth –aging- sickness — death, know how to control the desire, be satisfied with the present life, avoid the negative aspirations that are difficult to satisfy. Knowing enough is the realization of the high-spirited truth of Buddhism, achieving peace in the soul. Life is suffering, but you only live once.
ALL THESE LOFTY VALUES if you apply them to life and work, will bring you insight and wisdom when necessary.
On the other hand, as well as a coin with two sides, we also need to limit some negative traits of Buddhism: helping people to be satisfied with the present and not to move forward with a can-do spirit, limiting the struggle to find new good and more progressive things, restricting the activeness and creativity, sometimes turning into superstitions, creating a trend of average consumption …
In order to limit these negative impacts, some practical programs can be implemented to preserve and develop the humanistic values of Buddhism, such as transferring the moral values of Buddhism into the temples through social protection activities and services for children and disadvantaged, homeless people and street kids, entering into cooperative economic models with the role and high-mindedness social values of Buddhism; passing on the good of the meditation method to believers to make Buddhism easy to understand, and to reduce some of its confusing content (if any), to organize national and international scientific seminars (Korea, Thai, India, China …) according to practical theme groups … rewarding policies to encourage Buddhists and meaningful programs, assessing and supporting the establishment of funding channels for programs that support the career of Buddhism and Buddhists.
Through the construction of ethics and lifestyles, great ethical and normative values of Buddhism will contribute to the preservation and promotion of social culture.