🌀

i think we can learn a great deal from the story of the Buddha.

here is this Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, raised up in wealth & privilege, isolation from the pains of the world. when he sees suffering – a sick person, an aging person, a deceased person, & then sees a wondering ascetic who appears at peace, the prince is so deeply affected & moved that rather than running back to his comfortable, privileged life, he abandons all the comforts, status, & wealth to seek out the source of suffering. then when he wakes up to what suffering is, he spends the rest of his life, trying to teach people the truth that he encountered so that they too, may be free from suffering. this renunciation of wealth & comfort, offering oneself completely in service to compassion, seems so foreign to the ultra wealthy we see in power today. 

can you imagine it?

his is not the ideology of oligarchy or kleptocracy, of over consumption, hyper-capitalism & greed. his is not the perspective that empathy is something to distain or a weakness.

may we, like the Buddha, find our way to a life in service to compassion, rather than a life that values or even looks up to the hoarding of wealth & power, which won’t last anyway. death will come & as the saying goes – you can’t take it with you.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏼

#Buddha #empathy #compassion #OpenHeart #renunciation #service #offering #JinpaLhaga #JMWart