Blog Prompt 12: What are the Dalai Lama’s main commitments? What are their benefits? Do you share any of his commitments?

The Dalai Lama’s main commitments are: compassion, self-discipline, forgiveness, contentment and tolerance. Each of these have different meanings and benefits. Compassion is basically what it sounds like. Showing compassion is feeling with others. What this means is basically putting yourself in others shoes. With this, one of the benefits of being compassionate is that we get to understand how the other people are feeling and what causes and dictates their actions. The next one is called self-discipline which is a combination of self-compassion, a self-love, and a recollection of the mind. Self-compassion is a type of relaxation time for yourself along with being kind to yourself. So in other words what this virtue is, is that we come back to a present moment rather than getting lost in the thoughts of the past or future. Forgiveness is the next virtue after that. Forgiveness isn’t about giving the people who ask for forgiveness, it is simply a start. We must first learn to forgive ourselves because not doing it will cause you to have so many emotions towards yourself. Most of these emotions are a form of self-punishment and they never lead to any good. Most of the time self-punishment doesn’t help you learn or help you grow. It’s an understanding that others behavior isn’t personal or towards you. Forgiving yourself is for others and for yourself, because if your heart is soft it allows for more joy. This means that if you forgive and let yourself heal you will be able to relieve yourself from those chains of self punishment and heal from within, thus allowing more joy in your life. The next virtue is contentment. This gives you a peace of mind and acceptance of things that aren’t in your control. Acceptance is not complacency but a preparation for change if it’s needed. If we try not to get into the “more is best mentality,” or a “me-first” attitude we can work with what we have and reach a happiness from within and what we have. We must have a certain confidence in ourselves in order to reach a certain level of contentment. We must realize that if we switch our values around then we can truly be happy. There is this artist that speaks to this, his name is J. Cole. He has a song that is about the key to happiness is about loving yourself and the life you have now, in one of the interviews he speaks exactly to what I’m trying to say. “When I was young, I thought that success was all I needed. That was going to bring the happiness. Buying my mom a house, the fame, the accolades, having people say ‘Yo, you really are the best in the game’. I thought those things would bring the happiness. Then when those things came, the happiness wasn’t there. I realized why that was, there was such an attempt to achieve these things and to keep going that you lose sight of the people and blessings that you have around you. You’re so focused on the next success, the next step in your career, the next cheque, whatever it is, and you forget the fact that you have these things that seem small if you’re looking that way, but if you look this way then you realize that the only thing that matters, that’s your mother, that’s your family, that’s love, and that’s what this song is about.” I think that the key to contentment is accepting who you are, what you have and loving yourself and I think J. Cole explains it in the best way. Lastly, the last virtue is Tolerance. This gives a more outside perspective, we need to have the strength to be nonjudgemental and to not give back the negativity that has been given to you. We must teach love and end the cycle of negativity in order for us to be able to share the happiness within.

I personally think I do share some of his commitments. I learned at a very young age that forgiveness is a key to being happy from within and that doing a simple thing like forgiving someone even when they act so terribly to you is a wonderful way of getting closer to happiness. I’ve learned that some people act weird when it comes to forgiveness, like some people think they don’t deserve to be forgiven. But sometimes within this forgiveness comes your salvation. I also have always been a very compassionate person, I’ve always put myself in other’s shoes because ever since I was young I knew that not everyone lives in the same way and that everyone’s life is completely different. As of recently I have tried to adapt the contentment into my life. I’ve recently learned to meditate and tried to accept things that aren’t in my control. I’m trying to get to the state where my mind is at peace within itself so I can to get closer to happiness.

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