The Pandemic: A Time for Giving
The following Dhamma reflections are from Inda Aung Soe, pertaining the situation that Myanmar, and the world, now finds itself in with the advancing pandemic.
Since the beginning of pandemic, the part of my Buddhist training that I came to rely on the most is "Paticca Samuppada", or "The Law of Dependent Origination." In other words, as we can see clearly in the world today, all things and people are connected to each other. This is true of economies, or politics, or climate, or whatever….everything is interrelated.
The pandemic doesn’t discriminate between the rich and poor, whether bankers in big cities or small-scale farmers in the countryside. And this interdependency should remind us to be kind to one other, to do more and more good, which would give rise to beneficial results in many different ways.
This pandemic also calls to mind the importance of loving kindness practice, as never before in our lives! In times of such difficulty, people are becoming frightened for so many different reasons, and so at greater risk of performing unwholesome actions motivated by that fear. We should try to sympathize and understand them, putting ourselves in their shoes,
Sadly, I’ve heard that in some countries, the rate of domestic violence is actually higher now than before the pandemic, as families spend more time together in close quarters. In times like these, if we can't develop our loving kindness and mettā for one another, we can only expect this aggressiveness to rise.
And for me, from my years of learning and practicing Buddhism as a monk, I found that donations, charities or any other types of giving-away projects happen largely due to the sympathy and mettā we are able to generate towards others. There is an attitude we need to cultivate if we want others to have more and more good things, and to find themselves in good situations, to have some of the pleasure and comfort we are enjoying. So based on this mindset, we give, donate and share part of what we own!
While I see that for some people in other countries, it is quite difficult to stay locked down in one’s house, quarantined, for us Burmese Buddhists, this is something quite close to our nature because we’re familiar with retreats, like mettā retreats or meditation retreats. Of course, going to retreats and being quarantined do not share the same goal, but it’s worth considering that if we don't have any choice in the moment, then we can either complain about our reality, bemoan our misfortune, and look for someone or something to blame; or we can cope the best we can, and take this reality as a chance to free ourselves from daily chaos and help ourselves deal with whatever comes.
