Salt * Wet * Fish

Old LJ entry posted on Jun. 2nd, 2004 @ 11:43 pm

When we watch footage of auditions for the American Idol, many of us would have felt embarrassed at one point or another, by the daringness of the contestants, their inabilities to hear themselves and their self imagined greatness.

We would have said to ourselves: “Don’t they know that they sound terrible. How dumb can they be to think that they can become an idol.. its so embarrassing.”

Yet we often see a lot of contestant staring at disbelief when the judges said that they sound terrible or they can’t sing, as it someone was telling them that they have 3 legs.

The clue to their perception is usually revealed once they step outside… there we can see families and friends calling the judges stupid, reassuring their friend that they are they best. So in many ways, the behaviours of these contestants are very much a result of the families and friends whom they are with. We can also see clearly that contestants that takes rejection terribly also have friends who acts and helps to re-enforce their actions.

Actually, we as a TV viewer are also to be blamed. If we didn’t latch onto the show and watch with intense interest, such opportunities would have not arisen. So in many ways, we are connected to and is a cause of feeding those behaviours we see on TV.

So in many ways a lot of our actions or inactions are (like the butterfly effect) parts of the causes of the larger things in life and that is why in Buddhism it is so important for one to guard our senses and actions with the strength of 10 oxen.

Venerable Thich have a very good point about this inter-connectedness:

“Suppose I am a school teacher and I believe that nurturing love and understanding in children is a beautiful occupation, an example of right livelihood. I would object if someone asked me to stop teaching and become, for example, a butcher.

However, if I meditate on the interrelatedness of all things, I will see that the butcher is not solely responsible for killing animals. He kills them for all of us who buy pieces of raw meat, cleanly wrapped and displayed at our local supermarket. The act of killing is a collective one. In forgetfulness, we may separate ourselves from the butcher, thinking his livelihood is wrong, while ours is right. However, if we didn’t eat meat, the butcher wouldn’t kill it or would kill less.

This is why right livelihood is a collective matter. The livelihood of each person affects all of us, and vice versa. The butcher’s children may benefit from my teaching, while my children, because they eat meat, share some responsibility for the butcher’s livelihood of killing.