Moments of Clarity

Here’s are some good questions you can ask yourself occasionally:
What if everyone were like me?
What would happen to my community if everyone had the same degree of care and concern for others as me?
What would happen to the community if everyone offered the same amount of service as me?
What would happen to the Buddha’s teachings if all other Buddhists only studied and practised as much as me?
Whatever we are doing, saying or thinking we can ask ourselves this type of question as a gauge to see how we are doing.
Everyone involved in a community contributes something, be it positive or negative. It is impossible to avoid influencing others, but it’s often difficult to see for ourselves what influence we are having exactly. Asking this type of question may give us some clarity or perspective.
For example if you are in a shrine room and you are not sure whether your conduct is correct or not you can visualise the shrine room full of people doing the same thing as yourself. Then it should become clear whether yours is the right form of conduct or not. Let’s say that you are meditating in the temple and you start to feel a little tired and decide to have a little lie down. Well, what if then everyone you are meditating with follows suit?
Then imagine that you are a new person coming to the temple or dharma centre for the first time with the hope to learn meditation, and you enter the shrine room to be met by a room full of people snoozing, or hopping, doing star jumps, twirling their trousers above their heads, or what have you.
If we scale a particular behaviour of ours in this manner and it becomes absurd, it probably should be avoided.