At one point during a recent conversation with friends, someone made the insightful remark: Sean, that may all work well and good for you and the other 350 million Buddhists on the planet, but not everyone shares those beliefs, so what’s the solution that works for everyone?

Just before my friend said this, I had explained how one of Gandhi’s main messages, that we must be the change we wish to see in the world, made so much sense to me because, as I have written here before, I truly believe that one act of kindness can and will (someday) have a ripple effect that spreads across the globe and changes humanity as we know it. Hence, the remark from my friend above.

As I think about his statement more closely, however, I find myself wondering how different Earth would be if every man, woman and child practiced any one of the three branches of Buddhism. But then again, my mind concludes, what if everyone were Christian, or Muslim, or Jain, or whatever else. If we ALL had the same shared system of values and morals and beliefs, then my guess is there would be no war, exploitation of resources and each other, etc.

So what is the solution for all mankind? Where is the intersection between a planet full of belief systems? My guess is that it’s as simple as having respect for your fellow man and for the Earth.

I have co-workers who have very, very strong Christian faith, and while we’re quite friendly within the confines of the office, I have no idea what they think, in their heart of hearts, of me as a non-Christian gay man. But regardless, I respect them for their choices, especially since I see how much strength these men and women are able to draw from their faith in God and Jesus. And I honestly feel these same people respect me for who I am.

When the going gets tough, they turn the prayer — and who’s to say that Christian prayer isn’t just another form of the Buddhist practice of generating compassion and loving-kindness for all beings via setting our motivation and dedication before and after our own practice?

Respect as the antidote — as the solution that works for everyone, as my friend asked — seems so far-fetched, but it’s all I can offer.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

There is a reason why topics like religion and politics are taboo for most informal gatherings where people have just met each other: you simply don’t know one another’s history. A subject that could be a passing fancy for one person could elicit deep, strong and even uncomfortable feelings from another.

In those situations, I wonder if the person who is the offendee ever stops to recognize the offender’s intent. The very nature of human emotion makes it nearly impossible for the offendee to even pause, once the emotional chords have been struck.

I think about this today after unintentionally offending someone I met last night. He is a professional musician; I seriously considered a career as a musician in high school and college, but decided against it for a number of reasons, chief among them my mother’s constant nagging that musicians just don’t make any money. So I approached the conversation with said musician with a lot of respect for his accomplishment.

“You actually get paid to play the oboe full-time,” I asked, a tone of amazement in my voice as I realized this guy seems to have a pretty comfortable life in expensive Washington, D.C., putting in his 40-plus on the backside of a musical instrument. What a sweet life, I thought, to get paid for doing nothing more than feeding one’s own artistic passion.

The question plucked something that was lurking pretty deep in the guy’s head; he snapped back about how he was tired of people not giving him respect (whether it was because of him playing the oboe or working full-time as a military musician, I’ll never know). But as I thought about it later, it occurred to me that I had hit one of his hot-button issues, and that he didn’t have time to think about the context of my question. He simply reacted.

I don’t fault the guy, especially since I’ve spent the better part of five years trying to get one step ahead of my own head, only to fall into the same trap of emotionally charged, spontaneous reactions when someone hits one of my own buttons. If anything, what I have learned is to recognize when this happens in other people, and when put in the same situation, I hope to be able to see the response coming in myself in order to blunt it or eliminate it entirely.

It all goes back to mindfulness. If I am as mindful of what I say as I am of how people react to my words, then I’m in pretty good shape. Of course, wanting to be that mindful and actually doing it are two different things.

Clipped from my blog: http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp