Today let us think about the benefits of cherishing others. When we cherish others, others benefit, but the benefit is not just theirs, the benefit comes back to us. We all share an environment together. When we help others in the environment, it makes the environment more pleasant for us to live in. This goes for groups, for society, and for the whole planet, because if our actions make others unhappy, then we must live with unhappy people. If our minds are concerned with the benefit, welfare, and happiness of others, they are happy and then we get to live with happy people. That is why His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, “If you want to be selfish, be wisely selfish and take care of others,” because it definitely returns to us.

That is how it comes back in this lifetime. If we think beyond this life, cherishing others is what enables us to create good karma, which leads to a precious human life in the future. Cherishing others enables us to create an incredible amount of merit through the force of bodhicitta. When an action is done with a bodhicitta mind — a mind that wishes to become a Buddha as soon as possible, to benefit every being — we create great karma from benefiting that many people. If we have a positive motivation but it does not include everybody, we also create good karma, but it is not as vast and will take much longer to ripen the mind and make it more receptive to the teachings. With an attitude of bodhicitta, that ripening process speeds up. Cherishing others is what helps a Mahayana practitioner progress along that path and attain full awakening.

We always say we want to become a Buddha, but we never hear of a Buddha who cares only for himself or herself. One of the attributes we admire most about Buddhas is their complete altruism and their ability to cherish others as much as themselves. We want to emulate that and have a mind that is as joyful as the Buddha’s from cherishing others. But we have to know what cherishing others mean. It does not just mean pleasing people. Pleasing people is often done with a self-centred mind. When we really cherish others, we very often have to do difficult things. We may have to learn to communicate in an unfamiliar way, that makes our ego squirm. We may have to open up and explain things more. We may have to tell people that we cannot do what they want because what they want is not beneficial in the long run, or it is not beneficial for many beings.

Learning how to cherish others happens in our minds first, then we have to understand what that means when we put it into practice. Practically, it takes a great deal of courage to do what is beneficial for others in the long-term. This is something to think about as we go through the day.

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