Reply To: Convincing Pet Lovers

#50198
pathfinder
Participant

Yes, of course one should be able to control oneself in these discussions to prevent it from being heated, and it is wrong to impose onto others, it will be unproductive. However we can always try our luck and see if they are interested. And it doesn’t mean that when you try to introduce the dhamma to other people, you stop progressing on the path. It’s not like teaching the dhamma becomes a “full time job”, one can try to teach it when the opportunity arises, but yes it should not be the main goal. Also, one of the ways of meditation is to teach others! (Vimuttāyatanasutta) This is in line with the Feynman technique where the best way to learn something is to teach it. So far there has not been heated discussions for me, for example one can approach the topic even without rebirth and kamma initially. We do not even need to say that this is “buddhist philosophy” and not include pali words for a start! It is only after they are curious to learn more that you can explain in detail.

Christian: “People who are ignoring Dhamma or not are willing to learn it or practice it, or they are not interested, etc. are not children who are about to eat glass, if you think this way you will pretty much suffer as there is no way to changing the people or the world” 

Perhaps my analogy of the glass shard is not good. Let’s say you found out that smoking is harmful, and most people don’t know it. You see that your friend smokes. Would you try to explain to him that it is harmful? If he still doesn’t believe it after some explanation then sure, we can leave it as it is. But at the same time, will you suffer because millions of people in the world smoke? Similarly when your friend has many desires, you can drop the hint “hey, have you ever thought that having desire is the problem?”

At least, the dhamma can be explained. This is where you know your lack of understanding. When explaining to my friends, there are questions which i found hard to answer, which led me to realize the gaps in my understanding.