Quote from Dharma, Color, and Culture

Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism

edited by Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquin 

Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 2004         236 pages 

This is the heart of cessation: stopping the fight with ourselves. Traditionally, the opposite of making war on ourselves, endlessly judging and harshly criticizing ourselves, is spoken of as ‘making friends with ourselves’ . . . Just as compassion begins at home, a loving relationship with others radiates out from an inner affection, a friendly and fundamentally kind relationship with ourselves. -- Gaylon Ferguson (p. 95)

The challenge for me is not to become a follower of Something but to embody it; I am willing to try for that. And this is how I understand the meaning of both Jesus and Buddha. When the Buddha, dying, entreated his followers to be a ‘lamp unto yourself,’ I understood he was willing to free his followers even from his own teachings. He had done all he could do, taught them everything he had learned. Now, their own enlightenment was up to them. He was also warning them not to claim him as the sole route to their salvation, thereby robbing themselves of responsibility for their own choices, behavior, and lives. -- Alice Walker, (p. 192)

-- quote submitted by Camilla M.

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