Page 58 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

is no religious individualism. When you practice any religious

exercise you should feel that all other living beings are practicing
with you. In the Mahayana there is a way of actually developing

this kind of attitude. When performing a religious exercise you
should visualize everybody else as doing it with you and sharing
in its benefits. If you sit and meditate, think of everybody else as

meditating. When you chant the Buddha's praises, think of
everybody else as chanting. When you recite a mantra, think of

everyone else as reciting. In this way you develop the feeling of
sharing whatever benefits you derive from your spiritual practice
with other people, and this, of course, paves the way for taking

what we call the Bodhisattva Vow: the vow that one will gain
Enlightenment not for one's own sake only, but for the sake of

all living beings whatsoever; that one will carry them with one,
so to speak, so that all gain Enlightenment, all enter Nirvana, all
achieve Supreme Buddhahood.

This is the Sevenfold Puja: a very beautiful sequence of

devotional moods to which we give expression in appropriate
words and appropriate actions.

Most of the positive emotions to which I have referred are what
are called social emotions. In other words they are emotions

which refer to other people, and which arise in the course of our
various relationships with them. We do not feel them alone.
They spring up between us and other people — spring up within

the group. The positive emotions: love, compassion, joy and so
on, are much more easily cultivated in the group, where people

at least sometimes have friendly and happy faces. If we just sit at
home trying to be all loving and compassionate and joyous, it
will not be so easy. This is why we have a Spiritual Community,

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