Blessing Three:
Expressing Respect to Those Worthy of Respect
A. INTRODUCTION
A.1 People Differentiated by their discretion
As seen in the previous blessings, the brightness of a person’s future relies on his ability to judge the difference between good and evil. If his judgement is faulty, there is no way he can make a success out of his life. Even though people may look superficially similar, their standards of judgement can be so different. As human beings we are born equal — we all have a pair of hands and ten fingers — but some people use their hands to perform works that are useful to society while others think that their hands will become more famous as fists and go around punching up the neighbours for a living. In this Blessing we look at the third of three major influences on our development of sound discretion — having the right sort of “role model” in our hearts. This blessing doesn’t imply that we model ourselves on anyone or anything at all — but if we want to develop sound discretion we need to model ourselves (recognize and pay respect to) only those worthy of our respect.
A.2 Effect of one’s “hero” on one’s discretion
Hearing such terms as “paying respect”, ”expressing respect” or “people worthy of respect”, the casual reader might come to the premature conclusion that this blessing is irrelevant to our day and age. However, if we rephrase what we mean in modern terms, asking “Who is the hero of your heart — which celebrity do you model yourself on or dream of emulating?”, the pertinence of this blessing will become much more immediate.
When we are children and the horizons of our experience do not extend beyond the walls of our house, maybe our own parents represent all that we want to achieve in our lives. We try to play at being “grown-up” like our parents, imitating them in our play. If we are exposed to a good parental example, our idea of what we perceive as normal or ethical will develop quite accurately from an early age. However, if, for example, parents lie to their children often or beat them out of anger, then that comes to be what the child perceives to be the standard of “justice” in life.
During one’s teen years, when one’s horizons extend beyond the home, the influence of constructive or destructive role models becomes stronger and stronger. These role models are over and above the influence of good or bad friends as studied in the previous two blessings.
Look at some of the role models celebrities set for the youth of today and you can imagine some of the problems facing our impressionable youth of today. Supposing you plan to model yourself on Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, Dylan Thomas, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway or Brian Jones all of whom killed themselves at an early age, you might come to the conclusion that truly creative people are “too beautiful for this world”. You might come to the conclusion that creative writers drank because they had to — or it was the “pressure of fame”. Or that killing yourself is how to earn fame or emotionally blackmail others. We can overlook the insecure, grotesquely boring reality of these peoples’ lives. We can rationalize away the brutal and banal nature of their addictions. We can forgive our heroes and we come to be able to forgive ourselves as well. It gives us an instant excuse to be irresponsible and indecent. We can say we’re too beautiful for this world too. We can act like drugged children, crash our lives and drop out.
The truth about someone like Vincent Van Gogh is that when he painted he was beautiful, but in other matters he was not. He was always encouraging his emotions to work their dark magic. It’s true that he ought to be admired while he had his paintbrush in his hand, but to be admired for his whole sorrowful life and to make a legend out of it is to confuse oneself. The problem for us as beginners on the initial steps of the Manual of Peace, as debutants only just beginning to pick up an inkling of what is good for our spiritual development and what is not, we don’t yet have the ability to distinguish between the creative and destructive aspects of someone’s behaviour — therefore, when you are starting out on your sojourn of spiritual discovery, it’s better to choose a role model who you can rely upon as an exemplar in all aspects of life.
Hearing such terms as “paying respect”, ”expressing respect” or “people worthy of respect”, the casual reader might come to the premature conclusion that this blessing is irrelevant to our day and age. However, if we rephrase what we mean in modern terms, asking “Who is the hero of your heart — which celebrity do you model yourself on or dream of emulating?”, the pertinence of this blessing will become much more immediate.
When we are children and the horizons of our experience do not extend beyond the walls of our house, maybe our own parents represent all that we want to achieve in our lives. We try to play at being “grown-up” like our parents, imitating them in our play. If we are exposed to a good parental example, our idea of what we perceive as normal or ethical will develop quite accurately from an early age. However, if, for example, parents lie to their children often or beat them out of anger, then that comes to be what the child perceives to be the standard of “justice” in life.
During one’s teen years, when one’s horizons extend beyond the home, the influence of constructive or destructive role models becomes stronger and stronger. These role models are over and above the influence of good or bad friends as studied in the previous two blessings.
Look at some of the role models celebrities set for the youth of today and you can imagine some of the problems facing our impressionable youth of today. Supposing you plan to model yourself on Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, Dylan Thomas, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway or Brian Jones all of whom killed themselves at an early age, you might come to the conclusion that truly creative people are “too beautiful for this world”. You might come to the conclusion that creative writers drank because they had to — or it was the “pressure of fame”. Or that killing yourself is how to earn fame or emotionally blackmail others. We can overlook the insecure, grotesquely boring reality of these peoples’ lives. We can rationalize away the brutal and banal nature of their addictions. We can forgive our heroes and we come to be able to forgive ourselves as well. It gives us an instant excuse to be irresponsible and indecent. We can say we’re too beautiful for this world too. We can act like drugged children, crash our lives and drop out.
The truth about someone like Vincent Van Gogh is that when he painted he was beautiful, but in other matters he was not. He was always encouraging his emotions to work their dark magic. It’s true that he ought to be admired while he had his paintbrush in his hand, but to be admired for his whole sorrowful life and to make a legend out of it is to confuse oneself. The problem for us as beginners on the initial steps of the Manual of Peace, as debutants only just beginning to pick up an inkling of what is good for our spiritual development and what is not, we don’t yet have the ability to distinguish between the creative and destructive aspects of someone’s behaviour — therefore, when you are starting out on your sojourn of spiritual discovery, it’s better to choose a role model who you can rely upon as an exemplar in all aspects of life.
If you can choose a reliable role model for yourself:
● you will accelerate your acquisition of Right View and Wisdom.
● you will become less vulnerable to the influence of fools
● you will more easily be able to avoid associating with fools
● you will facilitate the spread of virtue in society and the world.
● it will prevent you from becoming self-centred or arrogant about your own virtues.
● it will facilitate the development of mindfulness that is the precursor of wisdom.
● it will add to your enthusiasm for self-development
● you will accelerate your acquisition of Right View and Wisdom.
● you will become less vulnerable to the influence of fools
● you will more easily be able to avoid associating with fools
● you will facilitate the spread of virtue in society and the world.
● it will prevent you from becoming self-centred or arrogant about your own virtues.
● it will facilitate the development of mindfulness that is the precursor of wisdom.
● it will add to your enthusiasm for self-development
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