Gate Twenty Nine
Read the following, place it in your heart and sleep on it. Then, tomorrow, live it until evening when you can leave a brief comment on what you may have received during the process.
Repayment of kindness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not cheat and disregard others.
By “Dharma Gate”, we mean a teaching or practice we can study to gain insights into the deepening our practice. It's a way to integrate our understanding of approaching reality.
Koan:
The simplest way to define “pay it forward” is that when someone does something for you, instead of paying that person back directly, you pass it on to another person instead.
A year 2000 movie synopses:
"The story of a social studies teacher who gives an assignment to his junior high school class to think of an idea to change the world for the better, then put it into action. When one young student creates a plan for "paying forward" favors, he not only affects the life of his struggling single mother, but he sets in motion an unprecedented wave of human kindness which, unbeknownst to him, has blossomed into a profound national phenomenon."
Most note worthy replies :
Can I find the kindnessSometimes as hard to rouse as an anonymous donation?Maybe I need to look harder, already knowing it is there,So that I can pay them backBefore they can put up their hands.Then I slide back into my shadows.
Just as we must recognize and accept with gratitude the kindness of others (Gate 28), I feel compelled to take all kindness shown to me and re-share it back to the original giver as well as forward to the world (where possible).
Kindness is receivedOnly soWe know how to give
合掌 仁道 生開 - gassho, Jindo Shokai
stlah
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