Buddhaful Blog

By: Tori

May 10 2009

Tags: ancestors, buddhism, consumption, contribution, family, generations, peace, philosophy, questions, quotes, spirituality, transformation, wisdom

Category: Spirituality and Philosophy, the Environment

1 Comment

I’m writing from the hospital waiting room in Reno while my Grandma recovers from thyroid surgery (update: she’s at home now and recovering nicely).  Being here with my family has given me a chance to reflect on the importance and often understated relevance of our relatives.

These are my maternal, maternal great grandparents, the Lohmans.   I never met them.  I find it strange to look at photos of ancestors. I wonder what an encounter with them would be like.  What did they sound like? What were their hobbies? What were their shortcomings or fears? What would they think of today’s world?

Jonas Salk said “Our great responsibility is to be good ancestors.” Reading this, I am inspired to live more for our future generations while deepening my gratitude for the ones that came before us.  Those that’s lives brought us here to this very spot on earth, at this very moment.  Without them, there is no us.

Even still, as imperfect as this world may seem right now it can be easy to blame our ancestors for the difficulties we are experiencing such as global warming, ethnic conflict, or resource depletion.  But the reality is, we can’t pinpoint a single cause or understand completely the forces that brought on these challenges.  I don’t want to underestimate the importance of examining the lessons from history, but it is easy to overstep the line from compassionate evaluation to detached criticism. We can however, draw from the experience of our ancestors, the wisdom of our elders, and the hope for our future generations, when we make choices.

I recently heard a great decision making strategy.   Ask yourself what the impact of your decision will be in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.  Another approach comes from the Native Americans, who used the 7 generations rule.  Every decision they made, they thought about the effect it would have on the next 7 generations.  (Incidentally, that’s actually what the green household product line “7th generation” was named for.)  I truly believe that considering the long term consequences of our decisions on an individual , local, national, and international level, is what will make us “good ancestors”.

You can think of it simply as a legacy, or if you believe in reincarnation it can go even farther.  I was recently given an analogy for life, that we are all waves riding along the sea and when we die we crash up onto the shore, but the water that comprised your wave doesn’t disappear, it simply recedes back into the ocean only to become a wave again.  Nothing ever truly dies, it just transforms.  This metaphor makes me think about how I can make my wave contribute to a positive transformation.  So that when I crash onto the shore, the ocean I recede back into is a little better then it was the last time around.  It is this kind of thinking that has me pausing to think about the long term consequences of all my decisions– from my career path, to using plastic water bottles, and going vegetarian.

What would you like to contribute to our future generations?