What Matters in Community Participation
Humans are the ultimate social animal.
Therefore, everyone is forced to participate in some kind of community.
From the moment we are born, we are raised and protected by our family community, and eventually we belong to schools, companies, and so on.
Even those who are now living like hermits must have been raised in some community from the time of their birth until they were able to live on their own to some extent.
However, as they gain the ability to make a living and become independent, they are able to choose which community to join.
This ability to choose the community in which to participate means that they have the “power of free choice.
Everyone wants to be rich because money gives them freedom of choice, but money itself is just a piece of paper. It really shouldn’t have any appeal.
Similarly, the ability to choose which communities to join is a great power.
In the extreme, if you are financially independent, you can choose not to belong to a community.
In reality, however, most people have to participate in a community, including belonging to a corporate organization.
The act of choosing a community to join, whether it is for work or pleasure, is very important.
It is not an exaggeration to say that your future will change depending on whether you join a community randomly, thinking that all communities are the same, or whether you join a community specifically because you are looking for something.
There is a Japanese proverb that says, “If you touch red, you become red.”
This means that people become better or worse depending on the influence of the people they interact with.
That is why we need to be careful about the people we associate with and the community we live in.
What it means to be involved with people
Participating in a community means associating with others.
When you are face to face with others and exchange opinions, you are naturally giving and receiving influence.
It is a kind of mental bartering that unconsciously influences information, emotions, and spirituality.
Information is an asset, or property, as we now take for granted.
And mental stability or calmness is also an asset.
In other words, just as we exchange money, we exchange information and spirituality depending on the people we associate with.
Rich people are good with their money.
Poor people make poor use of money, like gambling and lotteries. In this way, it seems that there are good and bad ways to use money, information, and spirituality.
In other words, the cause and effect of “like brings like” is influenced by every aspect of community and detailed social interaction.
In other words, this is what I mean by “If you touch red, you become red.”
Whether your future is a red light or a green light is determined by your community choices and how you deal with people.
Minds rot just as much as things do.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a very scary aspect to being in a relationship with people.
This is because the human mind is a living thing.
Therefore, depending on how we treat them, our minds can also become corrupt.
In other words, the mind will decay before you know it if you expose it to bad conditions, just as you would leave food scraps out in the hot midsummer sun.
For example, we should not associate with communities where people speak ill of others and complain, or with people for whom this is the norm.
Associating with such people will rot your heart.
Also, people have always suffered from food shortages throughout their long history as a result,
cultures have cut down or sacrificed someone.
Therefore, they say, humanity has always ranked the next person to be cut off.
That ranking has been scrutinized through gossip.
And We are constantly concerned about this gossip because it is a matter of life and death for me,
If you don’t care, you may find yourself a target before you know it.
That is why people have been programmed to pay attention to gossip as the most important information.
In modern times, there is no need to reduce the workforce due to food shortages, and there is no custom of sacrifices to pray for natural disasters.
Never before in the history of mankind have we been able to live with such peace of mind, and the sense of life and death crisis is probably at its lowest point.
Nevertheless, people cannot get away from the culture of gossiping about others that they have cultivated over the years.
However, one thing I would like to say here is that school, especially in the upper grades of elementary school and middle school, retains the form of a terrible primitive community of mankind.
Whenever I hear news of the occasional student who has committed suicide due to bullying or slander, I don’t think I am alone in thinking that it is a product of a primitive era of attrition and sacrificial culture.
If you are a student in elementary or middle school who has miraculously seen this and is suffering,
I urge you to run away.
Neither the school teachers nor the parents understand the horror of that community,
They are so busy protecting their own position that they can hardly be relied upon.
Anyway, nowadays there is no need to join a community that corrupts your mind.
If it is not a community that can keep you rich in money, time, information, and spirituality, you are better off being alone.
Washing the mind
Being involved in a corrupt community and with corrupt people can cause the mind to become corrupt, but even living a normal life can cause the mind to become stagnant and rotten.
That is why regular mind washing is important for any person.
I will list some of the reasons why the mind rots.
- Repeat the same thing over and over again.
- Thinking the same thing over and over again.
- Remembering the same thing over and over again.
In other words, going in circles is what causes the mind to stagnate.
In such a case, it seems to me that it is better to take action, a place where you can forget.
This is refreshment.
We believe that refreshment can be done by doing the opposite of what rots the mind.
In other words,
- Do something different.
- Exposure to different ideas. Meet different people.
- Go to places you have never been and make new memories.
If you do these things regularly, your mind is not likely to stagnate.
There is no sacrifice in a mind-chain world.
Most of the world is formed by the identity of the food chain.
This is a natural result of the fact that humans have lived by the same laws of nature as the rest of the plants and animals.
There is no sacrifice in a mind-chain world.
Most of the world is formed by the identity of the food chain.
This is a natural result of the fact that humans have lived by the same laws of nature as the rest of the plants and animals.
However, human life has become so wealthy that it deviates from that law, and we no longer live in the uncertainty of being next to death.
And so, humanity is beginning to move from the food chain to the world of the mind chain.
I believe that the mind chain is all about mutual elevation of each other, a community of the next generation that does not prey on others.
This seems to me to be the other side of what Buddhism teaches, which forbids the killing of animals, in short, a way of life that detaches from the killing of people’s minds.
You cannot live a life without eating animals right away, but if you first aim to live a life free from the predation of humans on each other, I think you will be able to find a community that you can be a part of.
