The Downfall of Empires and the Path to Moral Society : หน้า 141/164

Networking with a Dharma Politizer We worship money as God and morality is lost. When we do this, we begin to associate with ‘bad’ people, or people who lead us away from the very thing that would help us! And then that leads us to laziness in working and we become parasites on society. This is the common problem of all empires that have been lost: Worshipping money leads to greed which leads to the disintegration of society. “Ever since I was in high school, I was interested in the downfall of empires and I wanted to understand why they could not unite. But, very simply, the military approach begins with the understanding that we have to kill – and that leads us to become the blight of society. Understanding the Right View, having Right Thought, or Right Philosophy, is the only way to start to change this. “There are three ‘standards’ that need to be developed: (1) within humanity itself, (2) within the morality of society, and (3) within the economy. How do you develop these so that the population is made up of all moral people, universally, so that we have habitual morals, not just ones that we use on occasion to display our decency when we think it will serve us best? We do this by teaching people about the affect each person has on the six directions: leaders, parents, teachers, family, friends, and colleagues or employees. We need to help humanity develop good habits and use them to influence each of their own six directions! “Wat Phra Dhammakaya is, in essence, a moral Hollywood, trying to get people to wake up and pay attention to the consequences of their actions. Their actions are difficult to change once their habits have been formed. These early habits are formed mainly through three sources – and in this order: the parents, guardians, or caregivers; the teachers; and the early spiritual leader. Each person has to have clear guidelines and roles that are initially given by the people in these ‘directions’ and it is the interaction of these three sources with us that sets our early habits. “Added to this, of course, are the historical factors that dictate what is happening around us, whether or not we live in the right time or the right circumstance, and our own karma. Each of these directions (or the people within these directions) has a role to play in the development of the re-education of the world. The true benefit of this is the development of the self – even though, of course, it may consequently benefit the world. We are attracted together – we actually come together – because of this ‘main product’. But in reality, every person benefits from everyone else even though we should be dictated by ‘I do it for myself’ because in the end run, we have to be responsible for our own actions.