The 38 Ways to Happiness:- The Fifth Group of Blessings

The Fifth Group of Blessings
“Becoming a Pillar of Society”

 

 

The Fifth Grouping of the Blessings of Life is usually referred to as “Becoming a pillar of society”. The Group consists of “Being Generous” (15), “Practicing the Dhamma” (16), “Looking after your extended family” (17) and “Working in a blameless way” (18). In the Fourth Grouping, we have learned about harmony in the family life (where applicable) — doing things like recognizing and repaying the debt of gratitude we have to our parents will stimulate our awareness of good deeds and the harmony of the family life will be a foundation and a springboard to the real performance of virtue which we are to meet in this Fifth Grouping. Until now if we have fulfilled all the blessings we have learned from 1 - 14 we can say that we have done no more than ‘break even’ in our virtues. We have managed to steer clear of the minefields of everyday life that might cripple future efforts to accumulate merit. Thus in this fifth grouping we start to explore the virtues where we do truly start to give something back to society and the world about us. We are sufficiently mature in our cultivation of good deeds to start to produce virtue for ourselves — first in basic ways (in the Fifth Grouping) but subsequently in more and more advanced ways. The fifteenth blessing of generosity can be regarded the first stepping stone on the path of actively producing virtues. It will start to make us into the sort of person who society can trust and look up to. It will make us a person who can be considered a ‘pillar of society’.