Training in Compassion 17: Five Virtues: Owning Your Nobility

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues: Determination, Repetition, Owning Your Nobility, Reproaching Your Demons, and Aspiring to the Impossible. Today we look at Owning Your Nobility.

As human beings we are inherently noble -- inherently motivated to see life truly, generously, magnanimously. Every human community from the dawn of time has had some form of wholesome, salvific spirituality.

But the pressures of life and the persistence of human folly, embedded as these are in our societies and our communities – and our hearts -- can obscure our noble motivation to be wise and compassionate. That's why we remind ourselves of our noble heritage as human beings and step up to embody it.

Probably our biggest challenge in spiritual practice is simply that we don't take ourselves seriously enough. Owning our nobility, we step into seriousness.

The heritage, the legacy, of being human is to manifest wisdom, compassion, and lovingkindness, to be fully worthy of our lives, worthy of admiration and celebration. We can be perfectly aware of our many faults. Faults are perfectly natural, like earthquakes or floods. But along with these various faults, at the same time, deep within us is this beautiful, noble human heritage.

To own your nobility is to remind yourself every day of who you really are. None of the world's great spiritual exemplars has ever said, "Look at me, how great I am; pay attention to me!" All have said, "I am what you are." True nobility is not about lording it over the peasantry. For example, the Dalai Lama is owning his nobility when he says, as he often does, "I'm just a simple monk. I'm trying my best."

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