When others don t value your help Buddhism In English

What do you do when you want to give your fullest help to someone and you're willing to help someone, right? You are giving your best to help someone and still they don't understand your help. They don't understand the value of your help and they don't understand the consequences of their bad habits, the bad things that they do. What should you do? Well, this is one of the most common questions that I get asked from people. I need to help this person. I care about this person. I want to help that person. I am giving the best of mine but still they're not ready to take that help. They're not growing up. What should I do? Should I help them or should I stop helping them? Well, I'll tell you the Buddha story, right? Buddha had a cousin and his name was Devadatta. Later he became a monk and in the beginning he did fine. He was doing good. He did meditation and he was doing good, right? He became a monk under the Buddha's guidance and little by little Buddha became famous. People started to gather around the Buddha. When Devadatta saw this, he became jealous on the Buddha and he thought, no, no, I need to become the Buddha, right? I need to take this position. He thought that Buddhahood was a position that he, like a position that was in a company, right? That means like you swap the person and you can go to that position. It was not like that, right? So what happened? He tried everything, right? Devadatta tried everything to hurt the Buddha and harm the Buddha's life and kill the Buddha. But still, Buddha had the compassion in his heart towards Devadatta. And I came across this one part of the sutra that the Buddha says, it's amazing, the Buddha says that if there is anyone that I was thinking about day and night and giving my fullest to help, right? That was Devadatta. I was willing to give my best and I was thinking about him day and night to help this person. But this person doesn't understand, did not understand the consequences of his evil intentions, right? So Buddha was willing to help, but he did not get the help, right? And do you know when Devadatta learned the lesson? It was in his dead bed. In his dead bed Devadatta told, I regret about the things that I did in the past towards the Buddha. From now onwards, I go for refuge to the Buddha. But sometimes it is late, right? So we need to understand that for some people to learn lessons in life, it takes some time, right? It takes a long time to learn lessons, right? Sometimes you are giving your fullest help and they don't understand. That is the nature of people. Because capacities of people, mental capacities of people, how people view this world is different, okay? So if you care about someone, right? If you love someone, you need to give your best to help that person, right? You need to be willing to give your best to that person. Sometimes they will not understand it, right? In that case, please do not lose who you are, right? Do not lose your characters, good characters in the name of helping that person, right? You have to protect yourself. If you only protect yourself, you cannot help that person, right? First, do not lose who you are, lose your characters and lose your ethics to help someone. That is the first thing that you have to do. And then the second thing is that you need to understand for some people to learn lessons in life, it takes time, right? So that you need to wait until that. Until then, you need to practice your compassion and your empathy towards that person. The Buddha said that, I have empathy towards Devadatta. So in the same way, if we can have the empathy towards that person, that is the best thing to do. And the third thing is that you need to be willing to help, give your fullest help at any time when they are ready, right? Because sometimes when we give our help, right? We try our best and then we give up. And after some time, the person learns the lesson and they come back to us to get the help. And now we have the ego in our mind. We said, we always keep that past memories in our head and we said, no, I'm not giving you the help. If you truly care about that person, if you truly love someone, you need to be willing to give your help at any time, right? Whether they are in your life or out of your life, whatever the place, whatever the situation, if you truly care about that person's development, right? You need to be willing to help. So this is what we need. First, we need the patience. And then we need to give the time for people to grow and learn, right? Sometimes it works for you. And also we need to be willing to help that person, give the best to that person. And that is what we do in these kind of situations. So I believe that you got some idea about this situation. So I wish you, may all of you be healthy, happy, and may all of you be able to realize the four noble truths in this life.