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Love of All Wisdom

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Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Richard Mahoney

The Buddhist oxygen mask

15 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Family, Foundations of Ethics, Generosity, Health, Mahāyāna

≈ 4 Comments

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Dhammapāda, Ken Wilber, Richard Mahoney, Śāntideva, Treya Killam Wilber

If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your oxygen mask on first, and then assist the other person.

Anyone who has flown on a commercial airline has heard this instruction; anyone who flies frequently has heard it so often that it becomes background noise, though relatively few of us have ever had the chance to put it into practice. If the plane cabin depressurizes and the oxygen masks drop, one has only seconds before running out of oxygen oneself; if one tries to put the oxygen mask on a child first, hypoxia may inhibit one’s ability to put the mask on the child correctly, to say nothing of the risk to oneself. One can best save both people by attending to oneself first – running against any parent’s natural instinct to protect his own child.

I’m not the first to see this advice as a metaphor for other forms of ethical conduct in relationships: “the oxygen-mask principle”. Often we can take care of others most effectively by taking care of ourselves. What I also see, though, is that this principle is deeply Buddhist.

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