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N E N E S SQuarterly Newsletter of the Rev. Gyomay M. Kubose Dharma Legacy Vol. 5 No. 4 Winter 2001ONOBILITYBy Rev. Gyomay M. KuboseInsideIntroducing...The Legacy Logop. 2New Year’s EvePartyp. 3Dharma Glimpsep. 4Legacy’s Video LoanProgramp. 5When Gautama Buddha attainedEnlightenment, he declared, “I aloneam noble above heaven and belowheaven.” This means, “I alone am noblein the whole universe.” This was anexpression of his discovery of his trueself. Every being possesses such anoble essence. In Western terminol-ogy it is the divinity in all of us. How-ever, most of the time our ego gets thebest of us and our nobility or divinequality is hidden deep down within us.Gautama discovered this nobility inhimself and he lived that nobility. Allbeings are pure and good. Good in anabsolute, not relative sense. It is goodnot as compared to bad. Without com-paring, beyond the sense of relativity,we all have the noble quality in us. Tobe aware of this nobility in us is animportant thing. When I was a small boy, my grand-father used to say, “you belong to theKubose family and our family has beena noble family of long standing. If youdo a shameful thing, it is a shame tothe whole Kubose family. You shouldremember that. A boy of a good fam-ily does not do shameful things.” Manyyoung children were told such thingsand our young minds were impressed.I am grateful for such teachings frommy grandfather. To impress a youngmind with such nobleness, whethernobleness of family or nobleness of aperson, is very important. I sometimeshear parents telling their children, “Youare bad” or “You are no good.” Thisnot seem to be any emphasis on sucheducation in our society. It is lackingin our child training and in our socialinstitutions. This is why families andour nation are in turmoil. Awareness of the quality of noble-ness in all beings is very important. Itleads to a sense of oneness, to feel-ings of respect and humility. WhenGautama Buddha declared, “I aloneam noble in the whole world,” this didnot mean that he alone was noble. “Ialone” means that each individualfrom his own perspective is the mostnoble. Buddha’s declaration of hisnobility is the declaration of everybeing; everyone should have thisthought of nobleness of himself or her-self. When one is aware of the noble-ness in oneself, one cannot help butbe noble. He cannot do wrong things.This is the foundation and basis ofBuddhist teachings. This is religion inthe Buddhist sense.(The Center Within, pgs. 58-60)is a negative approach; it is the wrongkind of scolding for a child. It wouldbe much better to make the childaware of the nobleness of himself orhis family. If a boy misbehaves, hecould be told that a son of a good fam-ily does not do such things. It makes alot of difference psychologically if hehas this thought of being a child of anoble family instead of having hissmallness or evilness emphasized. Infact, the latter emphasis would actu-ally contribute towards creating suchnegative qualities. We should alwaystry to emphasize the nobleness of aperson. This is particularly importantat a young age, when the mind is soopen and receptive. This kind of teach-ing sticks in the mind of a young childand can influence his whole life. Today in our midst, there is so muchcrime and degenerate behvior. WhenI read about such things in the news-paper, I always think about the qualityof nobleness and how it is lacking inour society. Most people have noblethoughts and feelings but their egosget the better of them and they do notbehave accordingly. A person mayknow it is wrong to steal or do a badthing, but momentarily he forgets hisnoblity and he does the wrong thing.It is important to educate ourselves,to become aware that we have thisnobility in us. All other persons andthings also have this nobility. What welack in our culture today is the aware-ness of nobility in others. There does

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