Happy Martin Luther King Day: Jewel of meditation looking into one's own mind, Buddha statue in the lotus mudra, snow, Broadview, Seattle, Washington, USA

Happy Martin Luther King Day: Jewel of meditation looking into one's own mind, Buddha statue in the lotus mudra, snow, Broadview, Seattle, Washington, USA, a photo by Wonderlane on Flickr.

On the Dr. Martin Luther King memorial day, it is worth noting that Lord Buddha advocated human equality more than 2500 years ago, dismissing and refusing to recognize social structures which hold individuals down. He accepted all students regardless of caste or gender or other differences.

Buddha is quoted as saying "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule."

As human beings It must be difficult to change.

500 years later Lord Jesus Christ put it this way "As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

By being simply honest withourselves, open hearted, and willing to change as individuals we can look at our own prejudice and remove what ever they are, simply by watching our own minds, set on dismissing those thoughts and deeds as incorrect that do not align with the advice great beings who have come before us, going back in history beyond human memory.

There must be something even more to loving each other that we can not even yet imagine. Otherwise how could love and compassion be such a radical idea thousands of years after these great ideas have been recommended and even insisted upon by the foremost to ever live?

It is said:
A Brahman saw the Buddha meditating by the River. He engaged the Buddha in conversation.

"What caste are you? Asked the Brahman.

"Caste is irrelevant." Said the Buddha.

"How so," said the Brahman, "surely you would agree that Brahman and royalty are of considerable worth whereas peasants and commoners are not?"

"Caste and riches matter not," replied the Buddha, "it is one's conduct that matters."

"How so," said the Brahman.

"In that fire comes from any type of wood so can a wise person come from any caste. It is through the knowing of truth that one becomes noble not through caste. The noble one is the one that doesn't cling to unworthy attachments. The noble one realizes the true way that things are, he no longer thinks of himself as a self and thus has gained clarity."

"You are truly wise," said the Brahman.