19. Don’t seek others’ pain as the limbs of your own happiness. This final first difficulty slogan points to another familiar habitual pattern: deriving pleasure from the mishaps and suffering of others. The German word schadenfreude (literally “joy of harm or damage”) pithily reminds us of this conditioning. I want to remember that joy based …
1. First, train in the preliminaries. In this case there are two “preliminaries:” First, maintaining an awareness of the Four Reminders; second, practicing shamatha-vipasyana (mindfulness -awareness) meditation. They are preliminaries in the sense that they are the ongoing basis of all that follows, not that they are ever finally completed. The Four Reminders is a …
20. Drive all blames into one. Now we enter the Second Difficulty, “trying something different.” The “one” in this slogan is ego clinging, which is painful because being uptight about myself all the time makes me very vulnerable to suffering. Whenever I notice I am acting habitually – whether it’s blaming, wallowing in self-pity, pondering …
2. Regard all dharmas as dreams. This slogan, the first of the five absolute bodhicitta slogans, invites us to begin to experience the open, spacious quality of the mind. The word “dharmas” means our mental and physical experiences. We are encouraged to notice this paradox: despite being vivid and clear and seemingly solid, when we …
48. Abandon any hope of fruition. This potent, pithy slogan elegantly and simply reminds me to let go of the idea that I will “get it all together” at some future time. I have everything I need to wake up right now, in this very moment, just as I am. I can simply relax into …
3. Examine the nature of unborn awareness. “Regarding all dharmas as dreams” can lead me to complacency about my experience, so that I drift into fantasy and dreaminess and lose touch with the vivid quality of phenomena. This slogan brings me back to simply looking at the mind. Mind is unborn because it has no …
21. Be grateful to everyone (contemplate the great kindness of everyone). This is one of my favorite slogans! It points to how anyone – EVERYONE – is always available as a teacher to help me see my blind spots. Sometimes my best teachers are the ones who I find the most difficult and annoying and …
4. Self-liberate even the antidote. The “antidote” in this slogan is the realization that mind and thoughts are unborn and empty of a separate and permanent existence, as described in the previous slogan. This realization can become a trap when we think, “well, if everything is empty, then why bother?” One of the fundamental teachings …
22. Four practices are the best of methods. The four practices are accumulating merit, laying down evil deeds, offering to the ghosts and offering to the protectors. The first practice, accumulating merit, can be viewed in two ways. On the surface, it describes a traditional practice in eastern cultures of making financial and material contributions and donations to …
5. Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence. In the Tibetan system there are eight consciousnesses. The first five are the sense consciousnesses: visual (eye), auditory (ear), olfactory (nose), taste (tongue), touch (body). The sixth is the mental consciousness that governs and integrates the first five. The seventh is “nuisance mind” or conceptual mind, …