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Things that appear difficult and challenging, or nearly impossible from the ego’s point of view, the bodhisattva takes right on, with a vision of skillful means and a sense of joyful challenge to work on the ego, and progress further. This actually puts the self in service towards the highest outcome: toppling samsara—attaining the state […]

In the end, our life won’t just evaporate like a puddle of water in the hot sun. In fact, even a puddle of water does not just disappear into nothingness. The molecules remain in a different form, since atoms do not just disintegrate. If we do think that life is like this, then our life

Part 3 In moving toward some degree of renunciation, our first step is to be open and nonjudgmental about our suffering, not feeling guilty about it. Judgment and guilt will cloud our minds, preventing our intelligence from coming through. Knowledge leads to understanding and understanding to wisdom. Knowledge is information. It is what you hear

We need to recognize the source of our problems and the source of all our perceived threats. We must try to see how they arise from our “self,” and more specifically from our grasping to the self. When we have the feeling of being sucked into a situation, when we feel emotionally drained, or when

I’d like to address the theme of renunciation. This word, this idea of “renunciation,” as it is meant in the Buddhist teachings and particularly in the Hinayana teachings, provokes wildly different reactions among people. People will respond differently to this word depending upon where they are in their lives, their levels of suffering, and with

Cultivating the kind of detached awareness that I’ve mentioned allows us to develop a maturity regarding our emotional reactions. We gain a perspective that is balanced, not viewing the emotions as “black and white”, so we find that we no longer feel a need to react aggressively or judge our own behavior. Instead of suppressing

As Shantideva says in the The Way of the Bodhisattva, when someone goes to war they study their opponent. This is how we have to study our disturbing emotions (Sanskrit: kleshas). These “poisons” are in certain ways nothing but our own reactions. When you can regard them from a mature viewpoint, with a developed awareness

It is very important to recognize that the reactions we feel are not necessarily who we are. These reactions that seem part of us, how we react, are very much about who we were as beings in the past. Whether we’re speaking of our physical actions, our speech, or the activity of our mind, especially