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Training the Mind Class Slogans and Commentary Training the Mind Class, taught by Pema Chodron
Point One The Preliminaries, Which Are A Basis for Dharma Practice Slogan #1 First Train in the Preliminaries Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche "First, Train in the Preliminaries" In practicing the slogans and in your daily life, you should maintain an awareness of: [1] the preciousness of human life and the particular good fortune of life in an environment in which you can hear the teachings of Buddhadharma; [2] the reality of death, that it comes suddenly and without warning; [3] the entrapment of Karma - whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, only further entraps you in the chain of cause and effect; and [4] the intensity and inevitability of suffering for you and for all sentient beings. This is called "taking the attitude of the four reminders" With that attitude as a base, you should call upon your guru with devotion, inviting into yourself the atmosphere of sanity inspired by his or her example, and vowing to cut the roots of further ignorance and suffering. This ties in very closely with the notion of maitri, or loving kindness. In the traditional analogy of one's spiritual path, the only pure loving object seems to be somebody who can show you the path. You could have a loving relationship with your parents, relatives, and so forth, but there are still problems with that; your neurosis goes along with it. A pure love affair can only take place with one's teacher. So that ideal sympathetic object is used as a starting point, a way of developing a relationship beyond your own neurosis. Particularly in the mahayana, you relate to the teacher as someone who cheers you up from depression and brings you down from excitement, a kind of moderator principle. The teacher is regarded as important from that point of view. This slogan establishes the contrast between samsara- the epitome of pain, imprisonment, and insanity- and the root guru- the embodiment of openness, freedom, and sanity- as the fundamental basis for all practice. As such, it is heavily influenced by the vajrayana tradition.
Pema Chodron "First, train in the premilaries." The preliminaries are the basic meditation practice - beneficial, supportive, warm-hearted, brilliant shamatha-vipashyana practice. When we say, "First, train in the preliminaries," it's not as if we first do shamatha-vipashyana pratice and then graduate to something more advanced. Shamatha-vipashyana practice is not only the earth that we stand on, it's also the air we breathe and the heart that beats inside us. Shamatha-vipashyana pratice is the essence of all other pratices as well. So when we say, "First, train in the preliminaries," it simply means that without this good base there's nothing to build on. Without it we couldn't understand tonglen pratice- and we wouldn't have any insight into our mind, into either our craziness or our wisdom. Point 2 The Main Pratice, Which Is Training in Bodhicitta Slogan 2 “Regard all Dharmas as dreams.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche “Regard all Dharmas as dreams.” This slogan is an expression of compassion and openness. It means that whatever you experience in your life—pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, grossness, refinement,sophistication, crudeness, heat, cold, or whatever—is purely memory. The actual discipline or pratice of the bodhisattva tradition is to regard whatever occurs as a phantom. Nothing ever happens. But because nothing happens, everything happens. When we want to be entertained, nothing seems to happen. But in this case, although everything is just a thought in your mind, a lot of underlying percolation takes place. That ‘nothing happening’ is the experience of openness, and that percolation is the experience of compassion. You can experience that dreamlike quality by relating with sitting meditation practice. When you are reflecting on the breath, suddenly discursive thoughts begin to arise; you begin to see things, to hear things, and to feel things. But all those perceptions are none other than your own mental creation. In the same way, you can see that your hate for your enemy, your love for your friends, and your attitude toward money, food, and wealth are all part of discursive thought. Regarding things as dreams does not mean that you have become fuzzy or woolly, that everything has an edge of sleepiness about it. You might actually have a good dream, vivid and graphic. Regarding dharmas as dreams means that although you might think that things are very solid, the way you perceive them is soft and dreamlike. For instance, if you have participated in group meditation practice, your memory of your meditation cushion and the person who sat in front of you is very vivid, as is your memory of your food and the sound of the gong and the bed you slept in. But none of those situations is regarded as completely invincible and solid and tough. Everything is shifty. Things have a dreamlike quality. But at the same time, the production of your mind is quite vivid. If you didn’t have a mind, you wouldn’t be able to perceive anything at all. Because you have a mind, you perceive things. Therefore, what you perceive is a product of your mind, using your sense organs as channels for the sense perceptions. Pema Chodron “Regard all Dharmas as dreams.” More simply, regard everything as a dream. Life is a dream. Death is also a dream, for that matter; waking is a dream and sleeping is a dream. Another way to put this is: “Every situation is a passing memory”. We went for a walk this morning, but now it is a memory. Every situation is a passing memory. As we live our lives, there is a lot of repetition—so many mornings greeted. so many meals eaten, so many drives to work and drives home, so many times spent with our friends and family, again and again, over and over. All of these situations bring up irritation, lust, anger, sadness, all kinds of things about the people with whom we work or live or stand in line or fight traffic. So much will happen in the same way over and over again. It’s all an excellent opportunity to connect with this sense of each situation being like a memory. It is said that with these slogans that are pointing to absolute truth - openness - one should not say “Oh, yes, I know,” but that one should just allow a mental gap to open, and wonder, “Could it be? Am I dreaming this?” Pinch yourself. Dreams are just as convincing as waking reality. You could begin to contemplate the fact that things are not as solid or as reliable as they seem. To bring it down to our shamatha pratice- the key is, it’s no big deal. We could all just lighten up. Regard all dharmas as dreams. With our minds we make a big deal out of ourselves, out of our pain, and out of our problems. If someone instructed you to catch the beginning, middle, and end of every thought, you’d find that they don’t seem to have a beginning, middle, and end. They definitely are there. You’re talking to yourself, you’re creating your whole identity, your whole world, your whole sense of problem, your whole sense of contentment, with this continual stream of thought. But if you really try to find thoughts they are always changing. As the slogan says, each situation and even each word and thought and emotion is passing memory. It’s like trying to see when water turns into steam. You can never find that precise moment. You know there’s water, because you can drink it and make it into soup and wash in it, and you know there’s steam, but you can’t see precisely when one changes into the other. Everything is like that. Have you ever been caught in the heavy-duty scenario of feeling defeated and hurt, and then somehow, for no particular reason, you just drop it? It just goes, and you wonder why you made “Much ado about nothing.” What was that all about? It also happens when you fall in love with somebody; you’re so completely into thinking about the person twenty-four hours a day. You are haunted and you want him or her so badly. Then a little while later, “I don’t know where we went wrong, but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.” We all know this feeling of how we make things a big deal and then realize that we’re making a lot out of nothing. I’d like to encourage us all to lighten up, to pratice with a lot of gentleness....Gentleness in our practice and in our life helps to awaken bodhichitta. It’s like remembering something. This compassion, this clarity, this openness are like something we’ve forgotten. Sitting here being gentle with ourselves, we’re rediscovering something. It’s like a mother reuniting with her child; having been lost to each other for a long, long time, they reunite. The way to reunite with Bodhicitta is to lighten up in your practice and in your whole life... Labeling our thoughts is a powerful support for lightening up, a very helpful way to reconnect with shunyata—this open dimension of our being, this fresh, unbiased dimension of our mind. When we come to that place where we say, “Thinking”-we can just say it with an unbiased attitude and with tremendous gentleness. Regard the thoughts as bubbles and the labeling like touching them with a feather. There’s just this light touch-“Thinking”- and they dissolve back into space... That’s the essential meaning of the absolute Bodhicitta slogans - to connect with the open, spacious quality of your mind, so that you can see that there’s no need to shut down and make such a big deal about everything. Point Two The Main Practice, Which is Training in Bodhicitta Ultimate Bodhicitta Slogans #3 Examine the nature of unborn awareness. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche “Examine the nature of unborn awareness.” Look at your basic mind, just simple awareness which is not divided into sections, the thinking process that exists within you. Just look at that, see that. Examining does not mean analyzing. It is just viewing things as they are, in the ordinary sense. The reason our mind is known as unborn awareness is that we have no idea of its history. We have no idea where this mind, our crazy mind, began in the beginning. It has no shape, no color, no particular portrait or characteristics. It usually flickers on and off, off and on, all the time. Sometimes it is hibernating, sometimes it is all over the place. Look at your mind. That is part of ultimate bodhicitta training or discipline. Our mind fluctuates constantly, back and forth, forth and back. Look at that, just LOOK AT THAT! You could get caught up in the fascination of regarding all dharmas as dreams and perpetuate unnecessary visions and fantasies of all kinds. Therefore, it is very important to get to this next slogan, “Examine the nature of unborn awareness.” When you look beyond the perceptual level alone, when you look at your own mind (which you cannot actually do, but you pretend to do), you find that there is nothing there. You begin to realize that there is nothing to hold on to. Mind is ‘unborn’. But at the same time, it is ‘awareness’ because you still perceive things. There is awareness and clarity. Therefore, you should contemplate that by seeing ‘who’is actually perceiving dharmas as dreams. If you look further and further, at your mind’s root, its base, you will find that it has no color and no shape. Your mind is, basically speaking, somewhat blank. There is nothing to it. We are beginning to cultivate a kind of shunyata possibility; although in this case that possibility is quite primitive, in the sense of simplicity and workability. When we look at the root, when we try to find out why we see things, why we hear sounds, why we feel, why we smell- if we look beyond that and beyond that- we find a kind of blankness. That blankness is connected with mindfulness. To begin with, you are mindful of some ‘thing’: you are mindful of yourself, you are mindful of your atmosphere, and you are mindful of your breath. But if you look at ‘why’ you are mindful, beyond ‘what’ you are mindful of, you begin to find there is no root. Everything begins to dissolve. That is the idea of examining the nature of unborn awareness. In Pema’s ‘Start Where You Are’ she talks about this slogan on page 17. Point Two The Main Practice, Which is Training in Bodhicitta Slogan #4 Self-liberate even the antidote. Pema Chodron "Self-liberate even the antidote." In case you thought you understood "Examine the nature of unborn awareness," let go even of that understanding, that pride, that security, that sense of ground. The antidote that you're being asked to liberate is shunyata itself. Let go of even the notion of emptiness, openness, or space.
There was a crazy-wisdom teacher in India named Saraha. He said that those who believe that everything is solid and real are stupid, like cattle, but that those who believe that everything is empty are even more stupid. Everything is changing all the time, and we keep wanting to pin it done, to fix it. So whenever you come up with a solid conclusion, let the rug be pulled out. You can pull out your own rug, and you can also let life pull it out for you.
Having the rug pulled out from under you is a big opportunity to change your fundamental pattern. It's like changing the DNA. One way to pull out your own rug is by just letting go, lightening up, being more gentle, and not making such a big deal.
This approach is very different from practicing affirmations, which has been a popular thing to do in some circles. Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not. That's a big contrast to actually uncovering the whisper, realizing that it's passing memory, and moving closer to all those fears and all those edgy feelings that maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine. It's not just one way. We are walking, talking paradoxes.
When we contemplate all dharmas as dreams and regard all our thoughts as passing memory--labeling them, "Thinking," touching them very lightly-- then things will not appear to be so monolithic. We will feel a lightening of our burden. Labeling your thoughts as "thinking" will help you see the transparency of thoughts, that things are actually very light and illusory. Every time your stream of thoughts solidifies into a heavy story line that seems to be taking you elsewhere, label that "thinking." Then you will be able to see how all the passion that's connected with these thoughts, or all the aggression, or all the heartbreak, is simply passing memory. If even for a second you actually had a full experience that it was all just thought, that would be a moment of full awakening.
When we say "Self-liberate even the antidote." that's encouragement to simply touch and then let go of whatever you come up with. Whatever bright solutions or big plans you come up with, just let them go, let them go, let them go. Whether you seem to have just uncovered the root of a whole life of misery or you're thinking of a root beer float--whatever you're thinking-let it go. When something pleasant comes up, instead of rushing around the room like a windup toy, you could just pause and notice and let go. This technique provides a gentle approach that breaks up the solidity of thoughts and memories. If the memory was a strong one, you'll probably find that something is left behind even when the words go. When that happens, you're getting closer to the heart. You're getting closer to the bodhicitta. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche "The antidote will vanish of itself." People who ask for Dharma teachings do so because they are afraid of what might happen to them after death. They decide that they must take refuge, request the lama for instruction and concentrate unwaveringly on the practice: a hundred thousand prostrations, a hundred thousand mandala offerings, recitations of the refuge formula and so on. These, of course, are positive thoughts, but thoughts, being without substantial nature, do not stay for very long. When the teacher is no longer present and there is no one to show what should and should not be done, then for most practitioners it is as the saying goes: Old yogis getting rich; old teachers getting married. This only goes to show that thoughts are impermanent, and we should therefore bear in mind that any thought or antidote--even the thought of emptiness--is itself by nature empty without substantial existence.
Class #1 Point Seven / Guidelines of Mind Training / Postmeditation #40 Correct all wrongs with one intention. In other words, we should practice the exchange of good for evil. Point Three Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment Paramita of Patience Slogan 13 Be grateful to everyone. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
"Be Grateful to Everyone."
This slogan also is dealing with kundzop, or conventional reality. That is to say, without this world we cannot attain enlightenment, there would be no journey. By rejecting the world we would be rejecting the ground and rejecting the path. All our past history and all our neurosis is related with others in some sense. All of our experiences are based on others, basically. As long as we have a sense of practice , some realization that we are treading on the path, every one of those little details that are seemingly obstacles to us becomes an essential part of the path. Without them we cannot attain anything at all--we have no feedback, we have nothing to work with, absolutely nothing to work with.
So in a sense all the things taking place around our world, all the irritations and all the problems, are crucial. Without others we cannot attain enlightenment - in fact, we cannot even tread on the path. In other words, we could say that if there is no noise outside during our sitting meditation, we cannot develop mindfulness. If we do not have aches and pains in our body, we cannot attain mindfulness, we cannot actually meditate. If everything were lovey-dovey and jellyfish - like, there would be nothing to work with. Everything would be completely blank. Because of all these textures around us, we are enriched. We have a reference point--encouragement, discouragement, or whatever. Everything is related to the path.
More-pgs 90-95, Training the Mind. Pema Chodron
"Be Grateful to Everyone."
The slogan 'Be grateful to everyone' is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected. Through doing that, we also make peace with the people we dislike. More to the point, being around people we dislike is often a catalyst for making friends with ourselves. Thus, "Be grateful to everyone."
If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would find out a lot about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face. If we were to come up with one word about each of the troublemakers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities, which we project onto the outside world. The people who repel us unwittingly show the aspects of ourselves that we find unacceptable, which otherwise we can't see.. In traditional teachings on lojong it is put another way: other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out. They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of boulders.
"Be grateful to everyone" is a way of saying that we can learn from any situation, especially is we pra c tice this slogan with awareness. The people and situations in our lives can remind us to catch neurosis as neurosis, to see when we're in our room under the covers, to see when we've pulled the shades, locked the door, and are determined to stay there.
There's a reason that you can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence, and basic goodness. Therefore, if the environment is supportive and encourages you to be brave and to open your heart and mind, you'll find yourself opening to the wisdom and compassion that's inherently there. It's like tapping into your source, tapping into what you already have. It's the willingness to open your eyes, your heart, and your mind, to allow situations in your life to become your teacher. With awareness, you are able to find out for yourself what causes misery and what causes happiness.
Again, more, pgs 57-62, Start Where You Are.
Point Three Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment Paramita of Patience #16 "Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation." Pema Chodren
"Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation."
This is a very interesting suggestion. These slogans are pointing out that we can awaken bodhicitta through everything, that nothing is an interruption. This slogan points out how interruptions themselves awaken us, how interruptions themselves- surprises, unexpected events, bolts out of the blue- can awaken us to the experience of both absolute and relative bodhicitta, to the open, spacious quality of our minds and the warmth of our hearts.
This is the slogan about surprises as gifts. These surprises can be pleasant or unpleasant; the main point is that they can stop our minds. You're walking along and a snowball hits you on the side of the head. It stops your mind. Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche
" In order to take unexpected conditions as the path, immediately join whatever you meet with meditation." When illness, demons, interruptions, or disturbing emotions come unexpect ed ly, or if you see someone else troubled by some unpleasant situation, think, "I shall just practice taking and sending." In all virtuous thoughts and actions think: “ May all sentient beings come to engage naturally in much greater dharma activity than this. ” Do the same when you are happy and comfortable. If you have some evil thought or are forced to engage in some form of evil activity, think: “ May every evil thought and action of every sentient beings be gathered in this one. ”
In summary, maintain the motivation to help others whatever you are doing: eating, sleeping, walking, or sitting. As soon as you encounter a situation, good or bad, work at this practice of mind training.
Point Four Showing the Utilization of Practice in One's Whole Life: Paramita of Exertion
Slogan 17 Practice the five strengths, The condensed heart instructions. First Strength -- Strong determination Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche We have five types of energizing factors, or five strengths, so that we can practice our bodhisattva discipline throughout our whole life: strong determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, reproach, and aspiration. Number one is strong determination. You are determined to maintain twofold bodhicitta. The practitioner should always have the attitude of maintaining bodhicitta--for this lifetime, this year, this month, this day. Strong determination means not wasting your time. It is also making the point that you and the practice are one. Practice is your way of strengthening yourself. Sometimes when you get up in the morning, particularly if you have had a late night or you have been partying, you feel very feeble, somewhat uncertain. Quite possibly you wake up with a hangover, feeling very guilty. You wonder whether you were foolish the night before, whether you did absurd things. You wonder what other people think of you and begin to be afraid that they might have lost their respect for you or that they might have confirmed your feebleness. You do a lot of worrying in that kind of situation. The idea of the first strength is that as soon as you open your eyes and look out the window, as soon as you wake up, you reaffirm your strong determination to continue with your bodhicitta pratice. And you do the same thing when you lie down on your bed at the end of the day, as you reflect back on your day's work, its problems. Its frustrations. its pleasures, and all the good and bad things that happened. As you are dozing off, you think with strong determination that as soon as you wake up in the morning you are going to maintain your practice with continual exertion, which means joy. So you have some sense of looking forward to tomorrow, an attitude of looking forward to your day when you wake up in the morning. ...You have a sense of appreciation and joy; therefore, your practice does not become torture or torment, it does not become a cage. Instead, your practice becomes a way of cheering yourself up constantly. Your practice might require a certain amount of exertion, a certain amount of pushing yourself, but you are well connected, so you are pleased to go to bed at night. Even your sleep becomes worthwhile; you sleep in a good frame of mind. The idea is one of waking up basic goodness, the alaya principle, and realizing that you are in the right spot, the right practice. So, there is a sense of joy in strong determination, which is the first strength. Pema Chodron The first strength is strong determination. Rather than some kind of dogged pushing through, strong determination involves connecting with joy, relaxing, and trusting. It's determination to use every challenge you meet as an opportunity to open your heart and soften, determination not to withdraw. One simple way to develop this strength is to develop a strong-hearted spiritual appetite. To do this, some kind of playful quality is needed. When you wake up in the morning, you can say "I wonder what's going to happen today. This may be the day that I die. This may be the day that I understand what the teachings are all about." The Native Americans, before they went into battle, would say, "Today is a good day to die." You could also say, "Today is a good day to live." Strong determination gives you the vehicle that you need to find out for yourself that you have everything it takes, that the fundamental happiness is right here, waiting. Strong determination not to shut anything out of your heart and not close up takes a sense of humor and an appetite, an appetite for enlightenment. Second Strength -- Familiarization Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche The second strength is known as familiarization. Because you have already developed strong determination, everything becomes a natural process. Even if you sometimes are mindless, even if you lose your concentration or your awareness, situations will remind you to go back to your practice. This is a process of familiarization in which your dharmic subconscious gossip has begun to become more powerful than your ordinary subconscious gossip. Bodhicitta has become familiar ground in whatever you do--whether vice, virtue, or in between. So you are getting used to bodhicitta as an ongoing realization. Again, this process is analogous to falling in love. When somebody mentions your lover's name, you feel both pain and pleasure. You feel turned on to that person's name and to anything associated with him or her. In the same way, the natural tendency of mindfulness-awareness, when the concept of egolessness has already evolved in your mind, is to flash on to dharma. You familiarize yourself with it. In other words, you no longer regard dharma as a foreign entity, but you begin to realize that dharma is a household thought, a household word, and a household activity. Each time you uncork your bottle of wine or unpop your Coca-Cola can or pour yourself a glass of water--whatever you do becomes a reminder. You cannot get rid of it; it becomes a natural situation. So you learn to live with your sanity. That is very hard for many people at the beginning, but once you begin to realize that sanity is part of your being, there shouldn't be any problem. Of course, occasionally you want to take a break. You want to run away and take a vacation from your sanity. You want to do something else. However, your basic strength begins to become more powerful, so that your basic wickedness or insanity is changed into mindfulness and realization and familiarity with wakefulness. Pema Chodron The next strength is familiarization. What familiarization means is that the dharma no longer feels like a foreign entity, your first thought becomes dharmic. You begin to realize that all the teachings are about yourself: you're here to study yourself. Dharma isn't philosophy. Dharma is basically a good recipe for how to cook yourself, how to soften the hardest, toughest piece of meat. Dharma is good instruction on how to stop cheating yourself, how to stop robbing yourself, how to find out who you really are, not in the limited sense of "I need" and "I'm gonna get," but through developing wakefulness as your habit, your way of perceiving everything. We talk about enlightenment as if it's a big accomplishment. Basically, it has to do with relaxing and finding out what you already have. The enlightened "you" might be a slightly different "you" from the one you're familiar with, but it still has hair growing out of its head, still has taste buds, and when it gets the flu, snot comes out of its nose. Enlightened, however, you might experience yourself in a slightly less claustrophobic way, maybe a completely non-cluastrophobic way. Familiarization means you don't have to search any further, and you know it. It's all in the "pleasantness of the presentness," in the very discursive thoughts you're having now, in all the emotions that are coursing through you; it's all in there somehow. Third Strength -- The Seed of Virtue Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche Number three is known as the seed of virtue. You have tremendous yearning all the time, so you do not take a rest from your wakefulness. It means not taking a break from your practice, basically speaking, but continuing on--not being content with what you are doing and not taking a break. You do not feel that you have had enough of it or that you have to do something else instead. At that point, your neurosis about individual freedom and human rights might come up. You might begin to think, "I have a right to do anything I want, and I want to dive to the bottom of hell. I love it! I like it.!" That kind of reactionism could happen. But you should pull yourself back up from the bottom of hell- for your own sake. You should realize that you cannot just give in to the little claustrophobia of your own sanity. In this case, virtue means that your body, speech, and mind are all dedicated to propagating bodhicitta in yourself. Pema Chodron The third strength is called the seed of virtue. In effect, this is buddha nature or basic goodness. It's like a swimming pool with no sides that you're swimming in forever. In fact, you're made out of water. Buddha nature isn't like a heart transplant that you get from elsewhere. "It isn't as if you're trying to teach a tree to talk," as Rinpoche once said. It's just something that can be awakened or, you might say, relaxed into. Let yourself fall apart into wakefulness. The strength comes from the fact that the seed is already there; with warmth and moisture it sprouts and becomes visible above the ground. You find yourself looking like a daffodil, or feeling like one, anyway. The practice is about softening or relaxing, but it's also about precision and seeing clearly. None of that implies searching. Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it. Fourth Strength – Reproach Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche Number four is reproach, reproaching your ego. It is revulsion with samsara. Whenever any ego-centered thought occurs, you should think, "It is because of such clinging to ego that I wander in samsara and suffer endless pain. Since ego-clinging is the source of pain, if I try to maintain ego, there can be no happiness. Therefore, I must try to tame ego as much as I can." If you even want to talk to yourself, you should talk in this way. In fact, talking to yourself is very highly recommended, but it obviously depends on what you talk to yourself about. In this case, you are encouraged to say to your ego: "You have created tremendous trouble for me, and I don't like you. You have caused me so much trouble by making me wander in the lower realms of samsara. I have no desire at all to hang around with you. I'm going to destroy you. This 'you'--who are you, anyway? Go away! I don't like you." Talking to your ego, reproaching yourself in that way, is very helpful. It is worth taking a shower and talking to yourself that way. It is worth sitting on the toilet seat and talking to yourself in that way. It would be a very good thing for you to do when you are driving. Instead of turning on the rock-punk, just turn on your reproach to your ego instead and talk to yourself. If you are being accompanied by somebody you might feel embarrassed, but you can still whisper to yourself. That is the best way to become an eccentric bodhisattva. Pema Chodron The fourth strength is called reproach. This one requires talking to yourself: "Ego, you've done nothing but cause me problems for ages. Give me a break. I'm not buying it anymore." Try it in the shower. You should talk to yourself all the time without embarrassment. When you see yourself starting to spin off in frivolity, say to yourself, "Be gone, you troublemaker!" This approach can be slightly problematic because we usually don't distinguish between who we think we are and our ego. The more gentleness that comes up, the more friendliness you feel for yourself, the more this dialogue is fruitful. But to the degree that you actually are hard on yourself, then this dialogue could just increase your self-criticism. Over the years, with encouragement from wonderful teachers, I have found that, rather than blaming yourself or yelling at yourself, you can teach the dharma to yourself. Reproach doesn't have to be a negative reaction to your personal brand of insanity. But it does imply that you see insanity as insanity, neurosis as neurosis, spinning off as spinning off. At that point, you can teach the dharma to yourself. This advice was given to me by Trangu Rinpoche. I was having anxiety attacks, and he said that I should teach the dharma to myself, just good simple dharma. So now I say, "Pema, what do you really want? Do you want to shut down and close off, do you want to stay imprisoned? Or do you want to let yourself relax here, let yourself die? Here's your chance to actually realize something. Here's your chance not to be stuck. So what do you really want? Do you want always to be right or do you want to wake up?" Reproach can be very powerful. You teach yourself the dharma in your own words. You can teach yourself the four noble truths, you can teach yourself about taking refuge-- ANYTHING that has to do with that moment when you're just about to re-create samsara as if you personally had invented it. Look ahead to the rest of your life and ask yourself what you want it to add up to. Each time you're willing to see your thoughts as empty, let them go, and come back to your breath, you're sowing seeds of wakefulness, seeds of being able to see the nature of mind, and seeds of being able to rest in unconditional space. It doesn't matter that you can't do it every time. Just the willingness, the strong determination to do it, is sowing the seeds of virtue. You find that you can do it more spontaneously and naturally, without its being an effort. It begins with some sense of exertion and becomes your normal state. That's the seed of bodhicitta ripening. You find out who you really are. Fifth Strength -- Aspiration Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche Aspiration. Number five is aspiration. The practitioner should end each session of meditation practice with the wish (1) to save all sentient beings- by himself, single handedly, (2) not to forget two-fold bodhichitta, even in his or her dreams, and (3) to apply bodhichitta in spite of whatever chaos and obstacles may arise. Because you have experienced joy and celebration in your practice, it does not feel like a burden to you. Therefore, you aspire further and further. You would like to free yourself from neurosis. You would also like to serve all "mother sentient beings"* throughout all times, all situations, at any moment. You are willing to become a rock or bridge or a highway. You are willing to serve any worthy cause that will help the rest of the world. This is the same basic kind of aspirations in taking the bodhisattva vow. It is also general instruction on becoming a very pliable person, so that the rest of the world can use you as a working basis for their enjoyment of sanity. footnote* A traditional phrase expressive of the mahayana view that all sentient beings at one time or another have been our mothers and thus should be treated with the utmost love and respect. Pema Chodron Aspiration. The last strength, aspiration, is also a powerful tool. A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself; it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself. The notion of aspiration is simply that you voice your wish for enlightenment. You say to yourself, for yourself, about yourself, and by yourself things like, "May my compassion for myself increase." You might be feeling completely hopeless, down on yourself, and you can voice your heartfelt aspiration: "May my sense of being obstructed decrease. May my experience of wakefulness increase. May I experience my fundamental wisdom. May I think of others before myself." Aspiration is much like prayer, except that there's nobody who hears you. Aspiration, yet again, is to talk to yourself, to be an eccentric bodhisattva. It is a way to empower yourself. In fact, all five of these strengths are ways to empower yourself. Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want. The five strengths are the heart instructions on how to live and how to die. Whether it's right now or at the moment of your death, they tell you how to wake up to whatever is going on.
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