In Eight Steps to Happiness Geshe-la says "'Self' and 'other' are relative terms, rather like 'this mountain' and 'that mountain ... 'This' and 'that' therefore depend upon our point of reference. This is also true of self and other. By climbing down the mountain of self, it is possible to ascend the mountain of other, and thereby cherish others as much as we presently cherish ourself."

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Testing My Practice

One of the great things at Festival is the gems of wisdom you hear even in conversation. This Summer Kelsang Khandro mentioned offhandedly that you can tell whether you're actually practicing by whether you can make yourself happy. Brilliant! I'd never thought of it like that. It's such a clear, easy way to find out how your practice is doing.
If you've read even the first page of Modern Buddhism or heard Gen-la Dekyong teach this year, you know the definition of Buddhism is "the practice of Buddha's teachings."
We have all kinds of ways to brighten up our minds when they start to go "dark" as Gen-la called it ... and hopefully we're paying enough attention to our state of mind that we can catch the decline early, when it's easier to turn around. (The beginning of anger is often compared to a small fire; we want to douse while it is still small. But when my mind is going bad, it feels like I'm digging a hole, and when I've found myself deep in a hole, it's much harder to get out of.)
There's a quote I like that's often attributed to Elvis Presley, but seems more likely to have come from a writer named Roger Babson: "When things go wrong, don't go with them."
Usually we think of mental practices - from vizualizing Buddhas to remembering emptiness to generating compassion, and so on - but at Summer Festival everyone was reminded that physical prostrations are a great way to turn your mind around, because they purify your energy winds (of course, to be effective this should also be a mental prostration).

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