The dharma in the self
May. 7th, 2025 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mickiThis chapter is all about finding the dharma in the self, through meditative awareness on the nature of the self. She talks about the necessity of looking at yourself clearly.
“However, when we sit down to meditate and take an honest look at our minds, there is a tendency for it to become a rather morbid and depressing project. We can lose all sense of humor and sit with the grim determination to get to the bottom of this thinking mess. After a while when people have been practicing that way, they begin to feel so much guilt and distress that they just break down and they might say to someone they trust, where's the joy in all of this?
“So along with clear seeing, there's another important element, and that's kindness. It seems that without clarity and honesty we don't progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking like you've been sucking on lemons. We become so caught up in introspection that we lose any contentment or gratitude we might have had. That's why there's so much emphasis on kindness.... learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important period the reason it's important is that fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe. When we discover the Buddha that we are, we realize that everything and everyone is Buddha. We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake. Everything is equally precious and whole and good and everyone is equally precious and whole and good. When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that's how we perceive the universe.”
“However, when we sit down to meditate and take an honest look at our minds, there is a tendency for it to become a rather morbid and depressing project. We can lose all sense of humor and sit with the grim determination to get to the bottom of this thinking mess. After a while when people have been practicing that way, they begin to feel so much guilt and distress that they just break down and they might say to someone they trust, where's the joy in all of this?
“So along with clear seeing, there's another important element, and that's kindness. It seems that without clarity and honesty we don't progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking like you've been sucking on lemons. We become so caught up in introspection that we lose any contentment or gratitude we might have had. That's why there's so much emphasis on kindness.... learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important period the reason it's important is that fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe. When we discover the Buddha that we are, we realize that everything and everyone is Buddha. We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake. Everything is equally precious and whole and good and everyone is equally precious and whole and good. When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that's how we perceive the universe.”
