Start Where You Are: How to accept yourself and others

Our greatest obstacles are also our greatest wisdom.

When these things arise, train gradually and very gently without making it into a big deal. Begin to get the hang of feeling what’s underneath the story line. Feel the wounded heart that’s underneath the addiction, self-loathing, or anger. If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the pers

you have to unlock the door. You don’t open it yet, because you have to work with your fear that somebody you don’t like might come in.

For instance, you find yourself being tense and remember that I said to lighten up, and then you feel, “Basically, I’d better stop sitting because I can’t lighten up and I’m not a candidate for discovering bodhichitta or anything else.”

Sound is often an image for sambhogakaya; you can’t see or capture it, but it has vibration, energy, and movement. Nirmanakaya – the third of the four kayas

You don’t really know what’s going to benefit somebody, but it doesn’t benefit anybody to allow someone to beat you up, eat all your food, and put you out on the street.

It doesn’t seem to happen by trying to get it or capture it. It happens by letting go; it happens by relaxing your mind, and it happens by the aspiration and the longing to want to communicate with yourself and others. Each of us finds our own way.

instead of feeling that there’s a lot of space in which we could lead our life as a child of illusion, we’re robbing ourselves, robbing ourselves from letting the world speak for itself.

Even when we’re given the methods for how to give ourselves a break, we are so stubborn.

This sudden unreasonableness that comes out of nowhere is called a dön. It wakes you up, and you should regard that as best, rather than try to get rid of the problem.