The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness

Everyone who walks up to you has entered that sacred space, and it’s not an accident. Whatever comes into the space is there to teach you.

The antidote to being completely caught by lust and passion, wanting so much that it hurts, is your posture. Just resettle and have this sense of mindfulness of body.

The second part of this particular teaching is realizing that you’re not a victim of anything, and neither are you a patient that some doctor has to cure. You’re actually a sane, healthy, decent, basically good person, and you can find your own balance.

The essence of samsara is this tendency that we have to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. The basic teaching is that that is how we keep ourselves miserable, unhappy, and stuck in a very small, limited view of reality. That is how we keep ourselves enclosed in a cocoon. Ou

So you think of that person and up come those awful feelings, and when you’re breathing in, you connect with them—their quality and texture and just how they grab your heart. It’s not that you try to figure them out; you just feel the pain. Then on the out-breath you relax, let go, open up, ventilate the whole thing.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way. One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ou

Then those same demons will appear as friendly, warmhearted companions on the path.

The third reminder is karma: every action has a result. One could give a whole seminar on the law of karma. But fundamentally, in our everyday life, it’s a reminder that it’s important how we live.

If we understand renunciation properly, we also will serve as an inspiration for other people because of our hero quality, our warrior quality, the fact that each of us meets our challenges all the time. When somebody works with hardship in an openhearted humorous way like a warrior, when somebody cultivates his or her bravery, everyone responds, b