Sublime

Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this “I” who wants to find security—who wants something to hold on to—can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the un

we expect that what is always in the process of change should be graspable and predictable. Because we mistake what is impermanent to be permanent, we suffer.

Practicing like this, “one drip at a time,” you’ll find yourself gradually becoming free of the mental and emotional limitations that are the source of fatigue, disappointment, anger, and despair, and discover within yourself an unlimited source of clarity, wisdom, diligence, peace, and compassion.

So right from the beginning it’s helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.

Tonglen practice (and all meditation practice) is not about later, when you get it all together and you’re this person you really respect. You may be the most violent person in the world – that’s a fine place to start. That’s a very rich place to start – juicy, smelly.

When we train in awakening bodhichitta, we are nurturing the flexibility of our mind. In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure about who we are—or wh

Right away our own suffering becomes smaller.

how do we create space for other people and ourselves to connect with our own wisdom? How do we create a space where we can find out how to become more a part of this world we are living in and less separate and isolated and afraid?

an anthropologist named Alfred Kroeber