#humanbn

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“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.”

[humanbn]

SOMETIMES

by David Whyte

Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest,

breathing like the ones in the old stories,

who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound,

you come to a place whose only task

is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and

to stop what you are becoming while you do it,

questions that can make or unmake a life,

questions that have patiently waited for you,

questions that have no right to go away.

[humanbn]

SITTING IN THE FIRE

Pema Chodrun

I often wondered why it is that when I get hooked, when I’m resentful for example, and I breathe with it instead of acting out, it feels like I’m sitting in the middle of the fire. I asked Kongtrul Rinpoche about this. He said, “Because by not doing the habitual thing, you’re burning up the seeds of aggression.” As each individual works with it in this way, it’s not just a minor thing. It’s an opportunity we’re given not only to connect with the inexpressible goodness of our minds and our hearts, but also to dissolve aggression in the world.

[humanbn]

Visualizations

Purify Negativity with CompassionInstead of looking at others, telling yourself your usual story about who people are, visualize every person you see as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the very embodiment of compassion. Deeply doing this, there’s no way you can feel negative toward them. It’s impossible. Instead of misery, they give you blissful energy.Using visualizations can be a powerful form of meditation—but don’t imagine visualizations are something new and foreign that you have no experience with. In reality, you visualize all day long. The breakfast you eat in the morning is a visualization; in an important way it is a kind of projection of your own mind. You are visualizing that your breakfast has some kind of independent existence. Similarly, whenever you go shopping and think, “This is nice,” or “I don’t like that,” whatever you’re looking at is a projection of your own mind. When you get up in the morning and see the sun shining and think, “Oh, it’s going to be nice today,” that’s your own mind visualizing. Visualization is not something supernatural; it’s scientific. So the challenge is to harness that already well-developed skill and make it into something wholesome and useful. Accordingly, consider the following practices:Visualize yourself as a buddha, standing upright or sitting on your cushion, with your body completely transparent from your head down to your feet. Your body is utterly clear and empty of all material substance, like a balloon filled with air. Nothing at all is inside. Contemplate this for several minutes.Or try this: Instead of looking at others, telling yourself your usual story about who people are, visualize every person you see as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the very embodiment of compassion. Deeply doing this, there’s no way you can feel negative toward them. It’s impossible. Instead of misery, they give you blissful energy. This practice is a powerful way to purify negativity.Another visualization you can experiment with is this: When you wash, imagine that you are washing your divine body with blissful energy instead of washing your mundane, suffering body with water. Then dress your divine body with blissful, divine robes instead of ordinary clothes. If you start your morning like that, the rest of your day will be much easier.From When the Chocolate Runs Out by Lama Yeshe © 2011. Reprinted by permission of Wisdom Publications.