Start Where You Are

there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiotgenerosity. For example, trying to smooth e ...

ing cigarettes, drinking beer, eating your food, and then beating you up. You think you’re being a warrior and a bodhisattva by ...

you consider to be wise and courageous about their lives, you may find that they have hurt a lot of people and made a lot of mis ...

wallow in self-pity,” that the first step is to see yourself jealous, seeyourself frivolous, seeyourself wallowing in self-pity. ...

on, come on! Give yourself a break. Get to know this stuff. Drop the story line.” “Forget it!” you say. Boy are you stubborn. Th ...

the habitual pattern as a way of life. So whenever you see yourself spinning off in some kind of habitual way, you could aspire ...

one day’s activities can be painful, but you may end up respecting yourself more, because you see that a lot happened; you weren ...

21 High-Stakes Practice P ogo said, “We have met the enemy and they are us.” This particular slogan now appears a lot in the env ...

others is a high-stakes maitri practice, because when we start to work with others, somehow they all seem to end up looking like ...

mother went to the mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” and instead of, “You are, swee ...

course the process also helps us. The whole path seems to be about developing curiosity, about looking out and taking an interes ...

an intimate relationship with them. This teaching al- ways seemed old-fashioned to me. Then I read a book by Joanna Macy in whic ...

Today’s slogan is “Take on the three principal causes.” The three principal causes are what help us to keep our heart open, to r ...

tween the spiritual friend and everybody else in your life is that you’ve made a commitment to stick with him or her through thi ...

try to con the situation, you feel all the ways in which you try to make yourself look good. You’re seeing clearly what you do a ...

The teachings and practices. The second principal cause is the teachings and practices. You have a lot of support when you see w ...

Another slogan says, “This time, practice the main points.” What that’s saying is that for all of us it’s a crucial time. We ha ...

hisattva vows never wane. The refuge vow is a com- mitment not to seek islands of safety any longer but to learn how to leap, ho ...

22 Train Wholeheartedly N ow it’s timefor us to continue our journey and “walk it like we talk it.” One of the final slogans is ...

a hard time giving up smoking; the anxiety was trig- gering an old eating disorder. The young man said he just kept telling her ...