Start Where You Are

sometimes you do strange things. Because you’re lonely, you say cruel words; because you want some- one to love you, you insult ...

with the enemy—heart to heart—is the only way that things can change. As long as we hate the enemy, then we suffer and the enemy ...

know—something that you befriend by not acting out or repressing all the feelings that you feel. Whether we’re talking about the ...

puts a foot in and tells you you should be a different religion or vote for someone you don’t like or give money that you don’t ...

When he finished playing, it wasn’t there. The four other people in the bar were just sitting there looking at him with big smug ...

will continue to feel inadequate, and we can use these experiences to wake up, just as they did. The lojong teachings give us th ...

8 Drive All Blames into One I ’d like to talk a bitabout another slogan, “Drive all blames into one.” When we say, as in a previ ...

This is true in Israel with the Arabs and the Jews. This is true in Northern Ireland with the Protestants and the Catholics. The ...

we might see quite a shift in the aggressive energy that’s causing such a widespread holocaust. “Drive all blames into one”—or “ ...

You can take this slogan beyond what we think of as “blame” and practice applying it simply to the gen- eral sense that somethin ...

instruction—that’s what it means by dropping the object. Then you can do tonglen. If you aren’t feeding the fire of anger or the ...

necessary to stop talking to yourself about how wrong everything is—or how right everything is, for that matter. I challenge you ...

came on really mean. He was tough and he snarled and he walked around with a big chip on his shoul- der. You had the feeling tha ...

anthem. This was an awful experience for the rest of us because for some reason he loved to sing the Shambhala anthem in a high- ...

9 Be Grateful to Everyone T he slogan“Be grateful to everyone” is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have ...

can learn from any situation, especially if we practice this slogan with awareness. The people and situa- tions in our lives can ...

teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best. There may be a Juan or Juanita in your life, and Juan or Juanita i ...

teachings and the practice very personally, not trust- ing anybody else’s interpretations, because you your- self have the wisdo ...

you just gave the last person. But that just leaves this new person cold; he couldn’t care less. You have the humbling experienc ...

goals for others can be aggressive—really wanting a success story for ourselves. When we do this to oth- ers, we are asking them ...