Start Where You Are

power yourself. Buddhism itself is all about empow- ering yourself, not about getting what you want. The five strengths are the ...

14 Loving-Kindness and Compassion A ll dharma agreesat one point. All the teach- ings and all the practices are about just one t ...

chitta, which we instinctively protect so that nothing will touch it. This is a life-affirming view; it starts from the point of ...

you’re the only one who knows what is opening and what is closing down; you’re the only one who knows. The next slogan, “Of the ...

in and out all over the place but your motivation isn’t to befriend and begin to penetrate those areas of yourself that you fear ...

idea of karma is that you continually get the teach- ings that you need in order to open your heart. To the degree that you didn ...

ingness to feel the fear, to make fear your companion, is growing. You’re willing to get to know yourself at this deep level. Af ...

15 Lighten Up T he next two slogans—”Always maintain only a joyful mind” and “If you can practice even when distracted, you are ...

minder. Instead of habitually clinging to what’s de- lightful, you could become accustomed to giving it away, sending it out to ...

to work with things. “Always maintain only a joyful mind” can be very helpful to remember in such a sit- uation. Anything that h ...

or if you remember, you say, “You’re not gentle! Whack!” You hear a slogan like “Always maintain only a joy- ful mind,” and for ...

have a sense of humor. Things just keep popping your serious state of mind. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for ...

she had this time to enjoy her life, which she had not enjoyed up to the moment that she got sick. Finally, the day before she d ...

16 Abandon Any Hope of Fruition O ur next sloganis “Abandon any hope of fruition.” You could also say, “Give up all hope” or “Gi ...

to be later. We don’t quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present. For example, it’s easy to hope that things ...

tle sense of disappointment, a sense of things not completely measuring up. In one of the first teachings I ever heard, the teac ...

In Boston there’s a stress-reduction clinic run on Buddhist principles. It was started by Dr. Jon Kabat- Zinn, a Buddhist practi ...

more than two thousand years ago and was smarter than you’ll ever be. Buddha is our inherent nature— our buddha nature—and what ...

of compassion; anything you could think or feel is worthy of appreciation. This teaching was powerful for me; it stuck. I would ...

there’s a dispute about what it’s going to be. The food is sometimes good and sometimes terrible; it’s just a very uncomfortable ...