11 Overcoming Resistance

T

he sloganof the day is “Four practices are the
best of methods.” This slogan is about the four
things that help us to practice both relative and ab-
solute bodhichitta: ( 1 ) accumulating merit, ( 2 ) puri-
fying our negative actions—usually called confessing
our negative actions, ( 3 ) feeding the ghosts, and ( 4 )
offering to the protectors, which is sometimes trans-
lated as asking the protectors to help you in your
practice.
Each of these four practices jumps right into the
guts of unwanted feelings, emotions, and situations.
Earlier we talked about how the best kind of protec-
tion is to see the empty, dreamlike quality of the con-
fusion. Whereas seeing confusion as the four kayas
is something we do on the level of absolute bodhi-
chitta, the four practices are about actual things that
you can do at the relative level in terms of ritual and
ceremony.
However you talk about it, the crux of the matter is
to overcome resistance. These four practices are four
methods that Milarepa might have used to try to get
the demons out of his cave. The punch line of that
story was that when the resistance was gone, so were

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