Start Where You Are

(Dana P.) #1

and you offer it. Maybe you offer it during a cere-
mony, maybe you put it out each morning, but in any
case you physically offer something to the ghosts, the
negative aspects of yourself.
When Trungpa Rinpoche talked about feeding the
ghosts, he talked about unreasonableness that just
pops up out of nowhere. Out of nowhere we are un-
bearably sad. Out of nowhere we’re furious and we
want to destroy the place. He said, “Your fists are at
your wife’s eyes.” What an image! Without a warning,
unreasonableness just comes up out of nowhere—
Bang!—there it is. Frequently it comes first thing in
the morning, and then the whole day has that angry,
pissed-off feeling. It’s the same with sadness, the
same with passion.
This sudden unreasonableness that comes out of
nowhere is called a dön.It wakes you up, and you
should regard that as best, rather than try to get rid of
the problem. So, on the outer level, you give the dön
a cake. On the inner level, you see that a dön has
risen, that it has all this force, but you refrain from
blackening anybody’s eyes, from acting it out, and
you also refrain from repressing it. You take the mid-
dle way yet again and let yourself be there with the
full force of the dön. Being there has the power to pu-
rify you. That’s a description of 100 percent mindful-
ness.
Just as you accumulate merit by going beyond
hope and fear and saying, “Let it be,” the same with


Overcoming Resistance 105
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