The same goes for compassion. We all have com-
passion. When we remember or see certain things,
we can, without any effort at all, open our hearts.
Then we’re told to have compassion for our enemies,
for the Juans of our life, for the people that we really
hate. That’s advanced practice. But as a result of
doing lojong practice and giving up all hope of
fruition, of just relating with who we are now and
with what we’re feeling now, we find that the circle of
our compassion begins to widen, and we are able to
feel compassion in increasingly difficult situations.
Compassion starts coming to us because we have
the aspiration to do the practice and to get more in
touch with our own pain and our own joy. In other
words, we are willing to get real. We realize that we
can’t fake it and we can’t force it, but we know we
have what it takes to work with how we are right now.
So we start that way, and both the ability to drop it
and cheer up and the ability to open our hearts begin
to grow of their own accord.
“Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpass-
able shunyata protection” is really encouragement
not to make such a big deal of things. We can at least
entertain the thought that we could drop it and re-
member what it feels like when we do drop it—how
the world opens up—and discover the big world out-
side of our little ego-bound cocoon.
This particular slogan is meant as meditation in-
struction. It’s said that only on the cushion can you
Cutting the Solidity of Thoughts 93