to work with things. “Always maintain only a joyful
mind” can be very helpful to remember in such a sit-
uation.
Anything that helps us not to be so desperate
about pleasure and not to fear its transitory nature
is also introducing us to being at home in our world
and being able to help other people. In popular songs
you hear lines like “Freedom’s just another word for
nothing left to lose” or “I’ve got plenty of nothing
and nothing’s plenty for me.” “Great bliss arising from
the experience of emptiness” is how it’s described in
traditional Tibetan texts, which sounds somewhat
remote from personal experience. However, all these
words are saying the same thing: we practice and
we live in order to be able to relax and lighten up and
not make such a big deal about everything that hap-
pens—the successes and the failures, the rewards
and the punishments.
If your principal witness (in “Of the two witnesses,
hold the principal one”) is a judgmental authority fig-
ure, it might be hard to lighten up. Let’s say you’re
meditating, but there’s this other “you” standing be-
hind with a stick, saying, “You’re thinking again,
you’re always thinking! Whack! There goes the ton-
glen bell and you didn’t practice tonglen for even a
second! Smack!” You say to yourself, “I can’t do this.
I’m hopeless. Everybody else seems to be doing fine,
but I don’t seem to have any basic goodness.” Then
you beat yourself up and forget all about gentleness,
132 Lighten Up