world really small. When you feel craving, you could
be sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon, but all
you can see is this piece of chocolate cake that
you’re craving. With aversion, you’re sitting on the
edge of the Grand Canyon, and all you can hear is
the angry words you said to someone ten years ago.
With ignorance, you’re sitting on the edge of the
Grand Canyon with a paper bag over your head.
Each of the three poisons has the power to capture
you so completely that you don’t even perceive
what’s in front of you.
This “Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds
of virtue” is really a peculiar idea. It turns the con-
ventional formula on its head in an unpredictable,
nonhabitual way. It points to how the three poisons
can be three seeds of becoming a child of illusion,
how to step out of this limited world of ego fixation,
how to step out of the world of tunnel vision. And the
slogan is just an introduction to how this notion
works. Tonglen practice will give you a very explicit
method for working with this kind of lojong logic or,
you could say, big-heart logic.
There’s nothing really wrong with passion or ag-
gression or ignorance, except that we take it so per-
sonally and therefore waste all that juicy stuff. The
peacock eats poison and that’s what makes the colors
of its tail so brilliant. That’s the traditional image for
this practice, that the poison becomes the source of
Poison as Medicine 39