Slogan #19
All dharma agrees at one point.
Imagine that we’re sitting together having tea, holding space for both conversation and shared silence. These slogans have a direct application and practical relevance to our lives right now. Let’s break down complex and abstract aphorisms into manageable, reality-driven, bite-sized practice pieces. Compassion training is all about developing concrete and measurable ways to authentically practice and live these slogans.
All dharma exhorts us to give up ego-clinging. The process of practice, of working through these slogans, is to open up, to lose our armor, to be brave and vulnerable with first ourselves and then with the world. We start in a self-constructed room that feels impenetrable. But then we notice a window, which we open a crack. And then we notice the door. And we walk through it and leave behind a life of entitlement. Compassion is a call to action to open the windows and doors of the self. So stop personalizing everything. Stop arguing with reality. Stop making excuses. Stop defining success as having things work out in your favor. Step out of perceived comfort zones. Would you rather be right or would you rather be free? Practice is about freeing ourselves from fixed ideas and notions so we can be fully present and connected to our limitless potential for compassion, love, equanimity, and joy. The practice begins with ourselves but if it morphs into self-absorption, then it is painful. We will have no room in our heart for others. May we meet this next breath, sensation, thought, and emotion with kindness
Here’s poet Brandon Thompson’s rendering of slogan #19:
jesus and buddha were brothers
but it wasn’t just these two
who whispered
Into each other’s ears
mohammed and krishna spoke the same truths
In different tongues
but it is not just the prophets
who hold the keys to that
great
universal door
all of the teachings –
every lesson you’ve ever heard –
are sharpened arrow tips
drawn and loosed by the Invisible One
they fly
with a most auspicious purpose:
to wake you up,
to get you out of
your own way,
and to show you that suffering
Is caused by your own caught-up-ness,
but that there is a way
to become
uncaught