Slogan #8
Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue.
I call this slogan the Power of 3. We label the world around us in order to make sense of all experienced phenomena. Because we’re hardwired for survival, our needs for safety, control, and environmental mastery are paramount. The objects of perception? Everything: people, thoughts, sensations, and emotions! We categorize all these objects into three groups: pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent, or friends, enemies and neutrals.
The three poisons are our reactions: greed, passion, or craving; aversion, aggression, or hatred; or indifference, ignorance, or denial. We act out or shut down; we personalize and explode or implode.
Slogan #8 offers the antidote: do not suppress these feelings away nor act out on them. Instead, take responsibility for your reactions, digest and metabolize the poison so that like the peacock, you’ll experience the brilliance of your bodhicitta heart. When poisons arise, let go of the story and practice Tonglen to transform the three poisons into seeds of virtue. Bow to what’s happening and become a child of illusion. :) Actively choose compassion as your default. The seeds of virtue—oving kindness, equanimity, and genuine interest—mobilize reactive energies so that we do not continue to suffer from their toxicity.
Tonglen Practice #2: Be a superhero in training! The process of tonglen—bringing to mind pain and difficulty, touching it and breathing it in and holding it in your heart—awakens us to a larger view of reality. We breathe in resistance, betrayal, hopelessness , disappointment, and breathe out clarity, acceptance, love and compassion. Meditation teacher, Willa Baker, invites us to “ imagine that your body is the body of all beings – your body contains the whole universe and every being in it.” Try this practice of Tonglen by Jacoby Ballard:
Breathe in love and breathe out love (breathe in the love that is you and surrounds you and return that love to the world.
Breathe in suffering and breathe out love (here we let the suffering that we see hear feel touch our heart and instead of passing it on, we send out love)
Breathe in suffering and breathe out forgiveness. May your pain be eased. May you be at peace.
Breathe in love and breathe out love.
Journaling prompts
Pay attention to how and what you label. What are your typical reactions? What are your typical poisons? Can you follow a difficult situation through from its inception to the point where you pause and practice?
Consider the Japanese aesthetic “wabi-sabi”: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect. The world is already broken and yet, when we drop our fears and open our hearts, its preciousness is there too. There isn’t a difference between self and other.