Start Where You Are

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face. You realize that the man across from you is also
thinking about breakfasts because he has a resentful
look on his face, which makes you laugh because you
were there just one second ago.
The world opens up and suddenly we’re there for
what’s happening. The solidity of our thoughts be-
comes transparent, and we can connect automati-
cally with this space—shunyata—in ourselves. We
have the ability to drop our story line, to rouse our-
selves.
That’s an everyday experience of shunyata. But it’s
also a very advanced practice if you can do it when
you don’t happen to feel like it. If everything is solid
and intense and you’re wallowing in self-pity or
something else, if someone says to you at that point,
“Just drop it,” even in the sweetest, kindest, most
gentle voice, you want to punch the person in the
nose. You just want to keep wallowing in resentment
and self-pity.
The whole point of the practice of lojong is that
you start where you are. The slogan “Abandon any
hope of fruition” is also encouragement to just be
where you are, with your numbness or resentment or
whatever. Just start where you are. Then as a result of
doing the practice, to your surprise you find that this
week you can drop it more easily than last week; or
this year you can drop it more easily than last year. As
time goes by, you find that you can spontaneously just
drop it more and more.
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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
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really get into this one. In general, however, I’d like to
encourage you to use the whole lojong and tonglen
approach as practice even after you finish your formal
meditation period. That’s where it’s most powerful,
most real, and most heartfelt. As you’re going about
your day and you’re seeing things that touch your
heart, or you’re feeling things that scare you or make
you feel uptight or resentful, you can begin to think
of doing the exchange, breathing in and breathing out
on the spot. This is necessary and helpful. After med-
itation this practice feels quite real, sometimes a lot
more real than in the meditation room.
This slogan about the four kayas points out that it’s
in shamatha-vipashyana practice that you begin to
see the nonsubstantial nature of things. It’s ad-
dressed to that part of the practice where we say,
“Thinking.” You’re completely caught up. You’ve gone
to New York City in your mind, and you’re having that
breakfast, and you’re reliving resentments and joys,
and then without any effort, you wake up. That’s
what happens, as you know, but it’s not like you make
yourself come back. It’s that suddenly you notice and
wake up, and then you’re told to say, “Thinking.”
That label, “thinking,” is the beginning of acknowl-
edging that the whole drama doesn’t have any sub-
stance, that it arises out of nowhere, but it seems
extremely vivid. Even though the story line goes away,
there’s energy and movement. It definitely seems to
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