Start Where You Are

Overcoming Resistance
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the wisdom principle. Traditionally you offer cake.
At the inner level, you’re inviting that principle to be
alive and well in your being. You’re willing to prac-
tice in order to nurture your ability to know when
you’re awake and when you’re falling asleep and to
bring yourself back to the wakefulness of the pres-
ent moment.
In the lojong teachings, the approach is that the
best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path
of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into
them. Befriending emotions or developing compas-
sion for those embarrassing aspects of ourselves, the
ones that we think of as sinful or bad, becomes the
raw material, the juicy stuff with which we can work
to awaken ourselves. The four practices are the best
of methods for overcoming resistance, the best of
methods for transforming bad circumstances into the
way of enlightenment.
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Overcoming Resistance

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1 2
Empty Boat
I
h a d a n i n t e r v i e w
with someone who said she
couldn’t meditate; it was impossible because she
had real-life problems. In the meditation we’re doing
we’re trying to bring home the very supportive mes-
sage that real-life problems are the material for wak-
ing up, not the reason to stop trying. This is news you
can use.
Today’s slogan is “Whatever you meet unexpect-
edly, join with meditation.” This is a very interesting
suggestion. These slogans are pointing out that we
can awaken bodhichitta through everything, that
nothing is an interruption. This slogan points out
how interruptions themselves awaken us, how inter-
ruptions themselves—surprises, unexpected events,
bolts out of the blue—can awaken us to the experi-
ence of both absolute and relative bodhichitta, to the
open, spacious quality of our minds and the warmth
of our hearts.
This is the slogan about surprises as gifts. These
surprises can be pleasant or unpleasant; the main
point is that they can stop our minds. You’re walking
along and a snowball hits you on the side of the head.
It stops your mind.
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The slogan “Rest in the nature of alaya, the
essence” goes along with this. Usually it is consid-
ered a slogan for when you’re sitting on the cushion
meditating; you can then rest your mind in its natu-
ral, unbiased state. But the truth is that when the rug
is pulled out the same thing happens: without any ef-
fort on our part, our mind finds itself resting in the
nature of alaya.
I was being driven in a car one day, when a horn
honked loudly from behind. A car comes up by my
window and the driver’s face is purple and he’s shak-
ing his fist at me—my window is rolled down and so
is his—and he yells, “Get a job!” That one still stops
my mind.
The instruction is that when something stops your
mind, catch that moment of gap, that moment of big
space, that moment of bewilderment, that moment
of total astonishment, and let yourself rest in it a lit-
tle longer than you ordinarily might.
Interestingly enough, this is also the instruction
on how to die. The moment of death is apparently 
a major surprise. Perhaps you’ve heard this word
samadhi (meditative absorption), that we remain in
samadhi at the moment we die. What that means is
that we can rest our minds in the nature of alaya.
We can stay open and connect with the fresh, unbi-
ased quality of our minds, which is given to us at the
moment of our death. But it’s also given to us
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