Start Where You Are

Cutting the Solidity of Thoughts

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manifest in terms of tables and chairs and people and
animals, and it seems so tangible, but the moment
you say, “Thinking,” you’re acknowledging that the
whole drama is just a thought in your mind. That’s a
recognition of shunyata, or emptiness. Maybe each
of us has had some moments of how liberating that
can be.
When the thoughts arise it might occur to you to
wonder where they come from. Where do they come
from? It seems as if they come from nowhere. You’re
just faithfully following your breath and—Wham!—
you’re in Hawaii surfing. Where did it come from?
And where does it go? Big drama, big drama’s hap-
pening, big, big, drama. And it’s 9:30 in the morning.
“Oooh. Wow! This is extremely heavy.” A car horn
honks, and suddenly you’re not in that drama any-
more, you’re in another drama.
I was once instructed to meditate on thoughts. I
investigated the nature of thought for two whole
months. I can tell you firsthand that you can never
find a thought. There is nothing there of substance,
but with our minds we make it Extremely Big Deal.
Another slogan says, “All activities should be done
with one intention.” Breathing in, breathing out, feel-
ing resentful, feeling happy, being able to drop it, not
being able to drop it, eating our food, brushing our
teeth, walking, sitting—whatever we’re doing could
Cutting the Solidity of Thoughts
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be done with one intention, which is that we want to
wake up, we want to ripen our compassion, and we
want to ripen our ability to let go. Everything in our
lives can wake us up or put us to sleep, and basically
it’s up to us to let it wake us up.
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Cutting the Solidity of Thoughts

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1 1
Overcoming Resistance
T
h e s l o g a n
of the day is “Four practices are the
best of methods.” This slogan is about the four
things that help us to practice both relative and ab-
solute bodhichitta: (1) accumulating merit, (2) puri-
fying our negative actions—usually called confessing
our negative actions, (3) feeding the ghosts, and (4)
offering to the protectors, which is sometimes trans-
lated as asking the protectors to help you in your
practice.
Each of these four practices jumps right into the
guts of unwanted feelings, emotions, and situations.
Earlier we talked about how the best kind of protec-
tion is to see the empty, dreamlike quality of the con-
fusion. Whereas seeing confusion as the four kayas 
is something we do on the level of absolute bodhi-
chitta, the four practices are about actual things that
you can do at the relative level in terms of ritual and
ceremony.
However you talk about it, the crux of the matter is
to overcome resistance. These four practices are four
methods that Milarepa might have used to try to get
the demons out of his cave. The punch line of that
story was that when the resistance was gone, so were
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the demons. Resistance to unwanted circumstances
has the power to keep those circumstances alive and
well for a very long time.
Accumulating merit. The first of the four practices is
to accumulate merit. The way to accumulate merit is
to be willing to give, willing to open, willing not to
hold back. It is described as letting go of holding on
to yourself, letting your stronghold of ego go. Instead
of collecting things for yourself, you open and give
them away.
As a result of opening yourself, you begin to expe-
rience your world as more friendly. That is merit. You
find it easier to practice the dharma, you have fewer
kleshas, and circumstances seem to be hospitable.
You might think that the way to encounter circum-
stances in which you could practice the dharma is to
use your same old habitual style. But the idea behind
accumulating this kind of meritorious situation is to
open, to give, and not to hold back. Instead of encas-
ing yourself in a cocoon, instead of shielding your
heart, you can open, let the whole thing dissolve.
This is how merit is accumulated.
In Buddhist societies such as in Burma and Tibet
and China, accumulating merit is interpreted as
performing all kinds of good works, such as making
donations to build monasteries or retreat centers. 
It’s wonderful to fund-raise in Hong Kong and Tai-
wan because people feel that it’s meritorious to give
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