Start Where You Are

parts of himself that he’s rejected. It’s all interrelated.
We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also
we help others in order to work on ourselves. That’s a
very important point. We could say that working with
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others is a high-stakes maitri practice, because when
we start to work with others, somehow they all seem
to end up looking like Juan or Juanita. If we are
wholehearted about wanting to be there for other
people without shutting anybody or anything out of
our hearts, our pretty little self-image of how kind or
compassionate we are gets completely blown. We’re
always being tested and we’re always meeting our
match. The more you’re willing to open your heart,
the more challenges come along that make you want
to shut it.
You can’t do this work in a safety zone. You have to
go out into the marketplace and live your life like
everybody else, but with the added ingredient of not
wanting to shut anything out of your heart. Maitri—
loving-kindness—has to go very deep, because when
you practice it, you’re going to see everything about
yourself. Every time your buttons get pushed is like a
big mirror showing you your own face, and like the
evil stepmother in “Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs,” you want the mirror to tell you what you
want to hear—even if it’s that you haven’t been kind
or that you’re selfish. Somehow you can even use
your insight into your limitations to keep yourself
feeling all right.
What we don’t want is any unforeseen feedback
from the mirror. What we don’t want is to be naked,
exposed. We have blind spots, and we put a lot of
energy into staying blind. One day the wicked step-
High-Stakes Practice
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mother went to the mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror,
on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” and instead
of, “You are, sweetheart,” the mirror said, “Snow
White.” And just like us, she didn’t want to hear it.
Nevertheless, I think we all know that there’s no
point in blaming the mirror when it shows you your
own face, and there’s certainly no point in breaking
the mirror.
I once knew a very powerful woman who always
managed to have everything go her way. The epitome
of her approach to life was that she had a scale in her
bathroom that was always turned down so that when
she stood on it she weighed exactly what she wanted
to weigh. When you look in the mirror and see that
you have a big pimple on the end of your nose, and
you decide to actually see it and let yourself wince
and feel the embarrassment and nevertheless just 
go about your business, then when a five-year-old
comes rushing up to you and says, “Hey lady, you have
a big pimple on the end of your nose!” you just say, 
“I know.” But if you try to cover that pimple over 
with cosmetics or a nosebag, you are shocked and
offended when it turns out that everyone can see 
it anyway.
This tendency to refer back to ourselves, to try to
protect ourselves, is so strong and all-pervasive. A
simple way of turning it around is to develop our cu-
riosity and our inquisitiveness about everything. This
is another way of talking about helping others, but of
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course the process also helps us. The whole path
seems to be about developing curiosity, about looking
out and taking an interest in all the details of our lives
and in our immediate environment.
When we find ourselves in a situation in which our
buttons are being pushed, we can choose to repress
or act out, or we can choose to practice. If we can
start to do the exchange, breathing in with the inten-
tion of keeping our hearts open to the embarrass-
ment or fear or anger that we feel, then to our
surprise we find that we’re also open to what the
other person is feeling. Open heart is open heart.
Once it’s open, your eyes and your mind are also
open, and you can see what’s happening in the faces
and hearts of other people. If you’re walking down
the street and way off in the distance—so far away
that you can’t possibly do anything about it—you 
see a man beating his dog, and you feel helpless, you
can start to do the exchange. You start out doing it for
the dog, then you find you’re doing it for the man.
Then you’re also doing it for your own heartbreak 
and for all the animals and people who are abusing
and abused, and for all the people like you who are
watching and don’t know what to do. Simply by doing
this exchange you have made the world a larger, more
loving place.
There’s a traditional teaching about regarding all
sentient beings as your mother. Everyone has been
your mother; they’ve been kind to you and you’ve had