Start Where You Are

High-Stakes Practice

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try to con the situation, you feel all the ways in which
you try to make yourself look good. You’re seeing
clearly what you do all the time. But you’ve made this
commitment—one you’re not going to run away
from, you’re not going to write off. This time you’re
going to stick with it. Staying there becomes like the
three difficulties. When you’re with the spiritual
friend or even thinking about him or her, you begin to
see neurosis as neurosis. That encourages you to
practice the second difficulty, which is to begin to
apply the teachings. And finally, you long to make
that a way of life. The spiritual friend does not con-
firm your existence but serves as a mirror for you to
see where you’re stuck. The relationship encourages
you to wake up.
The most important thing about the relationship
with the spiritual friend is that it’s basic training for
how you relate to every situation in your life. It’s all
training for you to be grateful to every Juan, and not
just the Juan or Juanita that you call your spiritual
friend. So when your buttons get pushed, you begin
to see that what’s happening is your teacher. When
your cover has been blown, you begin to see that sit-
uation as your teacher. You realize that you know
what to do and can begin to relate directly with that
pain and use it to relate with the pain of all sentient
beings. When you feel inspired and joyful, you can
share that with others and develop a sense of kinship.
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High-Stakes Practice
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The teachings and practices. The second principal
cause is the teachings and practices. You have a lot of
support when you see what you do rather than turn it
against yourself or try to run away from it. You have a
lot of encouragement from the teachings and prac-
tices to open your heart further, to feel what’s going
on and not shut down, extending your openness to
other sentient beings. When the mirror has just told
you that you’re not the fairest of them all, and you’re
feeling embarrassed and awkward, it begins to occur
to you that there are many other people at this very
moment feeling the same way. You can breathe it in
for all of you. When you’re feeling happy, it begins to
occur to you to think of others and wish for all beings
to be happy.
Precious human birth. So the first principal cause is
the teacher, who serves as an example and represents
life itself, and who also serves as a pointed reminder
to let go of holding on to yourself. The second is the
teachings and the practices that actually give you
tools for opening your heart. And the third cause is
this precious human birth. All of us have this pre-
cious human birth. We’re fortunate enough not to be
starving; we’re fortunate enough to have food and
shelter; we’re fortunate enough to hear the teachings
and be given methods to wake up; we’re fortunate
enough to have good intelligence and the luxury to
explore and question why we and others suffer.
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High-Stakes Practice

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Another slogan says, “This time, practice the main
points.” What that’s saying is that for all of us it’s a
crucial time. We have everything we need to open
our hearts, and to work with others in a genuine way.
We have a precious human birth; we’re not starving
in Somalia. We’re not living in a country where we
grow up being taught to shoot anybody who’s on the
other side. We have a tremendous amount going for
us, so this is the crucial time to practice the main
points.
In the slogan “Pay heed that the three never wane,”
the three are gratitude to your teacher, gratitude to
the teachings and the practices, and a commitment
to keep the basic vows that you’ve taken. Gratitude to
the teacher starts with making a commitment never
to give up on that one person, who has also made a
commitment never to give up on you. When I think
of my own teacher I feel enormous gratitude contin-
ually, practically every moment of my life. It’s grati-
tude that there was somebody who was brave enough
and fierce enough and humorous enough and com-
passionate enough to get it through my thick skull
that there’s no place to hide. I feel gratitude to the
teachings and the practices because they’re good
medicine and they help us to uncover that soft spot
that’s been covered over for a very long time.
Finally, we pay heed that the refuge vow and bod-