Start Where You Are

party. He sat there unperturbed by this unfamiliar rit-
ual, just observing, and then ate the way everybody
else did. He was full of wonder, completely curious
about everything, and seemingly not afraid or resent-
ful, just totally open.
When Ishi was first taken to San Francisco, he
went to the Oroville train station and stood on the
platform. When the train came in, without anyone
really noticing, he simply walked away very quietly
and stood behind a pillar. Then the others noticed
and beckoned to him, and they all got on the train to
San Francisco. Later, Ishi told Kroeber that for his
whole life when he and the other members of his
tribe had seen that train they had thought it was a
demon that ate people, because of how it snaked
along and bellowed smoke and fire. When Kroeber
heard that, he was awestruck. He asked, “How did
you have the courage to just get on the train if you
thought it was a demon?” Then Ishi said, quite sim-
ply, “Well, my life has taught me to be more curious
than afraid.” His life had taught him what it meant to
be a child of illusion.
Let the World Speak for Itself
35

---

5
Poison as Medicine
W
i t h t h e s l o g a n
“Three objects, three poi-
sons, and three seeds of virtue” we begin to
enter into the teachings on relative bodhichitta, the
teachings on how to awaken compassion. We have so
far been attempting to establish that the ground of all
of our experience is very spacious, not as solid as we
tend to make it. We don’t have to make such a big
deal about ourselves, our enemies, our lovers, and
the whole show. This emphasis on gentleness is the
pith instruction on how to reconnect with openness
and freshness in our lives, how to liberate ourselves
from the small world of ego. We’ll keep coming back
to this sense of freshness and open space and not
making such a big deal, because we are now about to
get into the really messy stuff.
In the Buddhist teachings, the messy stuff is
called klesha, which means poison. Boiling it all
down to the simplest possible formula, there are
three main poisons: passion, aggression, and igno-
rance. We could talk about these in different ways—
for example, craving, aversion, and couldn’t care less.
Addictions of all kinds come under the category of
craving, which is wanting, wanting, wanting—feel-
36
.

---

ing that we have to have some kind of resolution.
Aversion encompasses violence, rage, hatred, and
negativity of all kinds, as well as garden-variety irrita-
tion. And ignorance? Nowadays, it’s usually called
denial.
The pith instruction of all the Buddhist teachings
and most explicitly of the lojong teachings is, what-
ever you do, don’t try to make these unwanted feel-
ings go away. That’s an unusual thought; it’s not our
habitual tendency to let these feelings hang around.
Our habitual tendency is definitely to try to make
those things go away.
People and situations in our lives are always trig-
gering our passion, aggression, and ignorance. A good
old innocent cup of coffee triggers some people’s
craving; they are addicted to it; it represents comfort
and all the good things in life. If they can’t get it, their
life is a wreck. Other people have an elaborate story
line about why it’s bad for you, and they have aversion
and a support group. Plenty of other people couldn’t
care less about a cup of coffee; it doesn’t mean much
at all to them.
And then there’s good old Mortimer, that person
who is sitting next to you in the meditation hall, or
perhaps someone who works in your office. Some
people are lusting when they see Mortimer. He looks
wonderful to them. A lot of their discursive thought is
taken up with what they’d like to do with Mortimer.
A certain number of people hate him. They haven’t