Judy Lief

Buddhism – Shambhala – Profound Treasury – Making Friends with Death

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Blog 52: Don’t Misinterpret

March 17, 2015 By Judy Lief

52. Don’t misinterpret.
This slogan focuses on six qualities—patience, yearning, excitement, compassion, priorities, and joy—and how they can be misinterpreted. More generally, the point is to see how we can twist things so that our avoidance of the dharma is considered to be a virtue rather than a fault. We are continually tempted to misinterpret teachings designed to soften our ego-fixation in such a way that they instead add more fuel to our self-absorption and distractedness.

An undercurrent that runs through this slogan is the strong pull of samsara. Lojong practice goes against the grain and threatens our cozy samsaric cocoon, so we try to figure out ways to be dharma practitioners without having to give anything up. We long for transformation, but we really don’t want to change anything. So we twist the teachings to fit our personal agenda. We pay lip service, but our heart really lies elsewhere.

The first thee categories—patience, yearning, and excitement—are quite straightforward. Misinterpreted patience is being patient with the hassles of samsara, but not patient with dharma practice. Misinterpreted yearning is to have constant yearning for more money, more pleasure, and more security, but to have very little yearning to train the mind or cultivate loving-kindness. Misinterpreted excitement is to find mindless entertainment and the endless pursuit of wealth exciting, but not be excited about the study and practice of the dharma.

The fourth category, misinterpreted compassion, is more provocative. Misinterpreted compassion means to feel compassion for the hardships faced by people who are dedicated to the dharma, but not to feel compassion for evildoers. According to this slogan, true compassion is not based on picking and choosing, and it is not based on sorting people into who is worthy of our compassion and who is not.

The fifth category, twisted priorities, could also be called the challenge of scheduling. Somehow, we always manage to find time in our schedules for what entertains us or advances our self-interest, but find it difficult to find time to practice the dharma.

The sixth and last category, twisted joy, means to take more delight in seeing your enemy suffer or your competitor fail than when you see someone succeed in overcoming confusion through dharmic practice.

These six categories are examples of the many ways that we try to disguise as virtues the many ways we feed our neuroses and our fixation on the self.

Today’s practice

Start with the misinterpretation of priorities. List out your main activities for a week, and calculate how much time you spend on each category, such as work, sleep, TV, study, practice, socializing etc. What does this tell you about your priorities? What would need to shift to free up a little time for dharma practice?

 

Upcoming Events: Profound Treasury Retreat

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8th Annual PROFOUND TREASURY RETREAT at Saco, Maine 

June 12-24 at Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

 

Living Dharma: The Joy and Challenge of Joining Practice and Action

 

 

“Mindfulness practice is not just about what is happening to you individually and personally—it is about how much you are going to transmit your sanity and your insanity to the rest of the world.”—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

 

“If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”  Charlie Parker

 

Living Dharma

The Joy and Challenge of Joining Practice and Action

 

In these times of turmoil, it’s important to reflect on ways to bring our lifestyle and our actions into greater accord with the dharma.   If your life does not reflect your practice, what is the point of meditation and study?

 

The time spent in sitting meditation is much less than the time spent going about our everyday lives. Therefore, postmeditation practice is essential. The combination of meditation and postmeditation makes our practice complete—running through our entire life rather than something we turn on and off.

 

In this class, we will focus on the challenges of living a dharmic life, and how they are addressed in the three stages of the Tibetan Buddhist path.  We will work with the foundational or hinayana guidelines for living life with simplicity and contentment. We will study mahayana teachings on how to activate compassion and benefit others. Finally, we will explore vajrayana teachings on how to engage more freshly and spontaneously by cutting hesitation and fixed views.

 

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Topics include:

The three essentials: discipline, meditation, and wisdom

Refraining from harm: working with the five precepts

Being of benefit: practicing the paramitas

Overcoming hesitation: engaging with the four karmas

Obstacles, mistakes, and fresh starts

 

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Judy Lief • 802-598-5832 • judy@judylief.com