Episode 163 – Tsk-tsk

This episode focuses on the faults and shortcomings we see in ourselves and in other beings: how do we become friends with ourselves, with all our faults, without excusing them and without concealing them?  •  why is it so easy to see everybody else’s faults and so hard to look at our own?  •  I was inspired in part by a traditional poem called “Calling to the Gurus from Afar”; it’s an example of a student being willing to show up as they are  •  here is the stanza I’m referring to: “My faults are as large as a mountain, but I conceal them within me / Others faults are as minute as a sesame seed, but I proclaim them and condemn them / I boast about my virtues, though I don’t even have a few / I call myself a Dharma practitioner and practice only non-dharma / Guru, think of me, look upon me quickly with compassion, grant your blessings so that I subdue my selfishness and pride”  •  this poem was written by a great Tibetan master named Jamgon Kongtrul  •  it’s oddly reassuring that someone like that can lay out such faults so easily, so openly, and with a sense of humor or lightness as well  •  it’s like taking our pile of juicy neurotic habits or attachments and laying them out like dead fish and exposing them to the light of the sun, and in that environment of sanity and compassion, they simply dry up.