Journal - Fight Fire with Fire

Okay, so anything with a Title of ‘Journal’ is a journal entry. If you don’t want to be bored by diatribes, then don’t read these entries marked “Journal”. But I am posting them in a public place so it is not quite a personal thing. Maybe it will be more intimate, but it won’t be purely personal.

When I read my journals (the ones on my bookshelf), it is like I am reading something that a stranger has written down. So, too, will be anything I write here. I will not remember tomorrow what I have written today, but instead will visit with myself as time goes on.

I drank 6 cups of water first thing this morning in order to induce a bowel movement. It works - within 10 minutes there was that old, familiar urge (to sit and shit). Also I cleaned out my nose with a neti pot. Tanya has cleaned the master closet so now we don’t have to dig through piles to find underwear or socks or whatever. There are sock bins . . . and underwear bins.

I listened to a radio ‘teaching’ on Friday. It was by a tibetan practitioner, a lady - maybe a nun. I couldn’t find her name. I will call her a nun, presumptiously. I don’t even know what the teaching was officially about. Usually there is some sort of descriptive title to these things. This is approximately what I heard:

“Always keep your mind in prayer for the benefit of all beings”.

She said that if your mind is always in prayer then it is one with the Dalai Lama’s mind. I would add that it is also one with Christ’s mind or any other great person.

A mind filled with prayer has a pragmatic effect of cutting discursive thinking. It cuts competitive thinking. If your mind is filled with love and wishes of benefit for everyone (everyone includes spiders and cockroaches and Hitler), then there will be less self-doubt, less anger, less selfishness. There will be less room for these things. It is rather like the idea of keeping a ‘clear mind’, but it has the benefit of dealing with discursiveness directly. Fight fire with fire. One’s mind is streaming thoughts but they are thoughts of benefit.

This prayer is called:

The Four Immesurables:
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be seperated from the happiness which is free from suffering.
May all beings abide in equanimity, free from both attachment and detachment.

These are immesurable wishes because they are directed at all beings, which are immesurable. You can not count how many beings there are. They are like the grains of sand on a vast beach. Wishing, may they all have happiness and the conditions of happiness, in every moment is the cause and condition our own happiness.

Rinpoche suggests this prayer:
May I bring more happiness to my life and to other people’s lives.

So this goes further and says, may I be a cause of happiness for others.

This has the benefit of cutting self-loathing. Fill the mind with thoughts like these and let go of all doubts and fears.