We have 4 remaining slogans in the section on Disciplines of Mind Training. We will explore two this week and two next week. The two for this week are Don’t Try To Be The Fastest and Don’t Act With A Twist. Trungpa Rinpoche says that the first relates to not trying to achieve fame, honor or distinction through one’s practice. His commentary is mainly about how competitive we can get with practice. This is particularly noticeable when you practice with a group of strong practitioners. The group encourages deeper practice, and as such, we can develop a natural human trait – competitiveness. We can take on a “racing” quality to our practice; striving to be the best meditator, the kindest, the most generous, etc. He relates the second to dropping the attitude of looking for personal benefits from practice. His comments around this one are about thinking we are special or accomplished but acting like we are less. We take the blame for something to look humble not out of genuine kindness. He calls this spiritual materialism. We only practice to get some benefit.
Norman Fisher’s comments are a little different so I want to point them out separately. He relates the first slogan (Don’t be so fast) less to competitiveness with others and more with ourselves. We are racing against ourselves to get somewhere. It’s as if we want to hurry and get this meditation/enlightenment thing done so we can move on to the next thing. I like that he says the very act of measurement or evaluation is a misunderstanding of the nature of the process. In his comments around the second slogan for this week (Don’t be tricky), he points to looking at our intentions behind our spiritual practice and behaviors. He points out that cultivating altruism deeply and seriously must come from our conviction and not to gain friends and influence people. As we deepen our practice, we can become quite proud of our spiritual efforts, preventing us from seeing the self-serving motives behind our actions.
I think we can use these two slogans to began to let go of that “what’s in it for me” attitude. Things like competitiveness, pride, spiritual materialism, measuring up and self-righteousness are all human tendencies. So we can pretty much expect to find some level of all of these traits within our practice. These two slogans poke at us to check ourselves around this. We can begin by asking ourselves – If I never have another peaceful sit, will I continue to meditate? If no one else around me is kind, will I still practice the cultivation of lovingkindness? If you knew you will continue to come face to face with your destructive habits until the moment of your death, would you continue to seek an awakened mind? Food for thought, huh! See you tomorrow.
Tuere
Capitol Hill Meditation Group 