notsalmon

“You can’t (live your life) in the safety zone! You have to go out in the marketplace and live your life like everybody else — but with the added ingredient of not wanting to shut anything out of your heart.

MAITRI (which translates into LOVING KINDNESS) has to go very deep, because when you practice it, you’re going to see everything about yourself!

Every time you get your buttons pushed is like a big mirror showing you your own face, and like the evil stepmother in ‘Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs,’ you want the mirror to tell you what you want to hear - even if it’s that you have not been kind or that you are selfish!

Somehow you can even use your insight into your limitations to keep yourself feeling all right.

What we don’t want is any UNFORESEEN feedback from the mirror!

What we don’t want is to be naked, exposed.

We have blind spots - and we put a lot of energy into staying blind!

One day the wicked stepmother went to the mirror and said: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all?’ and instead of hearing ‘You are sweetheart,’ the mirror said, ‘Snow White.’

And just like us, she did not want to hear it.

Nevertheless, I think we all know that there’s no point in blaming the mirror when it shows you your own face, and there’s certainly no point in breaking the mirror.’

– the above from Pema Chodron, a resident teach at Gampo Abbey, a Tibetan monastary

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