EverydayBliss: Ruling Your World

"Instead of seeing the transparency of anger, depression,
or hesitation, we identify with confused emotion,
which thickens our mind with drip*."
from Ruling Your World by Sakyong Mipham

(*Drip: Tibetan, contamination of ourselves and our environment; depletion of self.)

This quote, for me, made the whole book -- the second from Sakyong Mipham, the current spiritual leader of the Shambhala tradition, a form of Buddhism that has intentionally evolved to meet the needs of the Western mind.

And though I don't profess to be a practicing Buddhist (but check with me in five minutes and then five minutes after that), I know that Buddhism has much to teach me, a Westerner battling drip every day.

"The transparency of...hesitation..." Wow. Now when I sit down to write or I get those first moments of new-project inspiration or I think about doing yoga...I watch my mind for that hesitation and label it "transparent" rather than spiraling into negative self-talk about my own inherent laziness. Much healthier, I would say.

I don't see the hesitation as having meaning, as in "I guess I'm just not meant to be a writer or a yogi or a (insert your dream here)." I see it as a temporary moment of suffering and attachment (to use Buddhist terms). A temporary insanity, of sorts, when I am unaware of my true self.

And how much more would we fulfill our potential if we could do this every moment? If we could be aware of how we contaminate ourselves?

A bit later in the book, he gives a suggestion about how to make choices:

"We can ask, 'what is the result of my action?
Do I feel imprisoned or liberated?
Am I content? Do I have regret?'"

Ruling Your World is a short book (and small -- oh, how I love small books; perfect for bed reading) but it is packed. This is a book I will read over and over.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that Sakyong is a bit of a rock star: Mipham Video, "What About Me?"