Rascal

"You are innocent, but within your heart there is a spoiled rotten rascal who is totally out of control. This rascal is always causing you pain, so many forms of pain. You can’t predict the next problem it will make you face. Because of this rascal and its demands, you always have to be on your toes, anxious, struggling, tense. It bosses you around, making you work yourself to exhaustion, like a slave driver. If you don’t obey it and meet its needs, it will throw a tantrum. This may all sound like exaggeration, but when we sit with our self-importance long enough and get to know it well, we can recognize it for the rascal it is...

Once you’ve seen your own mind in this way, the next step is to put yourself in the shoes of another living being. It could be anyone you think of, from the president of the United States to an ant. The president seems all-important, and the ant seems insignificant, but from their point of view, is their essential moment-to-moment experience any different from yours? The president may be pondering whether to bomb a foreign country, while the ant is merely transporting a bread crumb, but both continually experience the basic grasping and rejection, the never-ending desire and fear that underlies the experience of all beings.

When we spend time thinking along these lines, we inevitably will conclude that we and all other living beings are equal in our desire for happiness. We and all other beings are equal in our longing to be free from suffering. Once we acknowledge this to be true, it becomes much harder to separate ourselves and our loved ones from the limitless numbers of sentient beings in the universe. What would we accomplish by focusing on such an extremely tiny group? And what would we have to lose by expanding our care to all beings? Say you are in a refugee camp and find yourself in the position of being able to help every refugee there get to a safer, more stable place. You have this chance, but instead you just run away with your immediate family. Wouldn’t that be small-minded? Wouldn’t you be failing to meet your potential?"

-- Dzigar Kongtrul, The Intelligent Heart