Just Sit Tight

"Our mind is spinning around
About carrying out a lot of useless projects:
It's a waste! Give it up!
Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You're completely distracted
By all these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don't be a fool: for once, just sit tight."

~ Patrul Rinpoche
    
" Listen up, Patrul, you dweller-in-distraction. For ages now you have been beguiled and fooled by appearances. Don’t let yourself get carried away by this fake and empty life. Your mind is spinning around about carrying out a lot of useless projects: Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish. With never enough time to finish them, this just weighs down your mind. These projects, never come to an end, but keep spreading out like ripples in water.

You’ve already heard hundreds of teachings, But when you haven’t grasped the meaning of even one teaching, What’s the point of more listening? You’ve added up just how many mantras you’ve done but you aren’t accomplishing the visualisations. You get the forms of deities nice and clear, so meticulously arranged, forget about them. Your practice is stable enough but there’s no brilliance to it. You try to force yourself into a state of self-awareness, as if stabbing a stake into a target!

Giving teachings on meditation texts without yourself having gained actual experience through practice, is like reciting a dance-manual out loud and thinking that’s the same as actually dancing. Sooner or later, when your own actions contradict the teachings, you’ll feel ashamed. You beat your little damaru drum—ting, ting— and your audience thinks it’s charming to hear. You’re reciting words about offering up your body, but you still haven’t stopped holding it dear. You’re making your little cymbals go cling, cling— Without keeping the ultimate purpose in mind.

Worldly and religious work is the province of gentlemen. Patrul, old boy—that’s not for you. Just sleep, eat, piss, shit. there’s nothing else in life that has to be done. Don’t get involved with other things: Keep a low profile, Sleep. When you’re without any worldly or religious obligations, Don’t keep on longing to acquire some! If you let go of everything, everything, everything. That’s the real point! "

~ Vidyavajra from Advice from Me to Myself, by Patrul Rinpoche