Cosmic Loti

That did it!
Now that things have gone properly pear shaped, I’ve got renewed energy to practice Gen Dekyong’s advice from the Dorje Shugden empowerment.
Here’s the salient parts that I remember from Dekyong’s commentary:

Gen Dekyong’s definition of ‘adverse conditions‘

Gen Dekyong pondering adversity labels

☆ Adverse Conditions to our practice

These present an obstacle to our spiritual practice.

☆ Favourable Conditions to our practice

These improve our spiritual practice, and enable us to progress.

So for spiritual practitioners of all levels. the question is, are the things we’re experiencing ‘adverse’ or ‘favourable’? Because they’re not inherently either way, we can play what they are.
Do events in our life hinder or help us on our spiritual path? Can we even get though today relatively unscathed? Because it is our choice, and it’s all too easy to categorise things in a way that doesn’t really help us.

What we can think of as an obstacle,
can easily become grist to the mill

An example uppermost in my mind is the Facebook page I do for my local Buddhist centre. – it’s been suspended! (That’s why I’m trying to put some Lojong into practice. LoL, why does it always need a kick up the butt to get us to actually practice?)

Stepping back from a situation often helps you get a handle on it.

~ I consider being suspended from doing something I enjoy, consider meaningful, and gets good feedback, to be an Adverse Condition. It stings, because I set the ABC e-zine up when there weren’t that many NKT FB pages around. I even called it an ‘e-zine’ to highlight it’s unofficial nature. (Hence breaking the ‘guidelines’ before they were brought in!)

You can see I’m too attached to the project, it’s gaining popularity, and I might not survive as admin.
But maybe Dorje Shugdan has other ideas in mind. It’s best not to take things too personally, or get too close to unreliable objects of refuge – such as a Facebook page (which by nature is impermanent), or you’re gonna get hurt.
Sorry! it’s down to us.

~ So maybe my suspension is a Favourable Condition
I’m actually doing the blog I’ve been planning for ages.
Just maybe folk will find a blog useful instead.
One of Buddha’s lightbulb blessings hit me earlier – “Hey Jas, you could do this blog for others’ benefit – really push the boat out with cherishing our cyber community.”

OK, so maybe FB wasn’t the best place for a NKT e-zine.
Well, I was told in no uncertain terms just how inappropriate and generally offensive to ‘the NKT‘ it was. OK, so I’m a little bit gutted; but if folk really are interested in that sort of thing, I’m prepared to try something new. (And ‘the NKT‘ BTW, mostly consists of quite sweet people who would’ve given me at least a written warning before getting the sniper rifle in.) ᕙ(`▽´)ᕗ

It’s the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl

If you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.

Anyhow, it’s the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl, isn’t it. As Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” So it takes some lateral thinking on our part, energised by Buddha’s blessings, to re-figure the problem.

Blessings change our mind from a negative state to a positive one, so they’re worth opening our mind up to. Buddhas can’t help but to beam out blessings 24/7, it’s their job! But it’s like a radio, we don’t get a reception if our radio’s turned off.
Hello? Turn your radio on!

Who knows what wonders we might achieve?

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Links to Further Reading:

See also Luna Kadampa’s surfing life’s waves for another side to Lojong,
and what are blessings?
Check out Geshe la’s free ebook Modern Buddhism  (link on the right)
Living Inside Out is an inspiring story