Transforming Felicity and Adversity into the Spiritual Path
D2S2 - Compassion, Not Despair, and the Small Adversities
Lama Alan · 83 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace returns to a point he had passed over, on training in compassion, and gives Buddhaghosa's analysis of it and its false facsimile, despair, which looks like it and is not. Practise first with minor adversity, the text says, and it will gradually become easier. Whether a thing is agreeable or disagreeable is the way our minds apprehend it, as with a dentist's drill. Half an hour of questions follows, on shamatha and dzogchen and on why expressing a toxic emotion deepens the habituation.
Anxiety and fear Buddhist psychology Depression and low mood Habits and change Karma Compassion (karuna) Dzogchen Shamatha (calm abiding)