Week of

Don’t Nurse Compassion

You don’t have to nurse compassion. It is like making yogurt. You add the culture to milk, and then you keep the milk warm until it becomes yogurt. Sometimes you try to speed the yogurt along by increasing the temperature of the milk. But that usually doesn’t make good yogurt at all. If you had left it at the right temperature and just abandoned it for a while, it would have made good yogurt.

Similarly, you needn’t constantly micromanage your life. Disowning is necessary at a certain point. You don’t have to constantly meddle in situations that don’t require further maintenance. Part of compassion is trust. If something positive is happening, you don’t have to check up on it all the time. The more you check up, the more possibilities there are of interrupting the growth. It requires fearlessness to let things be. In a sense, it’s a form of positive thinking. It’s the true mentality of wealth and richness.

From “The Bridge of Compassion,” in Mindfulness in Action: Making Friends with Yourself through Meditation and Everyday Awareness, pages 55 to 56.

 

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CTR Quote of the Week

The CTR Quote of the Week is coming to you from the Chogyam Trungpa Institute at Naropa University. The compiler of the quotes and the moderator of the list is Carolyn Gimian.

All material is used by permission of Diana J. Mukpo.

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