Tricycle's Daily Dharma: August 25, 2007
Becoming the Dharma
Devotion, scholarship, and
meditation can all be empty rituals, and whether these devotional acts
or any other practices are in fact Dharma depends solely upon one's
motivation. . . . Our initial attempts at spiritual practice tend to be
very self-conscious. We want to overcome the distortions of our minds
and cultivate such wholesome qualities as kindness, insight,
mindfulness, and concentration; but as we engage in practices designed
to cultivate these, at first they appear to be only mental exercises.
Dharma seems separate, something adopted from outside. But as we go
deeper into the practice, this sense of separation begins to disappear;
our minds become the very Dharma we seek to cultivate.
-B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up
