"If I could meditate, I'd be a better person."
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual
discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve,
which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a
bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could
only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate
and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - /maitri/
- toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means
that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry
after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of
feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves.
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and
become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The
ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we
are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to
know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
- Pema Chodron, /The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness/ from /Everyday Mind/, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith
