Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva

Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva: Verse 26

If you cannot look after yourself because you have no ethical discipline,

Then your intention to take care of others is simply a joke.

Observe ethical behavIor without concern

For a conventional life — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

What matters is knowing how and what you’re feeling. The capacity to identify and describe your emotions, your fleeting feelings, moment to moment or day to day, may differ some from being able to name those more enduring states of being, your moods. More painful — or maybe just more embarrassing — to say “I’m depressed” compared to saying “I felt down this morning.”

If someone — this morning — asked you: “How did you feel when you woke up this morning?” I think you’d respond by saying you woke up feeling anxious or depressed, or both. If you were trying to hide how you felt, you might say “I’m feeling tired today” and I’d know that was a disguise for “depressed and anxious” because you didn’t want to be discovered complaining. Maybe you thought it would be “inappropriate” or somehow wrong to tell me how you felt.

Do you know how to identify your feelings and your moods? Do you know how to tell someone else, someone you trust?

This is at the heart of self-care.

When your neighbor is in pain and you’re the witness

The pain she feels is mirrored throughout your mind; when your neighbor winces, you are wincing with her.

To help her you must know what pain itself feels like, and here, we’ve cycled back to the capacity to know exactly what you’re feeling.

This is the heart of caring for another — and this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

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