Take a few minutes to sit peacefully with your eyes closed or looking down. Observe your breath as you breathe in and out.
Allow yourself to breathe, naturally, without any modification of the breath.
For a few minutes simply observe your breath in its most natural state, as it passes through your nostrils.
If you find that you are distracted by your thoughts or sounds, no problem, just go back to observing your breath.
Read the following and then contemplate each question one at a time:
- Can you identify and define your “self?” Where is it? Can you show it to someone? Is it fixed? Is it permanent?
Close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes.
- Are the opinions and views you have of yourself different now than yesterday or a year ago?
Close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes.
- What about other people – are they growing or dying – and changing along the way? Might their views, opinions, and motivations be changing too?
Close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes.
- Consider that we are always changing, and our views of our “selves” and others are based on an illusion of permanence. The illusion is that we think that our views, and what is around us, are solid and permanent. This is not true.
Close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes.
- Thoughts, views, feelings, opinions, motivation, and judgment are subject to change from moment to moment – ours and everyone else’s. As a result, we would be foolish to judge anyone’s motivation, or even trust our own views with great certainty. As we contemplate this more and more, we will understand that “reality” is not what we think. It is something more nuanced; always changing, and more illusory than we think. We can be more open-minded to the view of those around us, and more compassionate to our “selves” and others.
Close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes.
May all beings benefit.
— Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Mordy Levine in The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners