When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of facing challenges directly rather than being distracted by fleeting thoughts or temptations.
Milarepa's quote highlights the difference between reactive thinking and proactive awareness. Instead of mindlessly chasing after every thought like a dog after a stick, it suggests that one should be more discerning and confront the source of challenges, much like a lion who confronts its adversary. By doing so, individuals can develop a stronger sense of control over their thoughts and life situations.
In practice
This quote can serve as a motivational reminder during a speech on mental health.
Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule.
All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.
He who knows that all things are his mind, That all with which he meets are friendly, Is ever joyful.
When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick
I have no desire for wealth or possessions, and so I have nothing. I do not experience the initial suffering of having to accumulate possessions, the intermediate suffering of having to guard and keep up possessions, nor the final suffering of loosing the possessions.
In the gap between thoughts_x000D_ nonconceptual wisdom shines continuously.
Build the raft of meditation and self-discipline, to carry you across the river. There will be no ocean, and no rising tides to stop you; this is how comfortable your path shall be.
Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.
The definition of the good life is doing creative things, whether making music, trying to figure out how to do a particular piece of code, or putting together investments.
With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."
The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.
Some help others in order to receive blessings and admiration. This is simply meaningless. Some cultivate themselves in part to serve others, in part to serve their own pride. They will understand, at best, half of the truth. But those who improve themselves for the sake of the world - to these, the whole truth of the universe will be revealed.
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