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.
Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.
I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.
Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.
Our experience over the last 20 years has shown that indeed people must themselves become their own liberators. You cannot wait for somebody else to come and rescue you.
And I'll know my song well before I start singing
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
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