Emphasizing our successes rather than our failures

person

I just read this passage from Pema Chodron's book Taking the Leap and wanted to share it.

In the evening, I review what happened. This is the part that can be so loaded for Western people. We have an unfortunate tendency to emphasize our failures. But when Dzigar Kongtrul teaches about this, he says that for him, when he sees that he has connected with his aspiration even once briefly during the whole day, he feels a sense of rejoicing. He also says that when he recognizes he lost it completely, he rejoices that he has the capacity to see that. This way of viewing ourselves has been very inspiring for me.

He encourages us to ask what it is in us, after all, that sees that we lost it. Isn't it our own wisdom, our own insight, our own natural intelligence? Can we just have that aspiration, then, to identify with the wisdom that acknowledges that we hurt someone's feeling, or that we smoked when we said we wouldn't? Can we have the aspiration to identify more and more with our ability to recognize what we're doing instead of always identifying with our mistakes? This is the spirit of delighting in what we see rather than despairing in what we see. It's the spirit of letting compassionate self-reflection build confidence rather than becoming a cause for depression.

Being able to acknowledge shenpa, being able to know that we are getting stuck, this is the basis of freedom. Just being able to recognize what's happening without denial-we should rejoice in that. Then, if we can take the next step and refrain from going down the same old road, which sometimes we'll be able to do and sometimes we won't, we can rejoice that sometimes we do have that ability to interrupt the momentum-that "sometimes" is major progress.

how

I don't disagree with the above but only say that this zafu pilot deliberately seeks neither the rejoicing or the despairing with any phenomena.
One's attention to a Zen meditative practise will see either, arising or falling away, but that same practise calls for both to be left unfiddled with for the conditioned impulses that they are.

pegembara

When one is feeling down and dejected emphasizing our successes rather than our failures can give one more energy to continue with our effort.

Otoh, if one is overconfident about one's achievements emphasizing what we have yet to achieve can spur the effort to strive for more.

It all depends on the situation.

sova

thank you for sharing that @person, many thanks

lobster

As an abject failure . . .
- It is six months into my resolution to be a Buddha and I am no nearer than my whiskers and no further than my life . . .
The fish are laughing at me. The Buddhas are patient as ever . . .

My only hope is each failure is a potential insight and therefore a win-win situation.
Next year I might attempt an easier resolution . . becoming God for example . . .
It's a hard job but someone has to do it.

Stay the course.

Citta

" If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same..."
Rudyard Kipling 'If '.