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I will not give away my compassion, my mercy, my trust. I will share them freely until or unless they are abused. They are mine ti share, to extend freely. But, they are not mine to surrender, to abandon, to give away. I will give away my anger, my fear, my mistrust. I have no need for them as they are useless dead weights dragging me, if allowed, into the sea of great suffering. It is not that I will not be angry or fearful or doubtful. It s that I do not hold onto such feelings. I quickly cast them aside, release them back into the dark sea. As regards people themselves, a politician-philosopher of 19th Century Japan who's name escapes me stated, "Do not hate the person, hate the action".

Peace to all

How is your discipline and what do you find helpful in its cultivation?

Cushion time twice a day every day, morning and afternoon...Plus a Dharma group meeting once a week, every Monday evening...( the group has been meeting at member's homes since 2021-I think I stated to attend 2006/7-before this I just attended the monthly Dharma talks given by Geshe-la who came to the island once a month )

In the past my emotional self was in the habit of throwing a spanner in the works whenever the motivational self set plans, the emotional self would try to talk the motivational self out of doing what needed to be done and more often than not it was successful ....

Over the years I'm becoming more and more aware that the mind is easily charmed by its own thoughts....

Nowadays the motivational self is not so easily charmed, and will just do it, not giving the emotional self enough time to pick up the spanner....

@FleaMarket said:
what do you find helpful in its cultivation?

A memory of what my mind and life are like when I don't engage in regular practice.

I do a couple of Zoom 30 min sittings a day with some friends at 7 am and 10 pm.
No dharma talks or ceremony, save a bell showing when it starts and ends. It places a certain time commitment that is put aside for a social formal sitting where we share in a meditative pilgrimage. It says that no matter what else shows up in my life to compete for time for formal practice, at least in these two times, I am saying that our sharing of a meditative journey trumps all else. It also means that instead of just formally meditating when I feel like it, I end up sitting through the many revealing states that I would have otherwise probably avoided.

While practitioners might hope for a mind that more closely resembles a domesticated dog's generous attention & loyalty,
a cat's self-centered semi-domesticated state of wildness more typically describes the mind that we have to work
with.

The path may be a straight line and not even very far but the mind will effin' knife you in the back while you try and then come to your rescue while you bleed out just to do it again. Hello my mind, I see you. I love you anyway and am learning to pay you none extra than your deserved keep. I'm gunna sit on that zafu the second you look away. I forgive you if you knock me off a second later. I have nothing better to do than try again.

Today I read the whole Dhammapadda for the first time (previously only fragments) from the SuttaFriends site here, and I thought I would put together a few bullet points as a mini-review now that it is fresh in my mind.

• It is a long list of pointers to dhamma — do this to be wise, act with restraint
• It has elements of propaganda, it talks up how wonderful it is to be wise, a monk, a follower of the Dhamma
• It covers good - happiness - and bad - hell, anger - and gives a view on how these qualities coexist
• Some things repeat a number of times in different sections, like not associating with bad acquaintances
• I found it to be limited in poetic expression, compared to say Seng’can’s Verses of the Faith Mind (here)

On the whole I was a little disappointed, I think I prefer the middle length discourses of the Buddha, but by all means go and check it out if you haven’t read it, it is held up as a classic of buddhist literature.