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It is never too late to pay attention
If you stop paying attention to your own actions of body, speech, and mind and focus instead on some lofty idea-like “What is Buddha? What is enlightenment?”- your spiritual journey becomes nothing more than a dream, a hallucination.
When the Chocolate Runs Out
Lama Yeshe
4
Comments
The "I'll do it tomorrow" is a lie! But it won't be til tomorrow that I pay attention.
Then maybe just this moment for a quick second..
Wha...Did someone say somthing?
I think it says something that this is coming from Lama Yeshe. He was a member of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, possibly the most scholarly and philosophical school of Buddhism around.
Considering that and the fact that he taught largely to westerners I think it points to the way us westerners tend to over intellectualize.
I spent the first part of my Buddhist life in that tradition and while the intellectualness of it is pronounced, there is an important aspect that I don't think us westerners tend to get about their approach to learning the teachings. Its that while acquiring a proper view of the teachings through learning, the goal isn't to keep them at that level. Its very important to allow that learning to seep into your being. I think in the west they call it procedural knowledge, or maybe experiential, I don't know the term. Basically its the difference between knowing you're going to die one day intellectually and the knowing you're going to die one day that someone who has had a life threatening accident or illness has.
The goal of study and practice is to bring the intellectual down to the experiential. For example, there is a large emphasis on the philosophy of emptiness and gaining a sound understanding of that concept. But then in practice through contemplation and meditation to gain a direct experience of emptiness.
So considering where he's coming from I don't think he's saying don't conceptualize Buddhism. I think more he's saying don't leave it there, that's not what Buddhism is really about.
Never too early either BUT early on it may not be possible. Distractions, life, inability to focus, mara in short, scrambles our efforts.
Hence formal discipline, continual effort, reminder, inspiration and application. One day it will all click. The polishing, the teachings, the journey, the meaning, the examples.
We will be humbled, unfold, be attentive to the lofty ideals, the miracle of chocolate or its lack.
The maitreya gives her first public lecture on rite eating (chocolate sutra)
OM MANI PADME HMMMMMMM … yum!