The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is "three objects, three poisons, three sources of virtue." This sounds quite cryptical, but it's actually a really powerful idea. The three poisons according to Buddhism are the three principal negative emotions of attachment, aversion and ignorance or greed, hatred and delusion. These emotions are thought to be negative because they lead to suffering for both the person and those around him or her. But the good news is that each of these can be turned into a source of virtue. So this means everything is workable!
The secret is taht whenever we experience a negative emotion, we can realize that we are not the only ones experiencing these emotions, and we can develop a sense of compassion to those others: may our experience of this negative emotion be enough. This immediately creates a sense of space, and a sense that the suffering of the negative emotion is not useless. For example, I am currently on a Buddhist retreat, and every morning I go for a run. Now it is quite hilly here, which means every run involves some painful ascent. This time, instead of being intimidated by the climb, I tried to use it to take upon me all the pain and exhaustion of all the countless runners. A that time, the climb became much less painful. What a relief!
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| cows I met during my daily run |
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| up the hill (not during my running route but still up the hill) |
Since I am curently on retreat, I am not working. However, I think it would also work really well in dealing with failure. For example, when your paper gets rejected, you may mentally feel: "may I take upon myself all the other paper rejections of all my colleagues as well." The paper rejection still sucks, but you are no longer alone. You then focus less on feelings of worthlessness that may also come up, but on the universality of the suffering (welcome to the world of academia!). I will definitely try this next time, if I manage to think of it ;-)
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