How to See Yourself As You Really Are

by Dalai Lama XIV

True self-knowledge involves exposing and facing misconceptions about ourselves.

If your mind is scattered, it is quite powerless. Distraction here and there opens the way for counterproductive emotions, leading to many kinds of trouble. Without clear, stable concentration, insight cannot know the true nature of phenomena in all its power.

For our own sakes, we restrain motivations and deeds that would produce suffering. For example, due to a serious stomach infection I had a few years ago, nowadays I avoid sour foods and cold drinks that otherwise I would enjoy. Such a regimen provides me protection, not punishment.

Meditative posture is important, because if you straighten your body, the energy channels within the body will also straighten, allowing the energy flowing in those channels to balance, which in turn will assist in balancing your mind and putting it at your service.

Realization of emptiness is difficult, but if you keep working at it—analyzing and analyzing—comprehension definitely will come. You will understand what is meant by searching for inherent existence but not finding it—searching for what is so strongly imagined and not finding it.

You are the trainer of the mind, which like an unruly student, is going to be taught to do what you want.

There are many discrepancies between the way things appear and the way they really are. Something that is impermanent can appear to be permanent.

For instance, when we get very angry at someone, we have a strong sense of the wretchedness of that person, but later, when we calm down and look at that same person, we may find our earlier perception laughable.

Just as the bucket bumps against the walls of the well when it ascends and descends, so sentient beings are battered day by day by the suffering of pain and change, and by being caught in processes beyond their control.

Even though there is no certainty that you will die tonight, when you cultivate an awareness of death, you appreciate that you could die tonight. With this attitude, if there is something you can do that will help in both this life and the next, you will give it precedence over something that would help only this life in a superficial way.

Once you realize things are always changing, if you are passing through a difficult period you can find comfort in knowing that the situation will not remain that way forever.

In addition to separating from all of our friends, all the wealth and resources you have accumulated—no matter how marvelous they are—eventually become unusable; the brevity of this present life will force you to leave all wealth behind.

The Indian philosopher and yogi Shantideva speaks evocatively of impermanence, saying that, no matter how wonderful your present life comes to be, it is like dreaming about pleasure and then being awakened, with nothing left except memory.

Good fortune is not permanent; consequently, it is dangerous to become too attached to things going well.

Not only must you die in the end but you do not know when the end will come.

If you keep in mind how quickly this life disappears, you will value your time and do what is most helpful.

At death nothing will help except my transformed attitude. Friends will be of no help. My wealth will be of no use, and neither will my body.

Ordinary happiness is like the dew on the tip of a blade of grass, disappearing very quickly. That it vanishes reveals that it is impermanent and under the control of other forces, causes, and conditions. Its vanishing also shows that there is no way of making everything right; no matter what you do within the scope of cyclic existence, you cannot pass beyond the range of suffering.

Sometimes when I am visiting a big city, staying on a high floor in a hotel, I look down on the traffic, hundreds and even thousands of cars going this way and that, and reflect that, although all these beings are impermanent, they are thinking, “I want to be happy,” “I must do this job,” “I must get this money,” “I have to do this.” They are mistakenly imagining themselves to be permanent. This thought stimulates my compassion.