Around and around

It's not that easy to undo limitless lifetimes of conditioning, grasping and aversion, and to penetrate our ignorance and obscurations. Our samsaric minds are complex and dynamic, in the extreme, and the scans, quarantines and file deletions we rely on to purge our impurities seem to be almost overwhelmed by our habit of simultaneously surfing infected sites and opening random attachments impulsively. The mindfulness virus protection software that can identify and immediately extinguish defilements the moment they arise requires overhead and does not always execute automatically when rebooting in the morning. Sometimes it runs and sometimes not. The firewall of retreat where we could seek shelter long enough to establish better practices is poorly distributed and unavailable to most. Finally, as we've demonstrated endlessly, the adventitious defilements can emerge again reliably even after the "reformatting" process following death when our composition has dissolved and we are plunged into dharmata. Like a perverse phoenix we've "succeeded" limitless times in arising once again as deluded beings from the ashheap of the bardo. Out of habit, we read old ROM and reject the very recognition that would liberate us.

May we all cultivate devotion and flash with the purity, insight and transcendant wisdom that is the mind of the lama.