Any technique is the remainder of a full-blown realization, the final result of something lived through, the "Aha!" experience of someone else, and not our own. We would have to make it our own. After all, the dharma that Shakyamuni Buddha left us is nothing more than a method or technique, a way to enlighten ourselves which we are left to figure out. Vajrayana Buddhism is all about working with a guide or teacher to make sure we get it right. We can't always trust ourselves, especially starting out.

Learning any technique by rote, and not experiencing it, much less realizing it fully, is not only useless, it is dangerous, one more obscuration on top of all our other obscurations. It can poison our mind for the topic, whatever that is.

I suppose I should say something about how things last, an enduring topic that has fascinated me for decades. And I am not talking about ordinary memories, although some of them do indeed persist. I am talking about the mind itself and the half-life of what's in it.

As we all know, the mind can be amorphous, even cloudy. Not everything in the mind is clear and shining. There are dark areas too, of course. But there are also things that shine like the sun in the firmament of mind. How does that work? What lasts and what is lasting?

If we read even a little Tibetan Buddhism, we can't get away from its focus on the present moment. As mentioned in earlier blogs, the Buddhists are not so worried about "Being Here Now" as Baba Ram Das pointed out, as with not altering the present in any way. Ultimately the Tibetan Buddhists are interested in recognizing the true nature of the mind (past, present, or future) and resting in that nature.  And of course they rule out the past and the future as just something seen from the present darkly. They only really say one thing.

Allow the mind to rest in the present, just as it is.

I have heard from a number of you asking for more comments on substances that I have known. After nicotine, alcohol was next on my list of bad habits to come to terms with. And although cigarettes and tobacco are pretty much guaranteed to kill you in the end, alcohol comes damn close and is, in my experience, a lot more destructive emotionally and psychologically. While tobacco definitely harmed me big-time and is also in the process of killing many people I care for, alcohol has been far more destructive to friends and extended family in actuality. Let me start out with a side-effect of alcohol that I discovered for myself, one that few drinkers are aware of, but most are subject to. 

The clinical definition of a sadist is someone who derives pleasure out of hurting others, and a masochist as one who enjoys being hurt. I am going to dispense with all of that, including the combination of the two which is called sadomasochism. Instead what interests me is how we can use this concept in dharma practice, not only with others, but especially with ourselves.