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resentful, just totally open.
    When Ishi was first taken to San Francisco, he went to the Oroville train station and stood on the platform. When the train came in, without anyone really noticing, he simply walked away very quietly and stood behind a pillar. Then the others noticed and beckoned to him, and they all got on the train to San Francisco. Later, Ishi told Kroeber that for his whole life when he and the other members of his tribe had seen that train they had thought it was a demon that ate people, because of how it snaked along and bellowed smoke and fire. When Kroeber heard that, he was awestruck. He asked, “How did you have the courage to just get on the train if you thought it was a demon?” Then Ishi said, quite simply, “Well, my life has taught me to be more curious than afraid.” His life had taught him what it meant to be a child of illusion.

Poison as Medicine
     
    W ITH THE SLOGAN “Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue” we begin to enter into the teachings on relative bodhichitta, the teachings on how to awaken compassion. We have so far been attempting to establish that the ground of all of our experience is very spacious, not as solid as we tend to make it. We don’t have to make such a big deal about ourselves, our enemies, our lovers, and the whole show. This emphasis on gentleness is the pith instruction on how to reconnect with openness and freshness in our lives, how to liberate ourselves from the small world of ego. We’ll keep coming back to this sense of freshness and open space and not making such a big deal, because we are now about to get into the really messy stuff.
    In the Buddhist teachings, the messy stuff is called klesha, which means poison. Boiling it all down to the simplest possible formula, there are three main poisons: passion, aggression, and ignorance. We could talk about these in different ways—for example, craving, aversion, and couldn’t care less. Addictions of all kinds come under the category of craving, which is wanting, wanting, wanting—feeling that we have to have some kind of resolution. Aversion encompasses violence, rage, hatred, and negativity of all kinds, as well as garden-variety irritation. And ignorance? Nowadays, it’s usually called denial.
    The pith instruction of all the Buddhist teachings and most explicitly of the lojong teachings is, whatever you do, don’t try to make these unwanted feelings go away. That’s an unusual thought; it’s not our habitual tendency to let these feelings hang around. Our habitual tendency is definitely to try to make those things go away.
    People and situations in our lives are always triggering our passion, aggression, and ignorance. A good old innocent cup of coffee triggers some people’s craving; they are addicted to it; it represents comfort and all the good things in life. If they can’t get it, their life is a wreck. Other people have an elaborate story line about why it’s bad for you, and they have aversion and a support group. Plenty of other people couldn’t care less about a cup of coffee; it doesn’t mean much at all to them.
    And then there’s good old Mortimer, that person who is sitting next to you in the meditation hall, or perhaps someone who works in your office. Some people are lusting when they see Mortimer. He looks wonderful to them. A lot of their discursive thought is taken up with what they’d like to do with Mortimer. A certain number of people hate him. They haven’t even talked to him yet, but the minute they saw him, they felt loathing. Some of us haven’t noticed him, and we may never notice him. In fact, a few years from now he’ll tell us he was here, and we’ll be surprised.
    So there are three things, which in the slogan are called three objects. One object is what we find pleasant, another is what we find unpleasant, and a third is what we’re neutral about. If it’s pleasant, it triggers craving; if it’s unpleasant, it triggers aversion; if