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repressing we invite suffering, bewilderment, or confusion to intensify.
    Drive all blames into Mortimer. Someone once heard the slogan “Drive all blames into one” and thought it was “Drive all blames into Juan.” Whether you call him or her Juan or Juanita or Mortimer, the usual tactic is either to act out or repress. If Mortimer or Juan or Juanita walks by and craving arises, you try to get together by flirting or making advances. If aversion arises, you try to get revenge. You don’t stay with the raw feelings. You don’t hold your seat. You take it a step further and act out.
    Repressing could actually come under the category of ignorance. When you see Juan or Juanita or Mortimer, you just shut down. Maybe you don’t even want to touch what they remind you of, so you just shut down. There’s another common form of repression, which has to do with guilt: Juan walks by; aversion arises; you act out; and then you feel guilty about it. You think you’re a bad person to be hating Juan, and so you repress it.
    What we’re working with in our basic shamatha-vipashyana practice—and explicitly with the tonglen practice—is the middle ground between acting out and repressing. We’re discovering how to hold our seat and feel completely what’s underneath all that story line of wanting, not wanting, and so forth.
    In terms of “Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue,” when these poisons arise, the instruction is to drop the story line, which means—instead of acting out or repressing—use the situation as an opportunity to feel your heart, to feel the wound. Use it as an opportunity to touch that soft spot. Underneath all that craving or aversion or jealousy or feeling wretched about yourself, underneath all that hopelessness and despair and depression, there’s something extremely soft, which is called bodhichitta.
    When these things arise, train gradually and very gently without making it into a big deal. Begin to get the hang of feeling what’s underneath the story line. Feel the wounded heart that’s underneath the addiction, self-loathing, or anger. If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart and to relate to that wound.
    When we do that, the three poisons become three seeds of how to make friends with ourselves. They give us the chance to work on patience and kindness, the chance not to give up on ourselves and not to act out or repress. They give us the chance to change our habits completely. This is what helps both ourselves and others. This is instruction on how to turn un-wanted circumstances into the path of enlightenment. By following it, we can transform all that messy stuff that we usually push away into the path of awakening: reconnecting with our soft heart, our clarity, and our ability to open further.

Start Where You Are
     
    T HERE ARE TWO SLOGANS that go along with the tonglen practice: “Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. / These two should ride the breath”—which is actually a description of tonglen and how it works—and “Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself.”
    The slogan “Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself” is getting at the point that compassion starts with making friends with ourselves, and particularly with our poisons—the messy areas. As we practice tonglen—taking and sending—and contemplate the lojong slogans, gradually it begins to dawn on us how totally interconnected we all are. Now people know that what we do to the rivers in South America affects the whole world, and what we do to the air in Alaska affects the whole world. Everything is interrelated—including ourselves, so this is very important, this making friends with ourselves. It’s the key to a more sane, compassionate planet.
    What you do for yourself—any