There’s a feeling you get when some novel new way of seeing suddenly clicks. Stoking the fire to stick with the view can help turn that slow but steady analysis into fast intuition. Stoke the right fired the right way and the moment-to-moment intuition can be accurate too.

I got offended by something well intentioned a friend said. Happens to all of us. Thankfully, we’re good enough friends to know there was no ill will, no disrespect, just love. We hashed out our attempts at communication amicably. It’s a blessing to make that mistake enough times to know when you’re about to talk across each other.

Reflecting on the moments of offense, hurt and anger proved fruitful. Sensations, emotions, and judgements have less power when decomposed to parts. Sustained analysis takes comptemplative focus. Who was I angry with? Ok, my friend. What about my friend was I hurt by? His thoughts. I still loved his spirit, his jokes, our friendship, and his life. He probably has thousands of thoughts in a day. I was offended by such a small part of his thoughts, some wind through a thousand leaves. So what was I offended by? Nothing. We clarified our points in true brotherhood.

brozzers

Conceit is Buddhist jargon for something that shackles us from being our best every day. Freeing yourself of conceit is often regarded as not seeing things as inferior, superior, or equal. We compare things by quantity and qualities. Quality is often apparent to be empty. “Hes full of shit”, “I think she’s hot”, “that jackass”, etc are all extremely relative judgements. To understand how quantity is empty, dont all individuals have parts? Do you count the parts too? How many parts is that? Are those parts also countable?

Are the bird separate from the fish? Are the fish one with the birds?

Ultimate happiness is in other beings happines. We can get out of the way of ourselves to make everyone in our world happy, which often includes ourselves. Gotta stoke that fire. We talking about practice.