The Detriments of Self-grasping and Self Preoccupation | Step 20 of Awakening in 30 Steps

Our compassion training combines both a wise mind and an open heart, analysis and emotion.

Here we take a deep dive to expose the root cause (mula klesha) of the myriad forms of suffering, ecological, social and personal.

Try to trace the chain link of events for the most extreme atrocities backwards to its origin in the human mind, and there we will find fear, greed, and hatred.

Trace then further and we find self-grasping (atma graha) the subtle habit that reifies or make a substantial self, other, and experience out of the flow of relative reality.

The lojong slogan ‘Drive All Blames into One’ is about locating the source for all our problems of compulsive life (samsara) in the subtle habit of self-grasping. It’s in each of us. We are all falling prey to the hallucination of separateness.

If we can finally have compassion for ourselves knowing how we fall prey to the root cause, then perhaps we can have compassion for others. Compassion doesn’t make excuses, it makes a determined effort to create the conditions for the uprooting of the primary cause of suffering in each of us.

The ultimate solution is contemplative education for all, so we can each see and perform perceptual surgery on ourselves.

Learn more about the gradual path to awakening with the Lam Rim Meditations course.