Every encounter suddenly becomes the path

(16)

Originally this slogan is stated as: “Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.”

This slogan is similar to the Stoics practice of ‘The obstacle is the way.’ This is the leaning-in to your experiences that are needed to be a full participant in your life. This is truer than true. What we do is who we are. The things of your life are what make up your life. What happens is our path. No matter rather what you think about your experience. This becomes obvious when you reflect on this.

When unexpected good fortune befalls you, your jubilee is just as likely to cause you to slip into a stupor of lack of attention as adverse fortunes. Good and bad events can both throw you off track and interrupt your practice. These slip-ups and interruptions seem to happen at the most unpredictable times. Mind Training will not smooth out all the positive and negative experiences that come your way. It can meld these experiences into life in a way that keeps you aware and acting from a place of compassion no matter how rough the waters get.

Practicing this slogan doesn’t have to be formal. This can be applied in an instant. Whatever appears in your life can wake you up. Surprises are lurking around you - surprises you can use as gifts. Your life is continuous with no breaks, no mistakes, and no dress rehearsals. Make it your whole practice to be human, to include everything. Take advantage of these opportunities. You are always doing spiritual practice, whether you realize it or not.

Your whole life is a meditation, and sometimes you are buffeted by the unexpected. The path you thought you were on turns takes you to an unexpected place. When you feel life is going dandy, and everything seems to fall into place, and the unexpected happens. Some unplanned event presents itself. It is challenging to hold on to the equanimity that you have built up. This slogan opens the way by applying the unexpected as your path, to absorbing the unexpected into your path. Changes to what you think is our path are need excepting, without preference, both welcome and unwelcome.

View this as an opportunity. When new opportunities present themselves, you get to practice now with what something new. You get to see what practice stability you had developed when things were going sweetly. Remember not to coast when things are easy. Instead, use the time to prepare and practice for the coming unexpected encounters.

Happiness, gratitude, and purity are like the treasury of the sky, the attainment of the original nature of mind. This is how adversities are turned into the path.

1. Be happy that adversities remind you to practice.
2. Be grateful the adversities warn you not to be lax and take this precious life for granted.
3. “Think about how as a result of every obstacle and harm in your life, you may develop the greatest results from meditation. This type of harm is, therefore, not harmful at all. It is, rather, full of remarkable qualities like very bitter medicine that will completely cure your sickness.” [^@Rinpoche:2009a]

Zen saying: “When you fall down on the ground, you use the ground to get up.”

Be patient either way ……………………………………[[201904100507]] Be grateful to everyone ………………………………….[[201902060546]] Meditate on your dissatisfactions …………………………[[201904170606]] Right now exert yourself, get it right …………………….[[201904190458]]

Alternate Titles

• Whatever you meet is the path
• Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation
• Relate whatever you can to meditation right now
• In order to take unexpected conditions as the path, immediately join whatever you meet with meditation
• Whatever you encounter, immediately apply it to meditation
• Utilize every immediate circumstance for meditation
• Bring the unexpected to the path, begin to train immediately
• The obstacle is the way

03-15-2019 - 5:33 AM ›[[201903150533]] → #slogans