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The purpose of this meditation is to develop the strong wish to destroy our self-cherishing.

I began the meditation by thinking over a short passage from Geshe Kelsang Gyatso‘s recent book, Modern Buddhism:

“Because self-cherishing has deceived us, we have wasted our countless previous lives. It has driven us to work for our own purpose, but we have gained nothing. This foolish mind has made all our previous lives empty – when we took this human life we brought nothing with us but delusions. In every moment of every day, this self-cherishing mind continues to deceive us.”

I thought about this: self-cherishing dwells in my mind – an ever present bitter flavour. It spoils everything I try to achieve. In all my past lives it has caused me pain. It has caused my relationships to break down. It has caused me to leave my loved ones, or them to leave me. It had ruined my friendships. It has poisoned my mind, and caused me intolerable mental pain.

Self-cherishing has caused me to waste all my previous lives, and it is causing me to waste this one as well.

I slowly came to see self-cherishing as a piece of filthy waste material in my mind, festering and contaminating everything it touched. I need to eliminate this waste from my mind. I developed the strong wish to eliminate it from my mind. I focused on this wish for a while, and I came to a point where I imagined how it would be without self-cherishing in my mind.

I would be free. My mind would be free to flourish. All my thoughts would be pure and clean. It felt like a pure white flower flourishing, growing up and up, unhindered. I let my mind enter the flower and felt the purity and wholesomeness. I focused on this feeling for the rest of the meditation. It was lovely.

Dedication

May all living beings recognise and eliminate their self-cherishing, and attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.

Practice in the Meditation Break

I will apply the opponents to self-cherishing when I see it arising in my mind.