Of the Two Witnesses, Hold the Principal One
In any situation there are two witnesses: other people’s view of you and your own view of yourself. Of those, the principal witness is your own insight. You should not go along with other people’s opinion of you. The practice of this slogan is always be true to yourself.
This is based on trusting your intelligence rather than trusting yourself. It is trusting your intelligence by knowing who you are and what you are. You know yourself so well, therefore any deception could be cut through. If someone congratulates or compliments you, they may not know your entire existence. So you should come back to your own judgment, to your own sense of your expression and the tricks you play on others and on yourself. This is not self-centered, it is self-inspired from the point of view of the nonexistence of the ego. You just witness what you are. You are simply witnessing and evaluating the merit, rather than going back over it in a Jungian or Freudian way.
From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
September 18th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
great focus, great input, exactly where sponteneity lies!
September 24th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
You can never know what people are thinking of you, unless they tell you, and even then you don’t know what their motive is for telling you what they told you. So, if you try to act in a way that you think will please others you will become extremely confused! Ergo, ego is not always the enemy …