37 practices

someone ruins our chance to receive these by disparaging us in their presence. Try to imagine this scene. How would you feel and act?

Trying to impress people, we put on shows. We’re very clever when we try to impress someone. First we think of what kind of person they would be attracted to. Then we try to become that person or at least to appear like him or her. In other words, we present ourselves as being someone we think they think would be good. Confusing, isn’t it? We display ourselves as attractive; we pretend to be talented, rich, intelligent or artistic. We pretend we’re interested in things we’re not interested in. We pretend we know things that we don’t have a clue about—all because we want somebody to like us, we want him or her to approve of us and praise us, we want them to love us. To get them to say the ego-pleasing words we crave to hear or to do the ego-pleasing actions we want, we go through a big routine trying to become what we think they think we should be.

Even when we go to a Dharma centre, we may try to impress others by boasting, “I’ve done this retreat. I’ve taken this teaching.

I know this and have studied that.” We try to impress people with our Dharma knowledge as well. Or maybe we brag about how many lamas have visited our home or ridden in our car. We will use anything, even the Dharma, in an attempt to make ourselves look good and to get people to like or respect us. It’s very sad. This is like using gold to make a toilet.

Here’s the scenario: you are speaking to an audience of distinguished guests and are trying very hard to present a good image so that they will praise you and you will have a good 94