Cultivating Forgiveness (Pema Chodron)

Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel--shame, revenge, embarassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don't have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we'll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we'll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness. The potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an oppurtunity to make a fresh start.

The Button

There is a fungus which attacks tarantulas.
It lodges in their nervous system.
It directs them to build a special burrow
Where the tarantula dies
And the fungus grows, bursting up through the ground
Emerging from the tarantula's exploded body.

I saw the button on the table before me
And I pushed it, and an oak tree bloomed in my mind.
I pushed it again, and grimaced.
I collapsed to the ground.
I pushed it again,
and screamed.
The pain
lasted
forever.
And I pushed it again.
And the pain returned.
And I screamed.
And I writhed.
And I noticed that the oak tree was really a fungus.
And I pushed the button again.
And I screamed,
And pushed
And screamed.

Four Methods of Holding Your Seat (Pema Chodron)

When our intention is sincere but the going gets rough, most of us could use some help. We could use some fundamental instruction on how to lighten up and turn around our well-established habits of striking out and blaming.

The four methods for holding our seat provide just such support for developing the patience to stay open to what's happening instead of acting on automatic pilot. These four methods are:

1.Not setting up the target for the arrow. The choice is yours: you can strengthen old habits by reacting to irritation with anger, or weaken them by holding your seat.

2.Connecting with the heart. Sit with the intensity of the anger and let its energy humble you and make you more compassionate.

3.Seeing obstacles as teachers. Right at the point when you're about to blow your top, remember that you're being challenged to stay with edginess and discomfort and to relax where you are.

4.Regarding all that occurs as a dream. Contemplate that these outer circumstances, as well as these emotions, as well as this huge sense of ME, are passing and essenceless like a memory, like a movie, like a dream. That realization cuts through panic and fear.

When we find ourselves captured by aggression, we can remember this: we don't have to strike out, nor do we have to repress what we're feeling. We don't have to feel hatred or shame. We can at least begin to question our assumptions. Could it be that whether we are awake or asleep, we are simply moving from one dreamlike state to another?

Sorting

I was clearing out my mailbox, when I noticed that I had actually been invited to be a contributor here. How nice. Thank you. I am here.

Stages in my Spiritual Development

I recently discovered that the "J" in Prajna should be pronounced. I had assumed it was silent. How did I learn this? Well, therein lies a tale.

According to what I've learned, resentments are the number one offender which cause alcoholics to drink again. I recently heard some advice for getting rid of resentments. Pray for two weeks for the happiness and serenity of the person you resent. (In some cases it may take two months.) You will find that your resentment is gone. The other person doesn't change, but you no longer are letting them live without rent in your head. Okay fine, but what about people like me who don't believe in a deity? Well, I realized that I have resentments against people, but I also have (or perhaps had) a resentment against the idea of God.

The solution hit me. I can kill two resentments at once by praying for the happiness and root of happiness of the people I resent. This removes my resentment of them, and removes my resentment of God. This is similar to the Buddhist practice of tonglen which I mentioned in an earlier post. So I've begun doing that. I've also begun praying more generally, avoiding the wish-fufilment species of prayer, but more along the lines of, God help me to do the right thing. This Sunday, I finally figured out where a local Buddhist group meets, and I was feeling ambivalent about going. I asked God whether I should, ans the answer was clear. I should do it because I fear it. So I attended the Buddhist group's meeting. It was very interesting, and I got quite a bit out of it. I plan on going back next Sunday. In any event, we chanted in Sanskrit a couple of times, and it turns out that Prajna is pronounced like it's spelled!

P.S. The idea of God is consistent with Buddhism. The Zen Monk Suzuki thought that Westerners could use Buddhism to become more in tune with their native religions. In my view, by practicing meditation and mindfulness, I can ask God better questions. Thich Nhat Hanh believes that having two spiritual roots is an excellent idea, and that we should not renounce our original religion. Perhaps he realizes that such renunciation is often motivated by resentment, and is thus not a healthy spiritual foundation.

A Puzzle, by Vacuous

The man with large orbital neandertal ridges
Talked of Mother Teresa.
She was asked what she said when she prayed.
Nothing, I just listen.
And what does God say?
Nothing, she said, he just listens too.
This sounds profound,
But I have no idea what it means.

BTW

I am taking some time off from posting, so I can devote more time to reading. I will still read comments though, so if you have any burning desires...

Untitled, by Vacuous

one time I went with my Momma
to see the circus
I was greedy with anticipation
we rushed forward
there was a homeless man sleeping in the doorway
the crowd spoke with one silent voice
the idea is not to be acknowledged

the incident did not make a big impression on me
actually it made a profound impression
the deep mark that it left on my psyche
is that such incidents must not, cannot make big impressions

600 sand hill cranes by the Hiwassee river
huddled down
feathers puffed out
to protect against the cold air
this image remains in my mind
though i do not know why

Complacency

I feel like I am becoming complacent in my spirituality and I want to change that. I think it's like yoga. If you practice every day you can maintain your flexibility and even improve it. But if you stop, you lose that flexibility. Similarly, I feel like I went through a rapid period of spiritual growth and have now tapered off a bit. This is true of a lot of enterprises: a relatively small initial effort has dramatic consequences, but to go further, one has to expend much more energy. (Weightlifting comes to mind.) I know also that I shouldn't expect overnight changes, and that as long as I keep practicing, my character is bound to steadily improve.

This doesn't have much to do with today's reading, except of course that tonglen practice is a good way to practice improving one's personality. I love the way it transforms objects of my anger into tools for spiritual growth. I have a tendency, as I have remarked many times, not to acknowledge my own anger. When the `object of my fury' arises in my brain, I have two tendencies: one is to immediately banish it; the other is to get into an extended daydream in which I heap scorn on the object. Neither of these two courses is optimal. A third course, which I implement more often nowadays with my Buddhist practice, is to recognize the fury, and rest with its implications. In other words, I might be thinking of something and have an internal mental commentary in which the word "Bullshit" comes to mind. It actually is a new thing for me to recognize this when it happens, and to follow through on the implications. I said "bullshit" so I must feel strongly about this thing. Only when I recognize my own resentments can I be free of them. One of the wonderful things about my Buddhist practice is that it has made me more perceptive to all sorts of things, not the least of which is my own thought process. (I have no idea what other people's thought processes are like, and my perceptions about my own are likely not to be all that relevant to others. Each person has a unique mental construction. )

Inviting Your Unfinished Business

You can bring all of your unfinished karmic business right into tonglen practice. In fact, you should invite it in. Suppose that you are involved in a horrific relationship: every time you think of a particular person you feel furious. That is very useful for tonglen! Or perhaps you feel depressed. It was all you could do to get out of bed today. You're so depressed that you want to stay in bed for the rest of your life; you have considered hiding under your bed. This is very useful to tonglen practice. The specific fixation should be real, just like that.

You may be formally doing tonglen or just having your coffee, and here comes the object of your fury. You breathe that in. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion. The technique is that you do not blame the object; you also don't blame yourself. Instead, there is just liberated fury---hot, dark, and heavy. Experience it as fully as you can.

Breathe the anger in; remove the object; stop thinking about him. In fact, he was just a useful catalyst. Now you own the anger completely. You drive all blames into yourself. It takes a lot of bravery, and it's extremely insulting to the ego. In fact, it destroys the whole mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.

Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of just a small, dark situation, you allow a lot of space for these feelings. Breathing out is like opening up your arms and just letting go. It's fresh air. Then you breathe the rage in again---the dark, heavy hotness of it. Then you breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.

-Pema Chödrön

Comments on this very moment

I type poorly. I use a hybrid hunt and peck method which takes quite a bit of time and involves much backtracking to correct mistakes. This morning, I noticed that I can often type out passages, albeit slowly, without looking down at the keyboard. It's an interesting and surprising [TO ME!] observation about myself in the current moment.

Existing in the moment is damn good advice, since that's all we can ever directly experience. Worrying about, and being caught up in the past or future, we rob ourselves of experiencing right now. Right now will defy expectations, but that's good. It is surprising, and, as a result, stimulating. By being consistently present in the moment, we can make fully conscious decisions, rather than letting our auto-pilot system make the decision for us, while we daydream.

Do I live up to this ideal? Absolutely not. I let my auto-pilot run way too often for my taste. That's okay, I am not perfect, and recognizing that I do this is part of living in the moment. As I progress, I hope that my auto-pilot will come on line less and less. My journal which I write in each night, when I remember, helps me to assess my behavior throughout the day, and helps me to see where I could have done better, where my auto-pilot got me into trouble.

Meditation is very good practice for living in the moment. In meditation, thoughts unrelated to the present moment come up, and I try to let them go. I am just there, experiencing the world around me, without interpreting it verbally. I find that in situations that arise during the day, I can often pause and relax into it, much as I do when meditating.

This very moment is the perfect teacher

As we become more open, we might think that it's going to take bigger catastrophes to make us want to exit in our habitual ways. The interesting thing is that, as we open more and more, it's thie big ones that immediately wake us up and the little things that catch us off guard. However, no matter the size color, or shape of the catastrophe, the point is to continue to lean into the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than try to protect ourselves from it.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal---quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some kind of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then that's our experience. "This very moment is the perfect teacher" is really a most profound instruction. Just seeing what's going on---that's the teaching right there. We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom. It's available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

-Pema Chödrön

Comments

Tonglen is a Tibetan word meaning "Sending and receiving." "In the practice of tonglen, we breathe in whatever feels bad, and send out whatever feels good." If we feel discomfort, anger, guilt, loneliness or other emotions usually considered "bad," rather than trying to deny them, repress them, project them onto others, we can instead merely accept them. What a simple, revolutionary concept!

Slogan: "Drive all blames into one"

"Drive all blames into one" is saying, instead of always blaming the otyher, own the feeling of blame, own the anger, own the loneliness, and make friends with it. Use tonglen practice to see how you can place the anger of the fear or the loneliness in a cradle of loving-kindness; use tonglen to learn how to be gentle with all that stuff. In order to be gentle and create an atmosphere of compassion for yourself, it's necessary to stop talking to yourself about how wrong everything is---or how right everything is, for that matter.

I challenge you to experiment this way: drop the object of your emotion, do tonglen, and see if in fact the intensity of the so-called poison lessens. I have experimented with this, and because my doubt was so strong, for a while it seemed that it didn't work. But as my trust grew, I found that that's what happens---the intensity of the emption lessens, and so does the duration. This happens because the ego begins to be ventilated. We are all primarily addicted to ME. This big solid ME begins to be aerated when we go against the grain and abide with our feelings instead of blaming the other.

The "one" in "Drive all blames into one" is our tendency to protect ourselves: ego-clinging. When we drive all blames into this tendency by staying with our feelings and feeling them fully, the ongoing monolithic ME begins to lighten up, because it is fabricated withour opinions, our moods, and a lot of ephemeral--but at the same time vivid and convincing--stuff.

-Pema Chödrön

Untitled, by Vacuous

Once, when I was young
My Momma and I came to Hiwassee Tennessee
Where a maple tree dropped its leaves in Autumn.
Some lay on the ground.
Some fell in the water.
Momma's face was so serene.
Her joy was my joy.
Later, we visited a Trail of Tears memorial,
But I didn't understand what it was about.

Untitled, by Vacuous

Starlings, loud, startling
Back aching, slacking
Ash tree blooming over asphalt tiles
Leaves decaying, cloying
Restless, immersing in red cedar reflecting
Dim air, damp atmosphere
Cold squirrels chattering
Breath vapors blooming
Each instant individual
Each moment momentous

Comments on Sunday Morning

I like quite a few of the points this poem makes. Divinity should be within us, not an external oppressive force. It can be captured in certain moments, often representing a deep connection with the natural world. Things such as wet roads on Autumn nights, but also in sadder emotions, which is an interesting point. The poem also reinforces the common criticism of the conventional view of heaven, where everything is perfect and no-one ever dies. If nothing ever changes, things are bound to be uninteresting and significantly less beautiful than earth. Death is the mother of beauty, the poem says. If the trees displayed their Autumn colors all year round, would we find the colors as beautiful? I would not. It would be symptomatic of a deep wrongness (to co-opt a usage from Stranger in a Strange Land). The trees go through their cycles each year and this is part of the beauty. If they were to retain their almost-dead leaves for the mere purpose of being visually pleasing to some humans, they would lose their deeper beauty. The beauty expressed in their intricate interplay with the rest of nature. I like the passage on the primitve religion. The poem seems to be saying, here is a more honest, more basic religion. These chanting men
feel a deep connection with nature: the sun, the wind, the lake. And when they die, they know they will rejoin the earth, they will rejoin nature, and that is indeed a mystical, spiritual thing.

Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe.
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in lonlieness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

V

She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our persihing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother off beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voive by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voive that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live an an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us in their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Comments on Nothing

I've been somewhat irritable yesterday and today. It doesn't really manifest itself in personal interactions, but rather in my own mental commentary on the world. When I encounter something, I am quite likely to say "this is bullshit," or some such to myself. I am not sure what the origin of this is, but I have a guess. I attended a funeral a few days ago of a homeless man. His family was there, but they didn't seem sad. They didn't seem to care about anything but their own selves. The clincher was when the man's cousin, with a leather bible which had gold trim, got up to make his remarks, and proceeded to deliver a sermon filled with pompous bullshit. It really turned me off. I felt like, this man is a real hypocrite. Now I'm just saying what I felt at the time. I may be being too harsh on these people. It could be that the cousin was just doing his best to do a good job to honor his dead cousin. So he delivered a beautiful (in his mind) sermon. It may be. When my own grandmother died, I myself attempted to do a good job writing some remarks to say at the funeral. Indeed, and I'm ashamed of this, after I delivered my remarks, I was a bit surprised when no applause occurred. That's how hard-wired this sort of thing is for me. So perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on the man. It's interesting that this event has had such a lasting effect on me.

As for today's passage by Chödrön, it contains a lot which I try to take to heart and implement in my daily life. Living completely in the moment, for one. Perhaps this is the basic Buddhist tenet. Being comfortable with our own mind, accepting our emotions, these are others. Not prejudging, not saying "well I know how that's going to be," and using this as an excuse to not do or experience something. These are all good practices.

Nothing to Hold On To

Instructions on mindfulness all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame anyone else, and also don'r blame ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question with no conceptual answer. We also encounter ourselves.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find that something is not as we thought. That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion---not what we thought. Love, buddha nature, courage---these are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

The path of the warrior-bodhisattva is not about going to heaven or a place that's really comfortable. Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always lokking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsara. As long as we believe there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. "Nothing to hold on to" is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies.

-Pema Chödrön

Note: "Samsara" is a Sanskrit word meaning "journeying." It is "the vicious cycle of suffering that results from the mistaken belief in the solidity and permanence of self and other."

Comments on the Essential Paradox

Things are as bad and as good as they seem. Sometimes nowadays someone will tell me about somehting tragic or upsetting, and I will experience a wave of emotion wash over me, and then I will move on. This is actually quite good for me. It used to be that I would repress emotions of sadness or grief, often having them convert to anger. One of the things I was afraid of was losing my happiness. If I give in to the grief, I unconsciously thought, then I will never escape. I must not even acknowledge it. How much better it is to experience it genuinely and then move on. I notice that the elderly talk about death and in less reverent tones than the young, excluding those young who have seen a lot of death. An elderly person will often say simply "So and so has died" and then already be talking about something else one minute later. I think this is healthy. Death is a fact of life. Sadness is appropriate at the loss of a good friend, but there is no point, no obligation either, to grieve continuously. I think many of the elderly have learned this lesson, probably the hard way. As their friends and family continue to die, death becomes much more of a familiar entity, unworthy of extensive comment. Now, I am not espousing a fatalisitic view here. I am not saying everyone dies, so what's the point in living? I am saying, everyone dies, so what's the point in grieving. In a sense my view is exactly the opposite of the fatalistic interpretation. Finally, it should be said that it is not desirable or possible to completely eliminate grief. When a person close to you dies, it is completely natural to experience a large amount of grief. Trying to stop this emotional floodtide is not what I advocate at all. I do advocate not clinging to it. Experience these emotions but there's no need to prevent them from leaving when the time comes.

The other side of the coin is pleasurable experience. The first thing that comes to mind here is drinking alcohol. I used to drink a beer, experience a mild euphoric buzz, and then down as many beers as I could after that in an effort to maintain that euphoric buzz. The nature of the euphoria was such that this strategy always failed, and I would end up throwing up into a toilet the next day. (Hopefully I made it to a toilet.) I was trying to experience joy and cling tenaciously to it. How much better it is to experience joy when it naturally occurs, and let it pass peacefully on its way when the time comes.

The Essential Paradox

In the Heart Sutra, one of the Buddha's principal disciples, a monk named Shariputra, begins to question Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, asking, "In all the words and actions and thoughts of my life, how do I apply the prajnaparamita? What is the key to training in this practice? What view do I take?"

Avalokiteshvara answers with the most famous of Buddhist paradoxes: "Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness." His explanation, like the prajnaparamita itself, is inexpressible, indescribable, inconceivable. Form is that which simply is before we project our beliefs onto it. The prajnaparamita represents a completely fresh take, an unfettered mind where anything is possible.

"Form is emptiness" refers to our simple, direct relationship with the immediacy of experience. First we wipe away our preconceptions and then we even have to let go of our belief that we should look at things without preconceptions. In continuing to pull out our own rug, we understand the perfection of things just as they are.

But "emptiness also is form" turns the tables. Emptiness continually manifests as war and peace, as grief, birth, old age, sickness, and death, as well as joy. We are challenged to stay in touch with the heart-throbbing quality of being alive. That's why we train in the relative bodhichitta practices of the four limitless qualities and tonglen. They help us to engage fully in the vividness of life with an open, unclouded mind. Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.

-Pema Chödrön

Random Thoughts

I once read that we need to be entirely ready to have God remove all of our defects of character. This sort of advice is hard for me to follow, especially given my disbelief in any sort of deity. However, i think the use of the word God here indicates that it is not by a conscious act of self-will that we will eliminate or reduce our character defects. It is not by a constant self-policing that we will be free of them, but rather we need to gradually practice living spiritually. Meditating daily helps, certainly. After I started writing my daily actions in a journal yesterday, it occurred to me that I actually have reduced many of my character defects, and I hadn't really appreciated it. For example, I believe that I am far less egotistical than I was.

The main point here, of this advice, as far as I can see, is to not cling to one's character defects. Accept the fact that you can live without them. This is the first step toward living without them, or reducing them anyway. Some defects we will never be rid of. That's okay too. We are just people, and that's the way we are. It's interesting how I can be very charitable towards other people's flaws, but I tend to be more self-critical and hold myself to a higher standard. if only I held myself to the same standard I hold everyone else to. Then I could accept my own flaws. That doesn't mean that I cling to them and refuse to let them go. it means that I am ready to let them go, but if they prove to be hard to get rid of, I am not going to beat myself up over it.

This is very Buddhist advice. I am not going to cling to this. I am not going to cling to that. I will live with what i have without being attached to it.