# Exchanging Self with Other #177

An episode of [How to Train a Happy Mind](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1496841325), 17 Dec 2024, 40 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/721908/episodes/16287016-exchanging-self-with-other-177.mp3

Today's episode features a transformative meditation known as "Exchanging Self." Originally shared with the Train a Happy Mind community, this practice has deep roots in Tibetan Buddhism. For nearly a thousand years, it remained a closely guarded tradition, recently made accessible to all. If this meditation resonates with you, consider joining the Train a Happy Mind community, which gathers on Sunday mornings. Participation is open to everyone, either for free or by donation. Episode 177: Exchanging Self with Other If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials

## Chapters

- 0:00 Introduction
- 2:22 Am I a Bodhisattva?
- 4:02 What is real happiness?
- 7:49 The five steps of exchanging self with other
- 11:04 Exchanging self with other meditation
- 12:28 Bringing out our best qualities
- 15:29 Stabilize the mind
- 17:45 Step 1: All living beings want to be happy
- 23:29 Step 2: The disadvantages of being self-centered
- 27:01 Step 3: Advantages of cherishing others
- 31:39 Step 4: Exchanging self with other
- 33:39 Step 5: Love and compassion

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker: How to Train the Happy Mind is a production of the nonprofit A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment.
[0:04] Speaker: Our podcasts and programs are free and ad-free, thanks to our generous donors.
[0:09] Speaker: To support us now, visit our website at howtotrainahappymind.org.
[0:15] Speaker: We accept cash, credit, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, and your donations are tax deductible in the US.
[0:22] Speaker: Today's episode is a powerful meditation called Exchanging Self with Other that I led for our Train a Happy Mind community a couple months ago.
[0:49] Speaker: For nearly a thousand years, this was a secret practice that Tibetan Buddhist teachers only recently opened up to everyone after China's invasion of Tibet.
[0:59] Speaker: If you enjoy it, I invite you to join our Train a Happy Mind community that meets Sunday mornings.
[1:06] Speaker: You can become part of it for free or by donation.
[1:09] Speaker: We're doing an extended series on love and compassion, which is one of my favorite topics.
[1:24] Speaker: I think most of us like love and compassion.
[1:26] Speaker: Compassion can be a little scary, actually, because you open yourself up to other people's suffering.
[1:31] Speaker: Love can be scary too, because you take down your boundaries and open yourself up to people.
[1:36] Speaker: In the last three sessions, we did meditations from the book, we did equanimity, we did love, we did compassion, and we did a practice called universalizing, which is where you use every experience in your life as a way to generate love and compassion.
[1:53] Speaker: And as a reminder, if anyone missed that, it's like quite a nice practice because as you're eating a sandwich, you can just like, oh, if only everyone in the world had a nice sandwich and had food to eat and so on.
[2:04] Speaker: And then if something bad happens, say you stub your toe instead of my toe.
[2:09] Speaker: Like all the other people who are hurt who are sick right now, even people on their deathbed, may their pain be eased, may their illnesses be healed, may their toe feel better.
[2:21] Speaker: So today we're doing a practice that combines a lot of these.
[2:26] Speaker: A bodhisattva is a being who dedicates their life to benefiting others.
[2:31] Speaker: And they cultivate a quality called bodhicitta.
[2:35] Speaker: Citta means mind, and bodhi means enlightenment.
[2:39] Speaker: And so it's striking when you realize that when we say enlightenment, in this form of Buddhism, it's almost it's synonymous with altruism, that the two things are basically the same state.
[2:52] Speaker: That totally developing your mind to its highest state of development is to be completely altruistic, to want to take away all of other people's suffering and want to give everything to everybody that they need.
[3:05] Speaker: And I'll tell you, I was a little naive when I first heard about this.
[3:09] Speaker: My brother took me to teaching by the Dalai Lama 25 years ago, and he was teaching about this.
[3:15] Speaker: And when I went left, I was thinking, oh, I like people and I want them to be happy.
[3:20] Speaker: So maybe I'm almost a bodhisattva.
[3:23] Speaker: But it turns out it's not as easy as you think.
[3:27] Speaker: For me at least, it wasn't as easy as I thought.
[3:30] Speaker: Because when you start really getting to understand your mind, you're gonna see the more subtle ways that you may not feel equal about people.
[3:39] Speaker: Because I I never felt that angry at most people.
[3:43] Speaker: But what I start to realize is I do have bias.
[3:45] Speaker: I'm biased towards some people and against others, and the many people I don't really care about at all that I pass on the street or I see on television indifference.
[3:55] Speaker: Sometimes even tragedies, I would kind of feel indifferent, or just ooh, lucky not me.
[4:02] Speaker: I remember sometimes feeling.
[4:04] Speaker: And then also the sense of separateness is another kind of obstacle to caring about everybody that you feel insulated, isolated from others.
[4:15] Speaker: That somehow my happiness, our happiness can be disconnected from other people's happiness.
[4:20] Speaker: This Buddhist view is just they're totally inseparable.
[4:24] Speaker: It's not quite possible to have a selfish type of happiness.
[4:29] Speaker: It's not real happiness.
[4:32] Speaker: Then I also started to realize that the people I often get the most angry at are the ones who love me the most.
[4:38] Speaker: Which I think for people listening, this might ring true.
[4:42] Speaker: Who do I get angry at the most?
[4:44] Speaker: My partner, my parents, my siblings.
[4:48] Speaker: It's funny.
[4:49] Speaker: I I laugh a lot at these things.
[4:50] Speaker: I think laughter is a very good way to process things like this, but it is it is quite painful again.
[4:57] Speaker: So there are all these methods, there's these systematic methods to help us get past the kind of bias that we have that prevents us from loving everybody in a healthy way with boundaries and having compassion from everybody.
[5:14] Speaker: There's one called Tonglen, where you use your breath and you breathe in and take in people's suffering and breathe out and offer happiness.
[5:22] Speaker: At first, they sound simple, but to really practice them, I've found that they work, but they work quite gradually over the course of years and then eventually decades, which is not something to be disappointed about.
[5:34] Speaker: It's something to look forward to because I think it keeps opening, opening, opening your heart.
[5:39] Speaker: And and then when I look at people who really effectively followed the great teachers, it's always the Dalai Lama is a great example.
[5:45] Speaker: You can see there's no limit.
[5:48] Speaker: There's no limit to their effect on you, if you've ever met him or somebody like him, whoever's in front of them, they get all of his attention, all of his love, all of his compassion.
[5:57] Speaker: It's amazing being around somebody like that.
[6:00] Speaker: And if you ever have the chance, it doesn't have to be the Dalai Lama.
[6:03] Speaker: There's actually a lot of people like this.
[6:04] Speaker: And they're not all Buddhists, you know, some of them are nurses, mothers, caretakers, some of your friends, people we know.
[6:12] Speaker: But if you really follow those instructions, they seem simple, but they really work, I think, to transform your mind towards some towards the mind that's quite often and eventually always thinking about others and transforming all of your experience into compassion.
[6:28] Speaker: I've mentioned this a few times.
[6:30] Speaker: Most of these methods for love and compassion were very secret until quite recently, like until 50 or 60 years ago.
[6:38] Speaker: And it's a tragedy for the Tibetan people because they lost their country and a lot of their freedom to practice in it.
[6:46] Speaker: But it's been a treasure that was released to the world as these practices were opened up to everybody and made into forms that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice.
[6:57] Speaker: I take a very secular, non-religious approach to all these teachings.
[7:02] Speaker: I myself am a Buddhist, but I teach in a way that you don't have to be a Buddhist, which my teacher said, the Dalai Lama said, go beyond religion.
[7:09] Speaker: He has a book called Beyond Religion.
[7:10] Speaker: That was an inspiration for adapting a teaching like this.
[7:14] Speaker: So I'll explain this practice a little bit and then we'll do the meditation.
[7:17] Speaker: It's really important to actually do the meditation, not just read about it.
[7:21] Speaker: And like I said, it doesn't sound that complicated when you think about it.
[7:24] Speaker: And the key is just to do it.
[7:26] Speaker: It's five steps.
[7:28] Speaker: There's a lot of different numbered sequences in Buddhism.
[7:32] Speaker: Like with love and compassion, there's the four immeasurables love, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
[7:39] Speaker: There's a seven-step sequence on how to cultivate love and compassion, Bodhicitta.
[7:47] Speaker: This is a five-step sequence.
[7:49] Speaker: And it's called exchanging self with others.
[7:52] Speaker: I'll describe the steps.
[7:54] Speaker: It's actually nice to hear them described before we meditate.
[7:56] Speaker: It begins with equalizing self with others.
[8:00] Speaker: And so to explain it simply is to think how we're all equal, and one of the simplest ways is just that everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to suffer, just like me.
[8:12] Speaker: That phrase, just like me, is can be particularly helpful.
[8:15] Speaker: Especially when you're really angry at someone or see someone in the world you just really, really think is doing awful things is particularly helpful.
[8:24] Speaker: Because the bias, even against the people doing the worst things in the world, is an obstacle to our own love and compassion.
[8:30] Speaker: Although it might be the last step you're able to take.
[8:33] Speaker: But equalizing yourself with others is the first step.
[8:36] Speaker: So even that one might be kind of hard to practice fully at first.
[8:40] Speaker: Then you think of the drawbacks of selfishness, the second step.
[8:44] Speaker: And that one may not be immediately obvious because it's it's different from taking care of yourself.
[8:48] Speaker: It's important to take care of yourself and be compassionate to yourself.
[8:52] Speaker: But what are the drawbacks of selfishness?
[8:55] Speaker: It's nice to really think about it without just going through some rote program.
[8:59] Speaker: But um try to live one day totally selfish and then live the next day totally altruistic to the best of your ability and see how you feel at the end of each of those days.
[9:12] Speaker: Or try to remember back doing something very selfish and how you felt about it, how you still feel about it, or doing something very kind and altruistic and how you felt, how that made you feel.
[9:24] Speaker: So the third step is the benefits of cherishing others.
[9:27] Speaker: They think how nice it is to cherish others and how good I feel, even about like I look back for the things I really feel best about in my life.
[9:35] Speaker: Certain things that happened maybe even 20, 30 years ago that were selfless.
[9:40] Speaker: But I did, I didn't have to do, and maybe it was someone who wasn't immediately related to me or that I would get something back from.
[9:46] Speaker: I felt really good.
[9:48] Speaker: Felt really good about how develop my character in a good way.
[9:52] Speaker: And especially if there was a sacrifice, some big sacrifice involved, like, ah, but I still did that.
[9:57] Speaker: Then the fourth step is the one of exchanging self with other.
[10:01] Speaker: So that's what you actually think.
[10:03] Speaker: You actually picture, picture everyone around you, everyone in the world, and think, do I really want to live a life where I take everything they do for me, like all of them for me, me, me, me, me.
[10:15] Speaker: They're manufacturing my products, making my fruit.
[10:17] Speaker: Or does it make more sense that I try to benefit them?
[10:25] Speaker: That somehow, to whatever extent that I make their lives a little better.
[10:32] Speaker: And as a side effect, it makes you quite happy.
[10:34] Speaker: And then the last step is love and compassion, is to then practice love and compassion to whatever extent you can.
[10:41] Speaker: It's interesting when you hear it broken down right into these steps.
[10:47] Speaker: Like they are they are discrete and and slightly different from one another, anyway, let's do the practice.
[10:54] Speaker: So get yourself into meditation posture.
[11:07] Speaker: If you're on the ground, you cross your legs and raise your seat up onto a cushion.
[11:14] Speaker: If you're in a chair, don't cross your legs and just have your legs out and straight down.
[11:19] Speaker: You can put one hand on top of the other, your palms up like this, and then your thumbs touching.
[11:27] Speaker: And then straighten your spine, that's the most important part.
[11:34] Speaker: Tilt down your head and almost close your eyes if that feels comfortable, which helps you go inward without falling asleep.
[11:47] Speaker: But feel free to change any of these elements of posture if it makes your body more comfortable and more alert.
[11:56] Speaker: Just relax the muscles in your mouth, relax your shoulders, your neck, your face.
[12:02] Speaker: And just that actually, you should be able to feel more alert, a little bit more connected to yourself.
[12:13] Speaker: Remember for a moment what meditation is from Buddhist tradition, which is bringing out our best qualities.
[12:25] Speaker: So to start the meditation, we can just have that motivation of bringing out our best qualities.
[12:36] Speaker: My daughter's name is Samaya, and that's a vow.
[12:40] Speaker: It's a type of vow you have in Tibetan Buddhism.
[12:44] Speaker: It's your commitments to do certain practices and behave certain ways every day.
[12:49] Speaker: And so she asked what her name means.
[12:52] Speaker: And at first I would say, oh, it means a commitment vow.
[12:55] Speaker: Then my wife came up with this great way to explain her name, which is it's your promise to be your best self.
[13:01] Speaker: So that can be a nice motivation.
[13:06] Speaker: The second step of a meditation session after posture is just to have a motivation that however much time we spend on the cushion, that it's a way to connect with ourselves and to bring out our best qualities.
[13:21] Speaker: One of the perspectives on the mind from this tradition is that our minds are fundamentally good, and that delusions, disturbing emotions, that they're shallow.
[13:35] Speaker: They're actually on the surface, and uh deeper beneath within each of us is kindness, love, compassion, generosity, patience.
[13:43] Speaker: The more we see that in ourselves and others, the the better life we lead, a life of integrity and happiness.
[13:51] Speaker: And it can be useful to think of other beings more evolved than we are, but whoever that is for you, it could be.
[14:07] Speaker: If you're Buddhist, it can be Rudaya Lama.
[14:10] Speaker: If you're a Christian, it can be Jesus, Mary, God.
[14:14] Speaker: A little bit different if you're Christian and but you can just think of ordinary people who are patient and calm, generous wives.
[14:28] Speaker: And from this tradition's perspective of the mind, we can become like them.
[14:38] Speaker: We can become more like them.
[14:40] Speaker: And it's by doing exactly what we're doing right now.
[14:47] Speaker: Just by going inward.
[14:49] Speaker: And this is really one of the very best forms of self-care, self-compassion, is to spend some quiet time going inward to figure out who you are beneath stimulation, entertainment, relationships, even beneath your personality.
[15:05] Speaker: There's something very subtle and alive within all of us that is fundamentally good that we can recognize and connect with.
[15:15] Speaker: Then bring your mind to your breath just for one minute to stabilize the mind.
[15:33] Speaker: You can focus on the breath as it comes in and out of your nostrils.
[15:39] Speaker: The cooler as it comes in.
[15:43] Speaker: And pay attention at the pause.
[15:46] Speaker: And then as it goes out, a little warmer.
[15:50] Speaker: Totally natural to get distracted.
[15:55] Speaker: And when you do, just kind of smile.
[15:57] Speaker: You don't need to feel bad about yourself.
[16:00] Speaker: Just direct your mind back to your breath and let whatever distraction it was, whether a pain in your body or a plane in the memory, just let them fade away.
[16:10] Speaker: Thoughts naturally fade away.
[16:11] Speaker: If you don't feed them, don't pay attention to them.
[16:15] Speaker: So just one minute to focus on the breath.
[16:19] Speaker: With a method called exchanging self with the other.
[17:48] Speaker: That's a thousand years old.
[17:52] Speaker: Comes from the master Atisha, who was one of those who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 11th century.
[18:04] Speaker: And Lama Tsong khapa, the founder of this Lamrim lineage that I base the How to Train a Happy Mind meditations on.
[18:13] Speaker: And it's stayed pure down to the present day through great teachers.
[18:22] Speaker: So we start the first step is how much all living beings want to be happy.
[18:35] Speaker: To put yourself in the shoes of your partner, your parents, your friends.
[18:51] Speaker: And think how they just want to be happy, just as I do.
[18:58] Speaker: Gradually expand to include people around you.
[19:22] Speaker: It's because it's nice to think the people actually around you, like in the houses next door.
[19:27] Speaker: In the town or city where you are.
[19:33] Speaker: You can think of your personal enemies if you have them, people you're in conflict with.
[20:18] Speaker: But many of us are lucky enough not to have someone we would call an enemy in our everyday life.
[20:27] Speaker: But most of us have enemies in the greater world.
[20:33] Speaker: People we consider to be harming the world in some way, starting wars, stoking hatred, destroying the environment.
[20:45] Speaker: Try if you can to see that those people you consider your enemies, they also want to be happy.
[21:03] Speaker: They don't want to suffer.
[21:06] Speaker: Just like me.
[21:09] Speaker: To animals.
[21:47] Speaker: Fish, insects, they all have the same right to be happy as I do.
[21:59] Speaker: They flee from pain.
[22:04] Speaker: They move toward what's pleasant.
[22:07] Speaker: Even if you look at a little amoeba or paras or parasites, parasomium.
[22:13] Speaker: Under a microscope, they put a little drop of sugar, they move toward it.
[22:18] Speaker: And if you poke it with a pin, they run away.
[22:21] Speaker: You could imagine yourself in the body of head or a bird.
[22:31] Speaker: Think how they all have the same rights and aspirations to be happy.
[22:40] Speaker: Of course, with a slightly more primitive mind.
[22:44] Speaker: But still, they feel pain.
[22:47] Speaker: They have some sense of enjoyment to what feels good.
[22:51] Speaker: So in the middle of these infinite living beings, I'm just one.
[23:14] Speaker: Yet instead of thinking about making all of them happy, I spend most of my time thinking about making myself happy.
[23:26] Speaker: That would even be okay if it actually worked.
[23:33] Speaker: But by being so self-centered, I don't even change, don't even achieve that goal.
[23:42] Speaker: So that's why in the second step we meditate on the disadvantages of being self-centered, which is different than genuine self-care.
[23:55] Speaker: Think of all the actions that are motivated by self-centeredness.
[24:03] Speaker: Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, divisive speech, just thinking badly, ill will.
[24:13] Speaker: And when we look at the people who do these selfish acts, and ourselves, when we act selfishly, do these actions even make us happy?
[24:39] Speaker: You can decide for yourself, but in general, the conclusion, no.
[24:48] Speaker: The result is that we create the cause of our own suffering.
[24:52] Speaker: When we're self-centered, we make our partner and children unhappy.
[25:00] Speaker: Because nobody likes selfish people who think mostly about themselves and use other people and things for their own happiness.
[25:08] Speaker: Think about someone you know like this who is selfish like this, who acts selfishly.
[25:19] Speaker: People don't tend to like them very much.
[25:23] Speaker: They usually don't have that many friends.
[25:28] Speaker: People don't enjoy their company.
[25:30] Speaker: Even from a worldly perspective, it's hard for that person to be happy.
[25:36] Speaker: Selfish people easily become impatient with others when they don't do exactly as they wish.
[25:49] Speaker: Just like we do in feeling that way.
[25:54] Speaker: And it's quite difficult for a person imbued with self-interest to make spiritual progress, to evolve their mind toward the genuine causes of happiness.
[26:08] Speaker: But to whatever extent you're able or you feel this is true, just think for a moment about all the shortcomings of being selfish.
[26:19] Speaker: Living with a good, kind heart, caring for your partner, your parents, your friends, your community.
[27:09] Speaker: Just hearing that sentence, you know you might smile.
[27:12] Speaker: See how it makes you feel good, even thinking about being kind.
[27:17] Speaker: And when you live with the attitude, when you're cultivating your mind like this, then you naturally act that way.
[27:26] Speaker: You don't harm them.
[27:28] Speaker: You avoid lying, harsh speech, violence.
[27:35] Speaker: Always non-virtues.
[27:40] Speaker: You practice the opposite patience, generosity, kindness.
[27:46] Speaker: You naturally create virtue, the causes of happiness.
[27:54] Speaker: To a loving, kind person, often the people around them are very happy and relaxed, and they behave behave kindly in return.
[28:09] Speaker: So people naturally want to help you to repay your kindness.
[28:17] Speaker: And quite often these people have few obstacles in life because everyone around them wants to help.
[28:24] Speaker: If we live with a loving, kind heart, people appreciate us, they're kind to us.
[28:33] Speaker: We live in a happy environment.
[28:36] Speaker: People want to help us when we need things.
[28:41] Speaker: And just from a worldly perspective, the more we're kind and generous in helping, the kinder people are toward us.
[28:49] Speaker: If this intelligent selfishness that Dalai Lama talks about, we want to be intelligently selfish, cherish other.
[28:58] Speaker: And by being kind and generous, we awaken these qualities in the people around us.
[29:05] Speaker: It's contagious.
[29:07] Speaker: We naturally do very few negative things.
[29:12] Speaker: And even when we do, it's usually by accident to our misunderstanding.
[29:16] Speaker: It's nice to remember this word virtue, that we can live a life of virtue, a happy life that results in happy relationships, and eventually, at the end of your life, a happy death.
[29:31] Speaker: He said, just look at the difference between an ordinary being who is selfish and those who have evolved their minds.
[29:53] Speaker: At some point in the past, if you can compare two people, they were these were so they were similar.
[30:01] Speaker: People aren't most people that are not just born in a saintly way or in a devilish way.
[30:08] Speaker: They evolve their minds, they form habits.
[30:11] Speaker: You can see this if you've known people for decades.
[30:16] Speaker: I'm in my 50s now, so I look at people I've known since I was in elementary school or high school, college.
[30:23] Speaker: Think for yourself, people you may have known for decades, if you're older.
[30:28] Speaker: Classmates from elementary school, middle school, high school, or in your families.
[30:34] Speaker: You can see how siblings turn out differently as they grow up, with slightly different attitudes.
[30:40] Speaker: Where one person started just being a little bit selfish, the other a little bit generous.
[30:46] Speaker: You see this in your classmates.
[30:49] Speaker: How one person becomes more and more compassionate, another less and less satisfied.
[31:01] Speaker: Look at the differences in the people you've known for decades who started out in similar places and how their lives evolved with slightly different attitudes.
[31:14] Speaker: So then we come to the centerpiece of this meditation at the fourth stage, which is you imagine yourself in the middle of a huge assembly of people, like a big music concert or a sports game if you've ever been to one.
[31:56] Speaker: But even bigger, billions of people surrounding you.
[31:58] Speaker: Imagine all the people on earth, all alive, breathing, with their own, somewhere along the arc of their life.
[32:07] Speaker: And think, should I use all these people to make me happy as if I'm the center of the world?
[32:18] Speaker: And when you put it that way, it looks pretty absurd.
[32:24] Speaker: No, it's better to use my energy to make all of them happy.
[32:33] Speaker: Instead of using them for me, I use myself for them.
[32:39] Speaker: Because there's so many more of them than me, countless other beings.
[32:43] Speaker: If you can just imagine mustering the courage right now that the purpose of my life is to make all beings happy through my body and speech and mind.
[32:56] Speaker: Just imagine it.
[33:03] Speaker: Later.
[33:06] Speaker: Just imagine it right now for a few moments.
[33:09] Speaker: See how it feels.
[33:13] Speaker: Because this is the state of mind of exchanging self for other.
[33:19] Speaker: Exchanging the attitude of caring for oneself with caring for other.
[33:39] Speaker: Then you come to the training in love and compassion.
[33:42] Speaker: You could do them in either order, and today we'll start with compassion.
[33:48] Speaker: So imagine the sea of living beings around you and think of all their problems and suffering.
[33:56] Speaker: And that you have the capacity to take all their problems away.
[34:00] Speaker: You have to imagine yourself like a superhero.
[34:03] Speaker: Imagine stopping the wars, famine, anger, bickering, which might be one of the worst forms of our personal suffering.
[34:14] Speaker: Self-centeredness, materialism.
[34:18] Speaker: Out of compassion, you imagine that you have the capacity to stop it.
[34:26] Speaker: So imagine taking away all the suffering, war, all the other problems of the world.
[34:34] Speaker: People in hospitals, in poverty, whatever you can imagine.
[34:40] Speaker: And with there's a bit of heaviness in your heart when you think this way.
[34:45] Speaker: But with courage, think that you have the power to alleviate them.
[34:52] Speaker: Just imagine that your mind is vast, that it encompasses all living beings, and that you take away all the problems of all human beings.
[35:04] Speaker: And then even taking away those of animals too, pens.
[35:10] Speaker: There were creatures, creatures being raised to be eaten.
[35:14] Speaker: Birds, insects, so on.
[35:17] Speaker: That's compassion.
[35:26] Speaker: And then imagine giving beings whatever they need, whatever they like and love food and drink to those that don't have friends, to those who are lonely houses, to people who don't have jobs wealth.
[35:54] Speaker: Whatever they need and enjoy.
[35:57] Speaker: Imagine giving it all freely out of love to all living beings.
[36:03] Speaker: Imagine giving them whatever type of spiritual teacher they need.
[36:25] Speaker: Some are religious, some are not.
[36:27] Speaker: Teachings, places to go on retreat, books, podcasts, friends who influence them in a positive direction.
[36:42] Speaker: So gradually imagine that you lead them to whatever personal development, spiritual realizations that they need.
[36:53] Speaker: Imagine that you teach them this practice in that into the meditation with the dedication.
[37:31] Speaker: Of course, it's not possible to take away everyone and give everyone everything they need, but having that vast attitude will help you to aspire that it helps you to do whatever you can, whatever small things you can, just with your smile, just with your speech.
[37:56] Speaker: Maybe a few dollars if you have a little extra doubts.
[38:00] Speaker: That's all.
[38:01] Speaker: And always forgiving yourself, making amends for anything you regret, any harm you've done, without shame, without guilt.
[38:33] Speaker: Just sincere regret and moving on to trying to be your best self.
[38:41] Speaker: And you can come out of the meditation.
[38:51] Speaker: If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy the book based on our podcast's modern approach to Buddhist wisdom, How to Train a Happy Mind.
[39:12] Speaker: You can find it in paper, ebook, and audiobook format anywhere you buy books.
[39:17] Speaker: If you'd like to go deeper in your meditation practice and find like-minded people interested in talking about the ideas discussed in this podcast, go to how to train a hhappymind.org too sign up for our newsletter and join our Train a Happy Mind community that offers weekly lectures, meditations, classes, and discussions just like the one you heard today.

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