If Wishes Were Horses (Link #567)

Speaker: Mark Kram. Mark Kram reflects on how appreciating and working with our teachers, attaining genuine renunciation and realizing the wisdom of emptiness all require a shift in perspective. Emphasizing the importance of personal experience and contemplation, he points out how the gap between the levels of experience and insight may present challenges to both students and teachers. This gap calls for students to recognize how their own assumptions and projections may limit their understanding of the teachings. The effort to cultivate qualities embodied by the teacher such as lovingkindness, compassion, and devotion, also calls for students to question the belief in "real" self. Realizing the emptiness of self calls for shift in perspective that is ultimately nonconceptual, and that makes it possible to overcome self-cherishing. Finally, a shift in perspective generates the recognition of the cause of suffering---the mistaken belief in a real self---and a new insight into how to attain freedom from it.