I just left a 3 day Buddhist meditation retreat. I arrived with contempt and left with compassion. Thanks for reading Baoism! Stop Tox. Do Rox. Bao Ji. You can do all three by subscribing. Hey, so, I’m CD. Stop Tox. Do Rox. Bao Ji. Yeah, that’s the whole point.The whole point is to help other people lead happier, better lives, and in theprocess, we make our own lives better. That’s the whole point of Baoism. So,it’s simple. Six words. Stop Tox. The bad things that you know, that you find through polishing your mirror and through, like, all these otherpractices. You find your own Tox. You stop it. You replace it with somethingwhich is good, with something that rocks (ROX). And you know, fills it withpositivity. And then you teach that to someone else and it compounds. Andover the course of time, what we end up with is an amazing world filled with better people and nicerpeople and happy dogs. Can you believe how beautiful this place is? I mean,talk about rocks, right? This rocks. So I’m in Pai and I just finished a three-daymeditation retreat in Pa Pae. And you know, This is the whole point of when I say polish the mirror, that’s what I’m talkingabout. You have to find these practices that help you to actually see whereyour darkness is and to see what is not doing you or your life or the peoplearound you or the world any good. And you find those things through Things like meditation and Tai Chi andQigong and spending time in nature and doing art and spending time withgood quality people. And all of that leads to being able to identify your ownTox. And it has to be you that identifies it. Nobody else can tell you, I can’t say that’s Tox. Like I might think it, but thetruth is it has to be you that identifies your own Tox. So you identify your Toxand really important I’m just going to keep saying this over and over and overagain. You have to fill it with Rox. You have to fill it with something good because otherwise it’s a vacuum and itjust leaves you open to the next negative thing that comes along. And thenext negative thing that comes along might even be worse than the thing thatyou’re stopping. You stop smoking, you leave it, and you start doing heroin. That’s an extreme example, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about, youknow? Don’t do that. And then the other part that’s really important is whenwe give, it helps us to not only internalize our own process better, like whenyou teach someone else the process, it actually internalizes the process andmakes it more powerful within you, but it also actively makes the world a better place. That energy that you’regiving to someone else, just by giving them that moment of like, hey, you’reimportant enough for me to teach this to you. Even if they’re like, get awayfrom me, creep, whatever. Which could happen. Like, even if they’re like that, you’re still putting that positive energy into the world and that is a beautifulthing, making the world better. Like, oh my God, I just arrived here and this issuch a beautiful place. Look at that Buddha up on a hill there. Like, perfect,perfect tox? No, perfect Rox. So, I’ll be honest here, you know, I’m a flawed person. Like, I have all of myown tox to deal with, just like everyone. You know, things that I’ve done in mylife that I’m not happy about and problems that I’ve had and dealt with in thewrong way. And, you know, there’s a lot of positives that go along with that, too. But inthis case, at this three day retreat, like I went into there and I somewherebetween Ladakh and and Popeye, I just keep calling it Popeye. But Popeye issuch a great character. So Popeye, somewhere before I reached Popeye, I stopped enjoying thespinach. And what I started doing instead was judging. Like I was judging. Iwas judging other people. I was judging myself. And I got to that retreat and Irealized like, whoa, I’m really super judgy. Like the meditation, it becameclear. And it’s not just, you know, I wasn’t just externally judging. I was internallyjudging too, because a judge is always guilty, right? You always find yourselfguilty too. And so I started thinking about it like what is that like judgment isreally like contempt like they say contempt of court so maybe maybe the judge is in contempt of court actually so the judge is incontempt of court but I was like treating these new experiences and newpeople and people I didn’t even know with this like judgment this contemptlike not even looking at who they were and what I realized was what I had to do was To start looking at them insteadwith compassion and I think that those are two opposites that are really clearto me now is like one coin and on one side is contempt and the other side iscompassion and when you start looking at people with compassion when you start looking at people with like they’re human and they’re sufferingbecause you’re suffering because you’re a human and I know that you’resuffering in some regard and Every human is suffering. So if you start lookingat everyone as like this person is suffering with compassion and with wantingto ease that suffering, it just changes the way that you look at everything. And you can’t help butchange the way that also you look at yourself and you start looking at yourselfwith compassion as well. That’s that’s the lesson from three days ofmeditation and lots of new experience and the reward is right behind me and in front of me and all around me likethis is so great like people have been telling me for years you have to comehere and I’ve come here and I’m glad about it find your Tox replace it with Rox and be about you you can be if I can be you can be aloha. Be Happy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit baoism.substack.com
