Antidotes

The spirit of awakening is the antidote to ignoring, passivity, and automatic routines. We cultivate the spirit of awakening wisdom and compassion for the sake of ourselves and others. 

Renunciation and restraint are the antidotes to harmful impulses. We renounce allegiance to the attitude and behaviors that lead to suffering. We practice restraining those impulses. 

Body-grounded awareness is the antidote to wandering in thoughts and emotions. Experience consists of sensations, emotions, and thoughts. When we cultivate our capacity to be aware of and stable in the flow of sensations, then emotions and thoughts don’t take over. 

Stable attention is the antidote to reactivity. Stable attention can forsee and withstand the physical and emotional impulses that precede reactive behavior. 

Seeing clearly is the antidote to delusions of permanence and solidity. Believing and perceiving things as permanent, solid, and separate is a deep kind of confusion. Impermanent and interdependent are the way things actually are. We can train ourselves to see that clearly. 

Undistracted non-reactive compassionate presence is the antidote to willful manipulation. We all have a capacity for clarity and power. Sometimes it’s tempting to take advantage of knowing how things work and knowing how to manipulate things and people. Compassion and receptive awareness can help us release that temptation and impulse. 

Equanimity is the antidote to grasping and rejecting. We can enjoy what’s pleasant. We can discriminate between what’s helpful and what’s unhelpful. But with equanimity we can release the habitual grasping and rejecting that keep us spinning on the wheel of liking and disliking. 

Kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy are the antidotes to fearful self-centeredness. The confusion that grasps at a solid separate self makes us slaves to a ghost. Kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy dissolve fearful self-cherishing.