In the End, Liberate Yourself

📖Master’s Reading

We often think "deliverance" is only reciting sūtras for the dead at a puja, overlooking the most important truth: "True practice is in fact to deliver yourself." Helping others matters, but if you cannot even tend your own mind and let the soul sink in affliction, how can you have the power to deliver others?

In daily life we are tightly entangled by love and hate and every worldly clinging. "Delivering yourself" is not selfish; it is learning to free yourself completely from the prison of clinging, fear and pointless affliction. When we face adversity and harm, if we can restrain the impulse to take revenge with evil thoughts and instead transform the mind, leaving the other a way out, this not only forgives the other but delivers the resentment and grievance deep in our own heart.

Seen more deeply, the karmic creditors and the ancestors of past generations around us (especially our birth parents) are in fact closely linked to our soul. If we do not first cultivate ourselves well and let the mind attain true liberation, this painful resonance makes them suffer along with us. Only when you learn to transform the mind, set down excessive worldly clinging, and let the heart attain true peace and freedom, can this bright power of merit truly deliver and shelter the kin around you. So the most important starting point of practice is always to begin from delivering this very mind of your own.

🌱Reflection for Daily Life

• Understand that true practice is first to deliver yourself.
• In adversity, transform the mind and leave the other a way out.
• Forgiving others is also delivering your own resentment.
• Cultivate yourself well; only then can bright merit shelter your kin.
• The most important starting point of practice is to begin from delivering your own mind.