The following text is an edited excerpt from a talk by Patrick Sweeney, give at a program entitled "Discovering Awakened Mind", on December 6, 2002, at Pullahari Retreat Center in Cayucos, CA.

The Journey of Unconditional Friendship
The simple association with shamatha-vipashyana practice and process of studying the basic principles of the Hinayana dharma reveal some quality of decreased self-deception. This is the beginning of a life-long journey of making an unconditional friendship with ourselves. The quality of loving-kindness or self-acceptance grows to the point where less and less of our time is spent getting in our own way.

As the experience of shamatha-vipashyana evolves, at some point you may discover a kind of loss of heart. Or, more precisely, you discover a loss of spiritual ambition. Which is to say that you finally start to outgrow the strict Hinayana mentality that is characterized by the dualistic, linear mentality that you are trying to get out of samsara and into nirvana. You start to intuit a reality that underlies that whole process, which we call shunyata, or groundlessness. Openness, emptiness.

You start to sense that there is a dancing ground of spaciousness, clarity and openness that permeates everything no matter what you do. Sometimes it manifests as relaxation. Sometimes it manifests as great doubt. You might think, "I don't know who I am, as a Buddhist, anymore. As a practitioner I'm confused: am I in samsasra or am I in nirvana? Am I making progress or not? Why does my neurosis seem to be so heightened? What's going on here?"

The Discover of Soft Spot
From the dharmic perspective, this is good news. This is the discovery of what Trungpa Rinpoche called "soft spot." It's like when you get kicked in the stomach. There's something very painful about it, and yet there can be something exquisite about it as well, because it puts you in touch with a tenderness and an intimacy, a kind of "no bullshit" quality that feels quite satisfying. We find ourselves in a paradoxical situation where, on the one hand, we know that we're better, but on the other hand we feel worse. We've lost track of a sense of linear progress. We've lost ourselves as Buddhists. The "I" that originally took refuge or the "I" that originally signed up for the program or the "I" that originally got interested in Buddhism can't be found anymore. This is the transition into the Mahayana. It is the spirit of the Mahayana. Which is to say, we take refuge in that state of mind over and over again. We simply surrender to that state of soft spot. That soft spot becomes our constant consort. It becomes our lover. That soft spot is available when we return to our ourselves through practice.

Soft spot is available when we look at "other," and we realize that we don't have to lay a trip on them. Not only do we not have to lay a trip on them, we don't have to conceptualize them at all. We can simply let the space of otherness and the connection to that otherness speak to us. The extension of this experience in the Vajrayana is described as the discovery of the sacred world. We discover the intrinsic sacredness or luminous emptiness of reality. That discovery becomes the foundation of our way of life.

Relative and Absolute Bodhicitta
At the level of Mahayana, the discovery of soft spot is the discovery of bodhichitta. Bodhicitta is awakened mind, awakened heart. It is the capacity to stabilize one's mind and one's life around a psychic center of gravity which is not based on ego. It is endowed with the qualities of openness or spaciousness, of intelligence and clarity, and spontaneous compassion, or direct, unimpeded responsiveness. These are the three aspects of bodhichitta. The idea is, you slowly, slowly discover what it is like to live as a spiritual warrior, as opposed to living as a fearful person.

In the Mahayana, we continue to work with our shamata-vipashyana practice, as the ground that joins both the absolute and relative aspects. The absolute aspect of bodhichitta is emptiness. The relative aspect of bodhichitta is compassion, softness, and warmth. And intelligence helps us work with both aspects.

The Mahayana discipline consists of practices that connect us at a deeper level to the open-ended, empty nature of phenomena and of our mind. Specifically, we go further with the shamata-vipashyana discipline. We also work with practices that directly engender relative bodhicitta. The Mahayana is designed to transform confusion into sanity. So when we start to practice the Mahayana by attempting to engender compassion or loving-kindness or sympathetic joy or equanimity, we come face to face with our resistance. What we find is our difficulty. What we find is, "Wow, I really am kind of cruel. I am a bit vindictive. I really don't like people that much. I really would rather just have it my way."

Working with What's Really There
We start to find these so-called negative things. Instead of pasting some kind of smiley Buddhist face or compassionate facade over our direct experience, the trick in the Mahayana is to work with our direct experience, through the practice, so that we start to work with what is really there. We don't tell ourselves a story about being someone filled with loving-kindness, when maybe all we are feeling is the opposite. We're feeling hatred. We don't tell ourselves a story about being compassionate if all we're feeling is that our own needs aren't being met. We work with what's really there. This is the basis of true unconditional friendship.

So, when you are working with the Mahayana practices, this is a key point. Just because you enter into this bodhisattva spirit doesn't mean that you should artificially bypass the raw material of your mind. No spiritual bypassing at Pullahari. That should be a sign, on one of the entrances. "No Spiritual Bypassing Allowed." That's a good one.