Lojong Practice Journal: Self-liberate even the antidote

The 59 slogans through a social justice lens

Grainy photo of a Lojong card on a wooden shrine surface, a candle on either side. Card reads: Self-liberate even the antidote

‘Self-liberate even the antidote’ is a slogan that stops my mind. It’s like a zen koan — something we cannot understand conceptually. For that reason, writing a commentary on it might seem bizarre, but I have ventured to do just that.

This is an instruction to prevent us from falling into a fundamentalist view of things. It’s telling us we must let go even of the teachings, even of the very instruction that got us to where we are now. Let go of analysis. Let go of meditation. Let go of contemplation. Let go of perfecting the technique on the cushion. Let go over wanting to alleviate suffering. Let go of any goal at all.

It’s like the metaphor of seeing someone pointing to the moon and obsessing over their finger, rather than looking at the brilliance of the moon. Don’t get obsessed with the sign. The teachings are merely directions, or a map, not the location itself.

This is a genuinely non-theistic view. Not that theism is the belief in a god or gods, but theism as the belief that there is something outside ourselves, something inherently other, which will somehow save us. That if we just find the right practice or we perfect our meditation, or we hear the right teaching, or we finally grasp the Heart Sutra, we will have arrived.

This slogan throws all that out, saying that what we have used as an antidote is not the core of liberation. Even the antidote acts as an obscuration to an awakened mind.

When we drop the idea that there is a thing or an answer we can discover that will liberate us, we rest in our own capacity for liberation right where we are.

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Originally published on Medium

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