When the .... hits the fan!

He did it

He did it 

Sister Wendy Beckett does it

When the proverbial four letter substance hits the fan, you have to duck.  FAST!  When someone throws something which isn't meant to be friendly, you duck and then maybe run in case that person has something else to throw.  This is only common sense because nobody wants to get covered in rubbish or smacked around by an object hurtling in his or her direction.  When you are protecting yourself, you  are also protecting the thrower of both the four letter proverbial and of the missile, you are protecting them from the consequences of your injury.
That protection is what you have to practice in meditation;  only in meditation, the missile thrower and the fan are both in your own mind and it is that mind which you are protecting and the method is the same, you duck and you do it FAST.  If you aren't quick, and if you get knocked, it is much much harder to retrieve your good state of mind.  Meditation is a method to help make the mind clear and transparent so YOU can begin to sense that you are not the mind.   To do this you have to get that mind in check and you have to be determined from the beginning that you will get it under control.  From my experience, this isn't necessarily an immediate shift to nirvana, it can be more like dodging bullets fired by your own ignorance.  Here are a few tips to help which have been given by every wise person and every spiritual teacher.  You have to be well equipped emotionally.  The equipment you need are these four things which sound easy but let me tell you, they strike right at the centre of your own selfishness.  The four things are these..... first, Friendliness, second, compassion for those who are in need, third, happiness in the happiness of others and fourth, equanimity in the face of being hated.  Ah ha you think... I am friendly, I am a nice person.... but are you?  Are you friendly to everyone and to every creature?  Compassion, you think, you have in bucketfuls but are you compassionate towards people who seem to blindly fall into bad ways, people who you think should know better?  Go on, think about it, do you feel compassion for absolutely everyone in need? Then, happiness in the happiness of others sounds easy but if their happiness is taking something away from your bag of joy, then are you still going to be happy.  Are you going to be happy if your friend goes off with someone else?  Are you going to be happy when their good fortune seems unfair and seems to diminish yours?  Then the final one, equanimity when people hate you.  Equanimity means exactly that, you don't get moved by hatred and of course as well as equanimity, you are going to be wishing the person who hates you happiness and feeling compassion for their ignorance and keeping a friendly feeling for them!  See, these are quite tough preliminaries to getting your mind pure and transparent.  But the wise have told us that once the mind is pure, then the I of the mind which is you yourself, will see beauty in everything and never feel the lack of any outside thing.  It must be worth it mustn't it?

He is trying to tell us why we should do it