Last Saturday Hardcore Dharma continued its study of the Lojong by focusing on Point Four and Point Five of the mind training slogans.  Point Four is typically called “life and death,” which Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche connects with the paramita of exertion or Virya.  Introducing the slogans, he warns against laziness.  I really liked Ethan’s definition of laziness as passivity in the face of our habit energy.  I love the term habit energy – to me it acknowledges both our by-rote means of avoiding the present moment as well as the potentiality we have to transform that by-rote avoidance, that energy, into spiritual food that fuels greater peace, insight, effectiveness and clear-seeing. 

Lately I’ve noticed that I’m often extremely overly protective of my space at work.  I definitely view my job as a complete day job – it’s part-time and if I haven’t emerged from the “work” day with 1,000 words worth of creative writing than I feel it was kind of a waste.  It’s not that I avoid responsibility (who are we kidding, I do a little bit) but they also don’t give me much.  I have no deadlines and I’m surrounding in folks wearing sweat suits. 
That said I’ve got this kind of feral mole vibe when I’m there.  I don’t look anyone in the eye, I don’t engage in conversations, when the sweat suit brigade starts talking I generally put on my headphones.  I’m not playing anything – I just don’t want to participate.  Partly I do it because I have a, “get in to work /get work finished / get out of work with as much done for your own work as you can” mentality.  But I’ve realized I’m also just partly, simply, a jerk.  I’m afraid of these people that I don’t have anything in common with.  Honestly (really honestly – I don’t like saying this) I think I kind of look down on them.  Many of them care about and take pride in their job.  I am so hung up in my own sense of outside importance that I can’t, for the 30 hours I spend there a week, generously and authentically extend my presence.
I’m not going to start fist bumping or baking cookies for my department.  But how about trying to cultivate bodhichitta at work, Julesy?  After all, I’m trying to get to the point where I vow to save all beings single-handedly.  Perhaps I could start with the group of people I see more than my mother?  Especially since they almost all fall in either the neutral or averse categories of my estimation?  This is where Point Four of mind training comes in handy. 
The Point Four Slogan says to Practice the Five Strengths, the Condensed Heart Instructions in life and in death. 
The five strengths are:
1.  Strong Determination. 
In the office, to me, this means that I need to cultivate strong determination toward practicing.  Having consideration and noticing my effect on others.  Not looking at my cell phone in the elevator or to the floor when I pass in the hall.  Staying open, as much as my habit energy wants to seal myself up into a sour ball of self-consumed absorption.
2.  Familiarization. 
If I make a commitment to stay open, there is the opportunity to see exactly what happens when I want to shut down, get used to it, and see it for all its paper tigression.  What am I afraid I can’t offer?  What judgments are preventing me from interacting with a fellow human being?  Am I scared of embarrassing myself?  Them? 
3.  Seed of Virtue.
The seed of virtue has to do with letting our virtuous energy overtake our habit energy more regularly.  Wouldn’t it be rad if I reflex-ed compassion rather than cocooning? Ha.
4.  Reproach. 
Sometimes telling nasty habit energy to hit the road is useful.  While non-specific reproach is not good (saying I’m a bad person never helped anyone become anything more than more bad) sometimes it is extremely useful to notice that seizing fear and tight energy gripping at you, tell that energy to quit it, (after all its wasting your time) and wait for your muffin like a lady.
5.  Aspiration.
Gil Fronsdale (a favorite eguru), in a recent podcast on Solitude, mentioned very adorably that he was going to confess something.  What he was to confess, he said, made him extremely embarrassed.  Slowly, he revealed that sometimes, when he was talking to a person, he noticed that he was speaking to them not because he was skillfully attempting to help, but instead because he wanted his listener to think he was smart.  He announced this admission like he had said he sometimes killed kittens for fun and the group laughed at his sweet innocuousness.  But Gil (I really like him as a teacher) silenced them by saying that the real question his confession brings up is this: “What is the depth of motivation that you want your life coming from?”
Or at least it silenced me. 
This coming Saturday, Hardcore Dharma is testing for our in-class exam.  Julia May Jonas, under-prepared, exits weblog forum to cram.  Happy Ides.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHnZS8mAKGM