Buddhist Parallels 1

A very prominent modern Buddhist teacher is  Pema Chödrön. The following parallel from her book No Time to Lose (1997) is of interest because it occurs as part of her commentary on the eighth-century Shantideva’s basic Buddhist book, The Way of the Bodhisattva. So we get the old and the new together. This is from pages 94-95, where she is interpreting verse 4-34 of the master, which I will include.

.... There’s no way to abide with our dynamic, ungraspable emotions if we keep fueling them with thoughts. It’s like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

4.34

Therefore, if these long-lived, ancient enemies of mine,

The wellspring only of increasing woe,

Can find their lodging safe within my heart,

What joy or peace in this world can be found?

 In verse 34, Shantideva presents the fifth and final problematic aspect of the kleshas; as long as we are enslaved by them, there will never be world peace. We will have no peace  of mind personally, and the suffering of beings everywhere will continue unabated....

The “kleshas” Chödrön refers to are, of course, variously defined in Buddhism, but clearly amount to stuff in the mind that distresses us. Wikipedia –