“The best discipline is taming your mind stream.”

With taming the mind stream, one of the principal things to tame is the selfcentred attitude, the mind that thinks, “I’m the centre of the universe, my happiness and suffering are more important than others, my ideas are the best ones, and whatever I want should come about that way.” The self-centred attitude differs from the self-grasping ignorance. Self-grasping ignorance projects a false mode of existence onto the self, thinking that it is inherently existent.

The self-centred attitude and the self-grasping ignorance are very good friends. They help each other a lot in us ordinary beings, because we grasp at ourselves as being some inherently existent person, and from there we take off into attachment and anger, “What I want is more important, what I don’t like, I should have my way,” etc. They collaborate on creating a mess.

However, we can eliminate the gross levels and subtle levels of self-centredness which block us from becoming Buddhas. They block us from entering the Bodhisattva path because the subtle level of self-centredness is, “I’m just looking out for my liberation.” You can be free of the self-grasping but still, have that subtle self-centeredness. Since we all want to enter the Mahayana path, and that self-centred thought is what prevents us from generating bodhicitta, then clearly, we have to oppose it.

One of the best ways to oppose it is to remember its defects. You can start out looking at the defects, how they influence you in this life, and then progress from there; how they create problems to having a peaceful death, a good rebirth; how they make it difficult to enter the Bodhisattva path and to attain full awakening. Be aware of how the self-centred attitude acts in you and what it causes you to do, say, think and feel.

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