The idea is that whatever comes up is not a sudden threat or an encouragement or any of that bullshit. Instead it simply goes along with one's discipline, one's awareness of compassion. If somebody hits you in the face, that's fine...

Generally speaking, Western audiences have a problem with that kind of thing. It sounds love-and-lighty, like the hippie ethic in which "Everything is going to be okay. Everybody is everybody's property, everything is everybody's property. You can share everything with everybody. Don't lay ego trips on things." But this is something more than that... It is simply to be open and precise, and to know your territory at the same time. You are going to relate with your own neurosis rather than expanding that neurosis to others.

In a sense, when you begin to settle down to that kind of practice, to that level of being decent and good, you begin to feel very comfortable and relaxed in your world. It actually takes away your anxiety altogether, because you don't have to pretend at all... There is so much accommodation taking place in you. And out of that comes a kind of power: what you say makes sense to others. The whole thing works so wonderfully. It does not have to become martyrdom. It works very beautifully.

From TRAINING THE MIND by Chgyam Trungpa, 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.