Cleaning up our junk

Last post’s discussion of tonglen (taking suffering and giving love and wisdom) is not a complete practice for most of us who do not realize emptiness. Realizing emptiness requires accumulating massive amounts of merit. We do this by cleaning up our junk. Thus, we return to emotional hygiene, recognizing anger, jealousy, and pride and transforming them into tolerance, appreciation, and humility. Furthermore, we clean out the selfish junk by practicing the six perfections of generosity, ethics of no-harm, tolerance, diligence, concentration, and wisdom. Enough work for a lifetime, or two or three.