Sharon Salzberg on Balance

Krishnamurti: "It is the truth that liberates, not your efforts to be free."

Practices, in balance, are there to help us see the truth -- to create conditions. They don't make it happen.

Many days we spend with a sense of deficiency. "If only I had ___." But it's not about getting and owning an experience, or following an external form that makes no sense.

Note the Buddha used to begin teachings with teaching on generosity, then morality, then lovingkindness practices, and then the four noble truths.

Balance: Conditions where we can be with absolutely anything.
Very loving, but has sense of detachment - inclination towards truth.
Explore every means to see what balance means.
Don't try to hard - don't try to little.
Develop instinct to see where we are on this.

Relate to thoughts like an elderly person watching children in a playground. Detachment, but also tenderness to the children. "It's just a toy shovel, but I see you're really hurting right now."

"Develop a mind so filled with love, it resembles space."

"It's better to do nothing than to waste your time."

Being awake = Being alive

Patience is a form of devotion. Willingness to encounter whatever is happening.
This moment is step-by-step. Everything else is just a story.

Buddha-mind gets filled with good qualities like a bucket gets filled with water: drop by drop. This is how it actually happens, moment by moment.
Stories: fantasies of a full bucket, despair over how empty it is.

Balance between tranquility and effort.
Too much tranquility: ooze
Too much effort/energy: enthusiasm->agitation->restlessness

Be aware without adding grasping, aversion, or delusion.

Balance between "just mindfulness" and applying an antidote
Balance in balancing practices

Just aim and connect with the object. Mindstates will all just unfold.
Open to suffering of others and to joy of others.