Five Poisons Self-Liberated

Part of my daily practice involves certain supplications, which I tend to say out loud. Then when my session for the day draws to a close, I speed read through several pages of stuff that are not incorporated in my practice as of yet. However, they provide a wealth of instruction that over time and constant repetition, are making clear their wisdom. Such it is with the Five Poisons Self- Liberated by Dza Paltrul Rinpoche.

Let me first explain what they are, these five poisons, and then some aspects about them I have observed.
The five poisons are anger, pride, desire, jealousy, and stupidity. All of these poisons are self arisen, which makes me personally responsible for their existence, and being self-liberated, responsible for their non-existence as well. Which is my first observation. The ball is in my court with these five poisons.
Each of these five poisons, these five nouns, have a modifier that goes with it. The modifier accompanying anger is chase. "Do not chase after the object of your anger," the verse states. Note that it doesn't say chasing after anger, but the object of your anger. Be very clear on that.
The modifier accompanying pride is cling. "Do not cling to the object of your pride." Again, note the presence of the object.
The modifier accompanying desire is attach. Not being a student of the Tibetan language, the difference between the two in English is that attach means to join together, to fasten. Cling means to adhere closely to.
The modifier obsess attends to the noun jealousy. Again with the object. Again, we don't look at the object.
And the modifier mistaken escorts the noun stupidity. Once again....

I will comment on three of these poisons for now. Mainly because I have experienced the poisons profoundly throughout my life.
The first one is the anger. I need to look at the angry mind. So when my anger pops up, this is my flag. I can stop, and look at my angry mind. I can identify the object, and realize chasing it is futile. The object is not the problem. Anger is actually clarity-emptiness by nature, or, mirror-like wisdom. In other words, anger is really a polluted version of mirror-like wisdom. And what does a mirror do? See, now you're getting it. It reflects you, doesn't it? And specifically in this case, a part of you you need to see, not just for what we chase, but the wisdom we actually contain, the clarity that is there in us. It takes a bit of practice with this, and the willingness to be humble. Once my mind begins to unravel these delusions that are polluted forms of virtues, or I get glimpses of them, I recite the six syllable mantra, which is OM MA/NI PAD/ME HUM. This will be the antidotal mantra for all the poisons.

The second one is jealousy. The verse calls jealousy the "examining mind." I don't quite get that, I admit. Jealousy as I understand it is a resentment against someone because of their advantage, possessions, and so forth. The thing that makes me understand this is that the examining mind is nothing other than all accomplishing wisdom. All accomplishing? In other words, the nature to accomplish what someone else has accomplished resides in me. The question then is, is that what I really want to accomplish? The capability to accomplish is already within me. The road block is the polluted virtue of jealousy.

The third one is stupidity. Many people might feel this one, especially if they never went on to educational levels beyond high school. "Don't be mistaken about the object of your stupidity." Higher education won't necessarily make you smarter. I have in fact met doctorates that were alcoholics. Their education was doing nothing for them. So, stupidity. Look at the thoughts! Thoughts are awareness-emptiness by nature. Ah, the beginning of intelligence: awareness. If you ever end up in a circle of those who pride themselves on their intelligence and levels of education, you'll notice that they use a vocabulary you don't. But how tough is it to learn words? Not tough at all. Do you want to learn that vocabulary is the question. And, awareness often shows up how people utilize words as something to hide behind, and awareness can cut through that rather easily. So when it comes to discussing issues and the like, it isn't always necessary to know the Ph.D level vocabulary to discuss it. It is far better to be aware of the real nature of the issue, and being able to present it. Thoughts are self-arisen, and self-liberated. Go educate yourself.

That's three of them, and my ruminations about them. As I read over these verses, I finish with an OM MANI PADME HUM, and the constant re-reading of them usually uncovers something new. If you can't find them in Google search, let me know and I'll post them here.