Q. Much of my dharma practice has involved a ‘cultivation’ approach, trying to increase skillful mental states and eradicate unskillful ones. In trying to do this I have sometimes experienced a kind of alienation or dukkha, which seems to arise from striving to change myself. In this respect I have found the more receptive approach of the pure awareness practice a kind of antidote to this; it’s felt very healing and opened me up to some of the fear and restlessness behind my striving. I find both these approaches helpful at times, but have difficulty integrating them. They seem to be doing quite different things with the mind; one approach attempting to manipulate and change our state of consciousness and the other just knowing our experience without altering or manipulating it in any way. These practices seem to work in quite contrary ways. By cultivating, are we not reducing our capacity to accept our experience as it is? Would you recommend sticking to one approach, or do you have any advice on integrating them?

A. Certainly stick to one way. I personally would feel concern if I discovered I was pushing away a part of myself in favour of another. I would be cutting myself in two and that would lead to inevitable alienation. How could it not be any other way? Wanting to become this and no longer wanting to be that is a common theme with practitioners. If this were genuine Dharma practice, I think I would be off doing something else. It sounds a dangerous path to follow and could never be integrated into the effort to embrace the totality of ourselves without discrimination, which is what characterises pure awareness. The Hinayana path develops skillful ways of ‘suspending’ the more ‘unwholesome’ side of ourselves by learning to turn away from it whilst developing the more ‘wholesome’. This path is not a path of open all-embracing non- discrimination like the Mahayana, but this narrower way isn’t really a path of rejection either. And by the way, give up ‘striving to change’ yourself. You’ll tire yourself out.