Self-cherishing

Let’s talk about delusions today. There are six so-called root delusions – anger, attachment, ignorance, pride, doubt, and wrong views. If you think about it, delusions are the reason for our day to day unhappiness. Someone offends us in some way, and we get angry. We have high expectations from our friends and family due to attachment. So, on and so forth. Have you ever stopped to think about where these delusions come from? Why do we get angry or jealous? The root cause of all our delusions is self-cherishing. Self-cherishing is a mind that thinks “I am important”. Think about it. We have a conversation with someone, and they say something that hurts our pride. Why does that hurt our pride?   That is because we think we are more important than other person. We can apply the same logic on all of our delusions. For example, someone on your staff did not complete their task on time and you got angry. Well you got angry because that makes you look bad – you promised your client or your superior that task would be complete on certain date. So your anger is out of your self-cherishing and has nothing to do with the project itself. So we should try and contemplate during our mediation that all of our problems arise from self-cherishing. I must eliminate self-cherishing.