Examine Your Own Practice Rather Than Weighing the Teaching
On the path of practice, we sometimes become curious about the attainment of teachers or other practitioners. Yet from the outside, it is not easy to judge how far someone has gone or what the final state of that person's mind was.
What matters more is whether that person's teaching helps us look at our own mind correctly now and makes the direction of practice clear. A good teaching does not lead people into argument; it brings them back to their own study.
If we spend too much of the mind weighing a teacher's attainment, we can miss the practice we actually need to do today. Rather than measuring who has been liberated, we should look at whether we are walking even one step correctly now.
A Dharma talk is like a signpost pointing the way. Do not remain only in evaluating the signpost. Move your own feet in the direction it points.
Today, may we set down the mind that judges another person's level, and turn good teaching into practice within our own mind and daily life.
Another practitioner's attainment cannot be easily judged from the outside. What matters is how I practice today after hearing a good teaching. May today be a day of looking at my own mind and footsteps rather than judging another person's level.
