Diego Perez

Yeah, I mean, you explained it beautifully, and you use this sentence that I use all the time too, leave a mark on the mind.

And I think that's something that these different Buddhist traditions have understood really well, and that I think the Western world is understanding more so now than before, where the things that you feel very intensely throughout your life, whether it's in childhood or whether as an adult,

if you feel something very intensely, some heartache, some anxiety, some whatever it could be, it leaves a mark on the mind.

It shapes the mind and it affects the way that you're perceiving reality.

It's like literally a thick lens with which you have to look through to try to see reality as it is, but you have all this conditioning there that's blocking your view.

And it's challenging, but it's also, you know, one of the upsides is that the mind is quite malleable.

So when I go away to retreats,

it hit me that I'm just going to the mental gym.

I'm literally just taking myself to the gym and I'm working on three specific qualities.

I'm working on developing awareness, I'm working on developing non-reaction, which is like my new favorite sort of like synonym for equanimity, because equanimity is just like, that word is not that well used.

And the third quality is compassion.

And these are three qualities that every human being is born with, but they're not necessarily developed.

They need strengthening.

That's what I go to do.

And it's really radically changed my life, my choices, my behaviors, and the way I show up for my mom and my friends and my parents.

Yeah.

Yeah, we can even break it down between there's a difference between feeling the love for something that you care about, right?

Like love, you can use it to describe anything that's extremely important to you.

Like, I love this, I love that.

But what's really important in the relationship is that