Question

Petty judgments arise all the time, such as I don't like the color of those pants or the way her hair curls. Is it valuable to work on these as aversion?

Answer

It was two mornings ago in the other retreat I mentioned the Immature Yogi Mind. To refresh your memory of the Immature Yogi Mind, it picks up on lots of little aversions, the pants, the hair, the walk, eating, the bells, the walking tracks, the schedule, whatever it is. Lots of little aversions. Yes, petty judgments are another type of this Immature Yogi Mind. We want to work on them, we want to use the Compassion/Lovingkindness and see that these thoughts are just creating more pain for us. Every once in awhile Rosemary and I get some of these Immature Yogi Mind thoughts thrown at us, whether it is in an interview, whether it is in a note.

The person is suffering, the person has been holding on to it so much and has been feeding it the whole time. Sometimes it is just a little thing that happens on registration day and they are still holding on to this petty judgment until day 7, day 8. And it has been clouding their whole practice and they haven't been doing the work. They have just been feeding that one aversion feeding that one aversion. We don't want this, it is deadly, it can destroy the practice.

In the Regular retreat tomorrow night, I tell everybody that the Immature Yogi Mind, and the doubt it brings, changes into a strong aversion at times. So much so that these people stop listening to the teachers, stop wanting to do anything regarding something that is good and so on. It can really wreck everything.

With all of our experience here and with having been meditators 15 years before we started teaching, we have had people who have hardly even done any meditation from books, in their very first retreat, criticize how we run retreats. Yet our retreats have proven to be beneficial for thousands of people. That is how bizarre petty judgments or aversions can get. So if people don't work with little petty judgments, they can turn into the Immature Yogi Mind, then into bigger aversions and if directed towards the teachers it can result in them not listening. It's full of Dukkha and it is very important to work with those little immature aversions and petty judgments whenever you see them.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.