First off, for those of you who don't know who "Mara" is: Mara is the name we give as a personification of our ignorance. So, even the Buddha would use this expression, that Mara is part of us, but it's our ignorant part. It helps to personify our ignorance.
"Mara's many mirrors" would be all the different faces of our ignorance.
Practicing non-attachment can look like it's going the right way, from the outside. It may look quite okay, but on the inside there might be thoughts that are really indifferent thoughts. To be non-attached means we're not attached in a "me, me, I want" way, or in a "me, me, I don't want" way, but non-attachment still has caring.
On Day 7 evening, I explain "to care and not to care: the balance of compassion and equanimity". When compassion is there, non-attachment actually gets stronger, because we're caring more about ending Dukkha, not creating it. In being attached to things, we often create Dukkha. In non-attachment we can let go of the Dukkha, but if there's indifference, then it's not really the non-attachment we're looking for because there's no compassion involved.
The caring attitude is that wish to end Dukkha. We have to stimulate the compassion all the time. We have to understand the pain of Dukkha; where it comes from; how we can get rid of it, and so on. How it won't come again in the future. As long as we're pushing that wisdom growth, then our non-attachment will never move into indifference, and a selfishness, "Just me, I'm in my little space, I don't care about the world". So it all hinges on the compassionate motivation fuelling our practice.
Conceit. Conceit can't actually be there when our compassion is very strong, because we're losing the thought of, "Me, me", "mine, mine", "I am better than others", "I am this", "I am that". When we're having compassion for the world in general for our Dukkha and for other people's Dukkha, then we're not so focused on "me". In the D/D Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, where does it take you? Where does the Compassionate/Lovingkindness Defusing/Diffusing method take you? It takes you away from yourself. It takes you away from thinking about, "Me, me", "My Dukkha", "I'm the only one with this Dukkha". It broadens your awareness to understand that Dukkha is universal. People all over the world have Dukkha.
As we understand this more and more, we get out of "me" little world, our compassion increases, and our compassion for ourselves also gets bigger, because we're part of the vast amount of beings in the world whom we're opening compassion for. So the conceit gets lessened by compassion, our intention then stays strong, our ignorance gets weaker, because we're caring more to end Dukkha.
Now, when you care about ending Dukkha, that's fine, that's one thing. You can sit in a chair and just care about any Dukkha all you want, but if you only sit there and do nothing, then of course nothing gets done. And we're not saying just to care and do nothing, we're always talking about using the mindfulness, using the awareness, developing the understanding and then learning to let go of that anger, that fear, that jealousy, and so on. So our ignorance is going to get knocked on the head every time we're working on increasing our compassion.
Compassion is like the root base of our intention. Right Intention. Right Thought, that's the second factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. As our compassion gets stronger, our intention becomes very strong, which then pushes our whole practice forward. Right Intention, Right Understanding, the first two factors.
Where does the title of our first book come from? "...with Compassionate Understanding". It's very interesting when you look at our title, it doesn't work like most titles. We have "...", "with" in small letters, and then capitalized "Compassionate Understanding". When we were thinking of a title for the book, we knew that the expression "Compassionate Understanding" was so important.
Compassion is our intention. Understanding is our Right Understanding or right view, so we are putting the first factors of the Noble Eightfold Path together. However, just by itself, we didn't think that was right, so we started thinking, "How can we use this term with something else?" Like "Living with Compassionate Understanding", "Working with Compassionate Understanding"; "Eating..." (laughs), "Sleeping...". It was like, every word we stuck in front of "with Compassionate Understanding" made sense. We discovered, there's so many words we can stick in front of it that we left it "..." implying you can put in your own word. So as you open up that compassion, as you open up the understanding, then the non-attachment is not a problem. That's part of our practice.
We're not going to go into indifference, we're not going to go into a selfish little practice of "Me, I'm just here getting my own peace and calm". We're just not going to do that.
A word about the "importance regarding our close Kalyanamittas". A person is only your Kalyanamitta if they're encouraging you to grow. They're not a Kalyanamitta if they allow you stay in your own selfish world. That's not what we call a "Kalyanamitta". That's not the definition of "a good, kind, wise, spiritual friend". It is someone who will push your practice, someone who will give you advice from time to time. Someone who will tell you, "Hey, you're going too far to the left, time to go right", "Hey, you're going to far to the right, time to go left". Those are our Kalyanamittas; people who are going to help us in our practice. When we have enough of them, it's very difficult to go the wrong way.