Welcome to another episode of the secular Boos of podcast. This is episode number 64. I am your host, Noah and Macheta.

And the topic for the podcast episode today is we don't need to change ourselves.

So recently I've been sharing snippets of teachings from Payma's children, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, who teaches, she's an American who teaches Buddhism from the Tibetan tradition.

And there is a book called the Pocket Payma's Children by Shambhala Pocket Classics. And it's a small book that contains short teachings.

So I've been sharing some of these teachings on the Facebook group, the secular Buddhism podcast community Facebook group.

And I wanted to share one of the discussions that took place around one of the teachings.

So the teaching that I share from Payma, this is quoting her, says, when people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are.

It's like saying, if I jog, I'll be a much better person. If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person.

If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person. Or the scenario may be that they find fault with others, they might say, if it weren't for my husband, I'd have a perfect marriage.

If it weren't for the fact that my boss and I can't get along, my job would be great. And if it weren't for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.

But loving kindness, or my tree, as it's called in the Tibetan tradition, toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything.

My tree means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid, or jealous, or full of feelings of unworthiness.

The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we already are.

The ground of practice is you or me, or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

So that was the snippet of the teaching that I shared from Paymote, which is a wonderful little teaching on this concept of not needing to change ourselves.

And then I posed the question or the challenge for the day was what if you could accept yourself and others just the way you or they are right now? No need to change anything.

And sure you can still strive for change, but that happens because you can change, not because you should change.

So in a past podcast episode I talked about this shifting from should to can. So what if you really saw yourself others in life as inherently perfect, just the way you are right now? What would that feel like?

And this opened up a discussion in the Facebook group that I thought was a wonderful little discussion and one of the questions that arose in this discussion, which I think is a really good point to clarify, comes from Callie.

So Callie, thank you if you're listening. Thank you for interacting in the Facebook group and posting this question so we could elaborate on this concept a little bit more.

So Callie said I believe this perspective is very valuable, but only to a point. The power of changing should to can is immensely liberating, but surely at some point moral imperatives must also come into play.

For example, if I frequently lash out in physical violence at my husband and children, how can that be considered inherently perfect?

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