I like the deployment of that metaphor of “polishing (the mirror)”! It’s probably intentional but certainly calls to mind the Buddhist idea of polishing one’s mirror qua mind. At the same time, as you say so well, because you use your training partner as a way to mirror or reflect on your own vulnerabilities, one ends up polishing not the other (mirror) but yourself, the mirrored. Such polishing leads, inevitably, to humility - it must, if there is progress, if there is perseverance, if one will not allow the ego its tantrums. If over time the ego’s frustration and anger diminish with humility, so also the subjective ego itself also diminishes…here we rejoin the responsorial stanza by the great master Hui Neng: “there was never a mirror in the first instance - how then may we speak of polishing the dusty stains off “it”?”
Thanks for this thoughtful reflection! I'm glad the mirror metaphor resonated with you. I especially appreciate your point about humility being inevitable through this practice. It’s exactly as you say: the mirror eventually reveals there's nothing to polish but ourselves. Hui Neng’s stanza captures it perfectly, I reckon.
I like the deployment of that metaphor of “polishing (the mirror)”! It’s probably intentional but certainly calls to mind the Buddhist idea of polishing one’s mirror qua mind. At the same time, as you say so well, because you use your training partner as a way to mirror or reflect on your own vulnerabilities, one ends up polishing not the other (mirror) but yourself, the mirrored. Such polishing leads, inevitably, to humility - it must, if there is progress, if there is perseverance, if one will not allow the ego its tantrums. If over time the ego’s frustration and anger diminish with humility, so also the subjective ego itself also diminishes…here we rejoin the responsorial stanza by the great master Hui Neng: “there was never a mirror in the first instance - how then may we speak of polishing the dusty stains off “it”?”
Thanks for this thoughtful reflection! I'm glad the mirror metaphor resonated with you. I especially appreciate your point about humility being inevitable through this practice. It’s exactly as you say: the mirror eventually reveals there's nothing to polish but ourselves. Hui Neng’s stanza captures it perfectly, I reckon.