the buddha

excerpt from comfortable with uncertainty by pema chodron

when people decide to become buddhists, they participate in an official ceremony in which they take refuge in the three jewels - the buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. i've always thought it sounds theistic, dualistic, and dependent 'to take refuge' in something. however, the fundamental idea of taking refuge is that between birth and death we are alone. therefore taking refuge in the three jewels doesn't mean finding consolation in them. rather, it's a basic expression of our aspiration to leap out of the nest, whether we feel ready for it or not, to go through our puberty rites and be an adult with no hand to hold. taking refuge is the way that we begin cultivating the openness and the good-heartedness that allow us to be less and less dependent.

the buddha is the awakened one, and we too are buddhas. we are the awakened one - the one who continually leaps, who continually opens, who continually goes forward. being a buddha isn't easy. it's accompanied by fear, resentment, and doubt. but learning to leap into open space with our fear, resentment, and doubt is how we become fully human beings. there isn't any separation between samsara and nirvana, between the sadness and pain of the setting sun and the vision and power of the great eastern sun, as the shambhala teachings put it. one can hold them both in one's heart, which is actually the purpose of practice.

taking refuge in the buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake. every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality. we're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're reconnecting with who we are. so when we say, 'i take refuge in the buddha,' that means i take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. i am awake; i will spend my life taking this armor off. nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it's sewed up tight, where it's going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied. you have to do it alone. the basic instruction is simple: start taking off that armor. that's all anyone can tell you. no one can tell you how to do it because you're the only one who knows how you locked yourself in there to start.

if you're hooked

quotes from how to meditate by pema chodron

“the more we see this kind of pattern and don’t go on the downward cycle, the more our confidence grows in our capacity to awaken. as we expand our confidence in the workability of our situation, we begin to see that we are not victims of our habitual patterns. it can definitely feel like we are victims of our habitual patterns; they have a very sneaky way of getting the better of us. but the path of meditation addresses these patterns very directly, and it begins to unwind this whole sense of being imprisoned by our own mind.

the mind is the source of all suffering, and it is also the source of all happiness. think about that. in fact, you can contemplate this for the rest of your life. when something comes up in your life that causes you dissatisfaction, or triggers habitual patterns and reactivity, or makes you angry, lonely, and jealous, ask yourself: are these emotions happening because of outer circumstances? are they completely dependent on outer circumstances?

the path of meditation says that we have to work with our mind, and that if we do work with our mind, the outer circumstances become workable. things that used to irritate and bother us or that trigger our reactivity and habitual patterns begin to dissolve. so whenever you find yourself caught in an emotional attack, you have to ask yourself: ‘how much of this is really happening on the outside, and how much of this is my mind?’. . .

the guideline is this: if you’re hooked, then you need to work on your side of the situation, no matter how outrageous and unjust the outer circumstance might seem. if you’re hooked, this is a clue that you have some work to do -- and you, only you, can call yourself back. this is the basic attitude of meditation.”

“criticalness is an obstacle to meditation, and harshness is an obstacle to awakening. this tendency to be hard on ourselves does not come from the buddha nature, the basic goodness within all of us; it comes from the ego and our conditioning. we all have the seeds of this basic goodness within us -- we only have to nourish them. nourishing the basic goodness within includes not judging ourselves for all the wild thinking that takes place in our mind. we can’t control how many thoughts we’re going to have. and we can’t control what the next thought is going to be. as you practice, try to be faithful to the instruction with a gentle attitude. we train in attention, but it’s friendly attention. we train in labeling, but it’s friendly labeling.”

“as you spend more days and weeks with your commitment to practice, it might seem that your mind wanders even more. many people, even seasoned meditators, say, ‘i’m thinking more than i ever did before!’ they feel like their distractedness and thinking are getting worse, rather than better. the fact is that before you started meditating and trying to develop mindfulness, you weren’t aware of how many thoughts you have. now you are, and that’s why there appears to be more of them.”

“trungpa rinpoche used to say that this kind of experience is very good because it humbles us. he said, ‘our minds are great teachers because we have just enough growing awareness and alertness, or increasing kindness, to encourage ourselves.’ and as he pointed out, we can even get very arrogant about that. in other words, our humanity, this discursiveness and this inability to completely overcome the wild and drowsy mind, keeps us in balance.

the third word i’d like you to hold when it comes to your thoughts is ‘humor.’ gentleness, patience, and a sense of humor. have a sense of humor about the fact that your mind is like a wild monkey. in his book wake up to your life, ken mcleod has a great quote from the theravada meditation master henepola gunaratana. he says, ‘somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. no problem. you are not crazier than you were yesterday. it has always been this way and you never noticed.’ our thoughts are like the weather -- they’re just passing through. in our practice, there’s no need to cling to them, no need to see them as totally solid. they are thoughts, after all; they’re not the present moment. let them pass through the big sky of your mind.”  

the third commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"it's only when the fearful 'i' is not pushing and pulling at life, freaking out and grasping at it, that full engagement is possible. we become more fully engaged in our lives when we become less self-absorbed. as we have less and less allegiance to our small, egocentric self, less and less allegiance to a fixed notion of who we are or what we're capable of doing, we find we also have less and less fear of embracing the world just as it is."

"in the charnel ground, we meet both wretchedness and splendidness -- the totality of our experience as human beings -- and discover that we need both to be a genuine warrior. the splendidness of life lifts our spirits, and we go forward with enthusiasm. when we hear pleasant news or meet with inspiring teachers, when we enjoy the company of good friends or find ourselves in beautiful places, when we feel that everything is ideal and hunky-dory, then naturally we feel joyful and at ease. but should all of this good fortune make us arrogant or complacent or indifferent to the suffering of others, wretchedness humbles us. it cuts through any sense of superiority or entitlement, through any delusions that comfort is somehow our birthright. on the other hand, if there is too much wretchedness - too much misery and despair - it makes us want to collapse and never get out of bed. so the sweetness of life and the harshness of life complement each other. splendidness provides vision, and wretchedness grounds us. just when we're ready to give up, a kind word or the sight of the ocean or the sound of beautiful music can save the day. just when we're riding high and becoming arrogant, a sudden misfortune or bad news from the doctor or the unexpected death of a loved one can abruptly bring us down to earth and reconnect us with our tender heart.

when life is uncomfortable, when we're highly agitated and don't know where to turn, that's the most difficult time to stay present. but that's also the time when doing so can be the most rewarding. it's a challenge to practice staying present when we're despondent or distressed or overwhelmed, when our backs are against the wall. but right then, when we're in a tight spot, we have the ideal situation for practice. we can do something radical: accept suffering as part of our home ground, part of our enlightened mandala, and relate to it straightforwardly. we don't awaken in some paradise where the circumstances are made to order. we awaken in the charnel ground."

"wanting to escape pain is the reason that many people start on a spiritual path. it can be a good motivator, because it drives us to look for answers. the problem is, most of us spend our entire life going from one promise of relief to another, never staying with the pain long enough to learn anything from it.

but sooner or later, we all encounter intense emotion that we can't outrun. it may be fear that arises in a truly disturbing situation or the feeling of being very hooked and about to be swept away. one sign that you've already started charnel-ground practice, whether you realize it or not, is if you perk up when strong feelings come alone and then, instead of trying to get rid of them, you move toward them and get curious. when you're open to inviting difficult emotions to stick around long enough to teach you something, then you're already in the frame of mind to do this practice."

"if we're doing this practice in earnest, the emotions and habitual patterns we're working with can hit us with such force that it takes everything in us not to run. sometimes i felt like odysseus, lashed to the mast so i wouldn't follow the sirens' song. it was as if a giant magnet were trying to drag me away from staying present. i would just begin to sit with an intense feeling when a little voice in my head would start saying things like 'you'd better check to see if you turned off the stove' and 'maybe this is bad for your heart.' our old habits are worthy opponents. even if we're eager to have everything fall apart so we can do charnel-ground practice, when we actually do it, it puts us through a lot. we need strong motivation to stick with it because the desire to escape is so compelling."

the second commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"taking the . . . vow to help others implies that instead of holding our own individual territory and defending it tooth and nail, we become open to the world that we are living in. it means we are willing to take on greater responsibility, immense responsibility. in fact, it means taking a big chance."- chogyam trungpa rinpoche

"compassion is threatening to the ego. we might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it's very raw. when we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of 'life not on my terms.'"

"opening the door reflects our intention to remove our armor, to take off our mask, to face our fears. it is only to the degree that we become willing to face our own feelings that we can really help others. so we make a commitment that for the rest of our lives, we'll train in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of our own reactivity, our own survival mechanisms, our own propensities to be hooked."

"we probably learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. we have to recognize when something doesn't work and - this is important - not take it personally. instead, we can follow chogyam trungpa's suggestion: live your life as an experiment. adopt an attitude of 'i'm not sure what will help in this situation, but i'm going to experiment and try this.'"

"the ending of a previously close relationship throws us right into the midst of fundamental uncertainty - and that definitely hurts. we've met our edge. we find ourselves caught up in behaviors we assumed we had outgrown years ago. sometimes just the thought of the person makes us close down. but often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what chogyam trungpa called 'the genuine heart of sadness.'"

the first commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"the first commitment is about refraining from speech and actions that are harmful to ourselves and others. it liberates us by making us far more aware of what we're feeling, so that whenever the urge to lie or slander or take something that isn't given to us comes up - whenever we have the urge to act out our desires or aggression, or escape in any form - we refrain."

"refraining from harmful speech and action is outer renunciation; choosing not to escape the underlying feelings is inner renunciation. the precepts are a device to put us in touch with the underlying uneasiness, the fundamental quality of being alive. working with this feeling and the neurosis it triggers is inner renunciation."

"there's a practice in buddhism called sojong that gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in terms of refraining and, when we feel that we've really made a mess of things, to put that behind us and start anew. traditionally, sojong takes place twice a month, on the full and new moon days. the day before, each person reviews the preceding two weeks and reflects: what have i done with my body? what have i done with my speech? what about my mind: is it steady or all over the place and never present? as much as possible, we explore these questions without self-criticism or blame. . .

sojong itself is a little like the fourth and fifth steps in a twelve step program, which call for making 'a searching and fearless' self-inventory, recognizing where we've gone off course, then sharing this with another person. sojong is a kind of antiguilt process that allows us to assess ourselves honestly, acknowledge what we've done and where we are, then let go of self-judgment and move on. . .

you don't have to say this aloud to a group or another person, but most people find it easier to let go of self-judgment if they share their observations with someone else - a friend, perhaps, or a spiritual adviser. however you do it, the aim is to be fully honest and, at the same time, to shed feelings of guilt."

"nobody's perfect in keeping the commitment to not harm. but still, students often ask me, 'how can i make this vow with any integrity? if i'm going to break it at all, then what's the point?' patrul rinpoche, a buddhist master who lived in the eighteenth century, basically said there is no way to escape harming. he devotes an entire section of his book the words of my perfect teacher to all the ways we cause harm: countless being suffer from making the clothes we wear, from bringing us the food we eat. beings suffer even when we walk. 'who is not guilt of having crushed countless tiny insects underfoot?' he asks. our situation is inescapable because of our interconnectedness with all things. what makes the difference is our intention to not harm. on an everyday level, the intention to not harm means using our body, our speech, and our mind in such a way that we don't knowingly hurt people, animals, birds, insects - any being - with our actions or words."

"sakyong mipham recommends that as we sit down to meditate, we contemplate our intention for the session. our intention might be to strengthen the natural stability of mind by training in continually coming back to the body, to our mood right now, and to our environment. or our intention might be to make friends with ourselves, to be less stern and judgmental as we meditate, so we might train in noticing our tone of voice when we label and lightening up and not being too tight or goal oriented in our practice."

"it's a tricky business - not rejecting any part of yourself at the same time that you're becoming acutely aware of how embarrassing or painful some of those parts are. what most of us have been doing is gearing our lives toward avoiding unpleasant feelings while clinging to whatever we think will make us feel good and feel secure. from a conventional point of view, this makes perfect sense. but from the vantage point of remaining with our direct experience, the vantage point of opening to the tentativeness of life, this strategy is self-defeating, the very thing that keeps us stuck.

there's an exercise that can help us reflect on this knee-jerk tendency to cling to what makes us feel good and push away what makes us feel bad:

sit quietly for a few minutes and become mindful of your breath as it goes in and out. then contemplate what you do when you're unhappy or dissatisfied and want to feel better. even make a list if you want to. then ask yourself: does it work? has it ever worked? does it soothe the pain? does it escalate the pain? if you're really honest, you'll come up with some pretty interesting observations."

"pleasure and pain drive us all the time. the attraction is simple: we want pleasure; we don't want pain. our attachment to them is very strong, very visceral at either extreme. we can get that clenching-in-the-gut feeling of being hooked both when we crave something - when we're consumed with wanting or needing - and when we're averse to something and try to push it away."

"this has been going on through the ages. they criticize the silent ones. they criticize the talkative ones. they criticize the moderate ones. there is no one in the world that escapes criticism. there never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved." [shakyamuni buddha]

morning cleanse

from how to meditate by pema chodron

"when you say 'everything is a dream,' another way to say that is, 'there is just so much room.' we have an enormous amount of room to move around in. our minds are really vast. we're not constricted by anything. but the opposite is our habitual experience. our experience is usually quite claustrophobic, and we carry with us a very strong sense of burden, of things being solid. if we can loosen the grip of our thoughts, regarding them as dreams, we've just made the world and our ability to experience this world evermore larger."

"the instruction i've been giving for years is: when you're meditating, and even in your everyday life, notice when you're hooked. notice when you're triggered or activated. that's the first step: you acknowledge that emotion has arisen.

next, i advise students to drop the story line and lean in. just pause, and for a second connect in with spaciousness, with openness. i call this the 'pause practice.' it's like taking a time-out for yourself. then you lean in to the quality or the texture or the experience, completely touching in to the emotion, without the story. how does the sadness feel? how does the anger feel? where is it in your body? you let the feeling of the emotion become the object of your meditation. and the reason that i've been so committed to teaching on this is emotion itself is a radical and very potent way of awakening.

without a doubt, this is where everyone loses it. we have so much fear of our emotions, so much aversion to them. you get caught in the momentum of the emotion, and it sweeps you away as if you were in its control. but i've found that we can take another approach, which is to enter the emotions that arise in our practice. emotions are actually very empowering; i call working with the emotions 'accelerated transformation.' when you experience difficult emotions in your sitting practice, and you let go of the words and the story behind the experience, then you're sitting with just the energy. and yes, it can feel painful to do this."

"one of my granddaughter's conclusions was that we're changing all the time; everything about us is always changing. my granddaughter said, 'when you hold a fixed idea of yourself, you have to leave out all the parts that you find boring, embarrassing, difficult, or sad. you leave out the emotions you don't want to feel. and then when you do that, when you leave out all those parts, when those parts are not acceptable, then it eats away at you underneath. these unacknowledged parts are like a hum in the background that's eating away at you, and you have to find an escape to get away from that. and my mother's escape was alcohol.'

in order for us to be fully present, to experience life fully, we need to acknowledge and accept all our emotions and all parts of ourselves -- the embarrassing parts as well as our anger, our rage, our jealousy, our envy, our self-pity, and all these chaotic emotions that sweep us away. looking for an exit from experiencing the full range of our humanity leads to all kinds of pain and suffering. meditation gives us the opportunity to experience our emotions naked and fresh, free from the labels of 'right' and 'wrong,' 'should' and 'shouldn't.'"

the teacher

from start where you are by pema chodron

"first we'll consider the teacher. in the lojong teachings the teacher is referred to as the spiritual friend, the kalyanamitra. the teacher is like a senior warrior, or a student warrior who's further along the path. it's somebody who inspires you to walk the path of warriorship yourself. looking at them reminds you of your own softness, your own clarity of mind, and your own ability to continually step out and open. something about them speaks to your heart; you want to have a friendship with this person as a teacher. trust is an essential ingredient: if you enter into a serious relationship with a teacher, you make a commitment to stick with them and they make a commitment to stick with you, so you're stuck together.

lest one romanticize the relationship, i'd like to repeat something that trungpa rinpoche once said: 'the role of the spiritual friend is to insult you.' this is true. it isn't that the spiritual friend phones you up and calls you names or sends you letters about what a jerk you are. it's more that the spiritual friend is the ultimate juan. all your blind spots are going to come out with the spiritual friend. the only difference between the spiritual friend and everybody else in your life is that you've made a commitment to stick with him or her through thick or thin, better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in death. we're not too good at keeping commitments these days; this isn't an age where commitment is honored very widely. if you enter into a relationship with a spiritual friend, you're really asking for it. rather than the cozy, nurturing situation you might have imagined in the beginning - that the teacher is always kind and will replace the mother or father who never loved you or is finally the friend who has unconditional love for you - you find that in this relationship you begin to see the pimples on your nose, and the mirror on the wall isn't telling you that you're the fairest of them all. to the degree that anything is hidden in this relationship, you begin to see it."

quotes from the wisdom of no escape by pema chodron

"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. . . but loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. maitri means that we can still be crazy 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 are already."

"why do we resist our energy? why do we resist the life force that flows through us? the first noble truth says that if you are alive, if you have a heart, if you can love, if you can be compassionate, if you can realize the life energy that makes everything change and move and grow and die, then you won't have any resentment or resistance. the first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort. we don't even have to call it suffering anymore, we don't even have to call it discomfort. it's simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth. nothing in its essence is one way or the other. the four elements take on different qualities; they're like magicians. sometimes they manifest in one form and sometimes in another. if we feel that that's a problem, we resist it. the first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. we do that, and there's no reason to resist it. if we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.

the second noble truth says that this resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering. traditionally it's said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view. another way to say the same thing is that resisting our complete unity with all of life, resisting the fact that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, resisting that is what's called ego."

finding our own true nature

excerpt from the wisdom of no escape by pema chodron

in one of the buddha's discourses, he talks about the four kinds of horses: the excellent horse, the good horse, the poor horse, and the really bad horse. the excellent horse, according to the sutra, moves before the whip even touches its back, just the shadow of the whip or the slightest sound from the driver is enough to make the horse move. the good horse runs at the lightest touch of the whip on its back. the poor horse doesn't go until it feels pain, and the very bad horse doesn't budge until the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones.

when shunryu suzuki tells the story in his book zen mind, beginner's mind, he says that when people hear this sutra, they always want to be the best horse, but actually, when we sit, it doesn't matter whether we're the best horse or the worst horse. he goes on to say that in fact, the really terrible horse is the best practitioner.

what i have realized through practicing is that practice isn't about being the best horse or the good horse or the poor horse or the worst horse. it's about finding our own true nature and speaking from that, acting from that. whatever our quality is, that's our wealth and our beauty, that's what other people respond to.

once i had an opportunity to talk with chogyam trungpa, rinpoche, about the fact that i was not able to do my practice properly. i had just started the vajrayana practices and i was supposed to be visualizing. i couldn't visualize anything. i tried and tried but there was just nothing at all; i felt like a fraud doing the practice because it didn't feel natural to me. i was quite miserable because everybody else seemed to be having all kinds of visualizations and doing very well. he said, 'i'm always suspicious of the ones who say everything's going well. if you think that things are going well, then it's usually some kind of arrogance. if it's too easy for you, you just relax. you don't make a real effort, and therefore you never find out what it is to be fully human.' so he encouraged me by saying that as long as you have these kinds of doubts, your practice will be good. when you begin to think that everything is just perfect and feel complacent and superior to the others, watch out!

dainin katagiri roshi once told a story about his own experience of being the worst horse. when he first came to the united states from japan, he was a young monk in his late twenties. he had been a monk in japan - where everything was so precise, so clean, and so neat - for a long time. in the u.s., his students were hippies with long, unwashed hair and ragged clothes and no shoes. he didn't like them. he couldn't help it - he just couldn't stand those hippies. their style offended everything in him. he said, 'so all day i would give talks about compassion, and at night i would go home and weep and cry because i realized i had no compassion at all. because i didn't like my students, therefore i had to work much harder to develop my heart.' as suzuki roshi says in his talk, that's exactly the point: because we find ourselves to be the worst horse, we are inspired to try harder.

at gampo abbey we had a tibetan monk, lama sherap tendar, teaching us to play the tibetan musical instruments. we had forty-nine days in which to learn the music; we were also going to learn many other things, we thought, during that time. but as it turned out, for forty-nine days, twice a day, all we did was learn to play the cymbals and the drum and how they are played together. every day we would practice and practice. we would practice on our own, and then we would play for lama sherap, who would sit there with this pained little look on his face. then he would take our hands and show us how to play. then we would do it by ourselves, and he would sigh. this went on for forty-nine days. he never said that we were doing well, but he was very sweet and very gentle. finally, when it was all over and we had had our last performance, we were making toasts and remarks and lama sherap said, 'actually you were very good. you were very good right from the beginning, but i knew if i told you that you were good, you would stop trying.' he was right. he had such a gentle way of encouraging us that it didn't make us lose heart. it just made us feel that he knew the proper way to play the cymbals; he'd been playing these cymbals since he was a little boy, and we just had to keep trying. so for forty-nine days we were really worked hard.

we can work with ourselves in the same way. we don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse. we could be very sympathetic with that and use it as a motivation to keep trying to develop ourselves, to find our own true nature. not only will we find our own true nature, but we'll learn about other people, because in our heart of hearts almost all of us feel that we are the worst horse. you might consider that you yourself are an arrogant person or your might consider that someone else is an arrogant person, but everybody who has ever felt even a moment of arrogance knows that arrogance is just a cover-up for really feeling that you're the worst horse, and always trying to prove otherwise.

in his talk, suzuki roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation. when you find yourself slumping, that's the motivation to sit up, not out of self-denigration but actually out of pride in everything that occurs to you, pride in who you are just as you are, pride in the goodness or the fairness or the worstness of yourself - however you find yourself - some sort of sense of taking pride and using it to spur you on.

the karma kagyu lineage of tibetan buddhism, in which the students of chogyam trungpa are trained, is sometimes called the 'mishap lineage,' because of the ways in which the wise and venerated teachers of this lineage 'blew it' time after time. first there was tilopa, who was a madman, completely wild. his main student was naropa. naropa was so conceptual and intellectual that it took him twelve years of being run over by a truck, of being put through all sorts of trials by his teacher, for him to begin to wake up. he was so conceptual that if somebody would tell him something, he would say, 'oh yes, but surely by that you must mean this.' he had that kind of mind. his main student was marpa, who was famous for his intensely bad temper. he used to fly into rages, beat people, and yell at them. he was also a drunk. he was notorious for being incredibly stubborn. his student was milarepa. milarepa was a murderer! rinpoche used to say that marpa became a student of the dharma because he thought he could make a lot of money by bringing texts back from india and translating them into tibetan. his student milarepa became a student because he was afraid he was going to go to hell for having murdered people - and that scared him.

milarepa's student was gampopa (after whom gampo abbey is named). because everything was easy for him, gampopa was arrogant. for instance, the night before he met gampopa for the first time, milarepa said to some of his disciples, 'oh someone who is destined to be my main student is going to come tomorrow. whoever brings him to me will be greatly benefited.' so when gampopa arrived in the town, an old lady who saw him ran out and said, 'oh, milarepa told us you were coming and that you were destined to be one of his main students, and i want my daughter to bring you to see him.' so gampopa, thinking, 'i must be really hot stuff,' went very proudly to meet milarepa, sure that he would be greeted with great honor. however, milarepa had had someone put him in a cave and wouldn't see gampopa for three weeks.

as for gampopa's main student, the first karmapa, the only thing we know about him is that he was extremely ugly. he was said to look like a monkey. also, there's one story about him and three other main disciples of gampopa who were thrown out of the monastery for getting drunk and singing and dancing and breaking the monastic rules.

we could all take heart. these are the wise ones who sit in front of us, to whom we prostrate when we do prostrations. we can prostrate to them as an example of our own wisdom mind of enlightened beings, but perhaps it's also good to prostrate to them as confused, mixed-up people with a lot of neurosis, just like ourselves. they are good examples of people who never gave up on themselves and were not afraid to be themselves, who therefore found their own genuine quality and their own true nature.

the point is that our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. it's who we are right now, and that's what we can make friends with and celebrate.

putting makeup on space

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

"it's not impermanence per se, or even knowing we're going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the buddha taught. rather, it's our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. when we resist change, it's called suffering. but when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that's called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. another word for this is freedom -- freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human."

"what it means to be in denial: you can't hear anything that doesn't fit into your fixed identity. even something positive -- you're kind or you did a great job or you have a wonderful sense of humor -- is filtered through this fixed identity. you can't take it in unless it's already part of your self-definition.

in buddhism we call the notion of a fixed identity 'ego clinging.' it's how we try to put solid ground under our feet in an ever-shifting world. meditation practice starts to erode that fixed identity. as you sit, you begin to see yourself with more clarity, and you notice how attached you are to your opinions about yourself. often the first blow to the fixed identity is precipitated by a crisis. when things start to fall apart in your life, as they did in mine when i came to gampo abbey, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. but actually it's your fixed identity that's crumbling."

"in my stroke of insight, the brain scientist jill bolte taylor's book about her recovery from a massive stroke, she explains the physiological mechanism behind emotion: an emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. one and a half minutes, that's all. when it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it."

"chogyam trungpa had an image for our tendency to obscure the openness of our being; he called it 'putting makeup on space.' we can aspire to experience the space without the makeup. staying open and receptive for even a short time starts to interrupt our deep-seated resistance to feeling what we're feeling, to staying present where we are."

"as you're meditating, memories of something distressing that happened in the past may bubble up. it can be quite freeing to see all of that. but if you revisit the memory of something distressing over and over, rehashing what happened and obsessing on the story line, it becomes part of your static identity. you're just strengthening your propensity to experience yourself as the one who was wronged, as the victim. you're strengthening a preexisting propensity to blame others - your parents and anyone else - as the ones who wronged you."

"all of our habitual patterns are efforts to maintain a predictable identity: 'i am an angry person'; 'i am a friendly person'; 'i am a lowly worm.' we can work with these mental habits when they arise and stay with our experience not just when we're meditating but also in daily life."

"the three commitments are three levels of working with groundlessness. underlying them all is the basic instruction to make friends with yourself -- to be honest to yourself and kind. this begins with the willingness to stay present whenever you experience uneasiness. as these feelings arise, rather than running away, you lean into them. instead of trying to get rid of thoughts and feelings, you become curious about them. as you become accustomed to experiencing sensation free of interpretation, you will come to understand that contacting the fundamental ambiguity of being human provides a precious opportunity - the opportunity to be with life just as it is, the opportunity to experience the freedom of life without a story line."

failure

quotes from fail fail again fail better by pema chodron

"sometimes you experience failed expectations as heartbreak and disappointment, and sometimes you feel rage. failure or things not working out as you hoped doesn't feel good; that's for sure. but at that time, maybe instead of doing the habitual thing of labeling yourself as a 'failure' or a 'loser' or thinking there is something wrong with you, you could get curious about what is going on. . . getting curious about outer circumstances and how they are impacting you, noticing what words come out and what your internal discussion is, this is the key.

if there is a lot of 'i am bad; i am terrible,' somehow just notice that and maybe soften up a bit. instead say, 'what am i feeling here? maybe what is happening here is not that i am a failure -- i am just hurting. i am just hurting.'"

"it is out of this space that real genuine communication with other people starts to happen, because it's a very unguarded, wide-open space where when you look out your eyes -- unless you are getting into the blaming yourself or blaming others -- you can go beyond the blame and just feel the bleedingness of it, the raw-meat quality of it.

you can't describe it, but i bet everybody knows what i am talking about. and so in that space, communication with others and all of life happens, and my experience is that it's from that space that our best part of ourselves comes out. it's in that space -- when we aren't masking ourselves or trying to make circumstances go away -- that our best qualities begin to shine.

the alternative is that out of that space of failure comes addictions of all kinds -- addictions because we are not wanting to feel it, because we want to escape, because we want to numb ourselves."

"one instruction that i give when you're in that difficult place is to notice what it is you're saying to yourself -- and if it's very self-critical, if it's very harsh, don't believe what's being said. or you can just rephrase the self-critical talk so it's more gentle and positive. in other words, you're in that place of experiencing failure and it is very difficult, and you could say, 'this is really hurting, but i haven't done anything wrong.'"

"there is something cultural that reinforces the idea that we're fundamentally bad rather than basically open, fresh, full of possibilities, whole, complete -- that we're basically good. so when you've actually done something intentional that hurt someone, usually what i recommend... is something like the fourth step of AA. in the fourth step, you bring forth a kind of fearless inventory of all the things that you regret having done. the idea is not to induce guilt and shame, nor is it to turn your awareness away from whatever has actually happened. it has to do with being open and honest and true about the mistakes you've made.

once you've brought them forth, you allow yourself to feel the regret, and this becomes the method for letting the regrets go, letting them pass away. . . let the regret pierce you to the heart, and then you can lay it aside so that you don't have to carry it with you for the rest of your life as a package."

"allowing yourself to get dragged down by failure builds up this huge sense of 'me.' 'me' as a monolithic solid, instead of a fluid, dynamic, changing process. it becomes chiseled in stone that 'i am bad; i am a failure,' and then you sort of get addicted to the feeling of wallowing in self-pity, wallowing in guilt and shame. and who does that help? nobody! it doesn't help you, and it's poisonous for everybody around you. so it's a futile strategy to let failure drag you down, which we employ rather easily."

"chogyam trugpa rinpoche talked a lot about fear as being a positive thing. so again, this is having an attitude that allows you to become curious about exploring something rather than just committing for life to running away from the unknown because it's so devastating or challenging.

trungpa says that fear, unlike anger or jealousy or craving, is a very open and fluid state. it doesn't necessarily have to be narrowed down into something solid. . . he says loneliness is kind of the same, actually."

"my definition of bravery in that case -- or courage -- would be the willingness to stay open to what you're feeling in the moment, the willingness to feel what you're feeling. we talk in the shambhala tradition a lot about the warrior and the definition of the warrior. the warrior is one who cultivates courage and is willing to feel what he or she feels. to be completely human and be okay with being completely human, and the willingness to feel it."

"when i get hooked in any way or my feelings have been hurt or i feel my tendency to get obsessive, which is one of my qualities, or i want to really tell someone off, any of those things where there's that strong pull to go in an old, habitual, small-minded kind of direction, then the courage is to not heed the call of the sirens in that particular moment, but to just stay present and feel what i'm feeling.

every time i do it, i think, 'oh my gosh, how can i be asking people to do this? because this is actually very difficult.' it's humbling every single time, and it fills me with awe when i realize that other people are actually doing this, because it does take a lot of courage and bravery."

loosening our attachment

quotes from taking the leap by pema chodron

"not acting out, or refraining, is very interesting. it's also called renunciation in the buddhist teachings. the tibetan word for renunciation is shenluk, and it means turning shenpa upside down, shaking it up completely. it means getting unhooked. renunciation isn't about renouncing food, or sex, or your lifestyle. we're not referring to giving up the things themselves. we're talking about loosening our attachment, the shenpa we have to these things.

in general, buddhism encourages us never to reject what is problematic but rather to become very familiar with it. and so it is here: we are urged to acknowledge our shenpa, see it clearly, experience it fully -- without acting out or repressing.

if we are willing to acknowledge our shenpa and to experience it without sidetracks, then our natural intelligence begins to guide us. we begin to foresee the whole chain reaction and where it will lead. there's some wisdom that becomes accessible to us - wisdom based on compassion for oneself and others that has nothing to do with ego's fears. it's the part of us that knows we can connect and live from our basic goodness, our basic intelligence, openness, and warmth. over time, this knowledge becomes a stronger force than the shenpa, and we naturally interrupt the chain reaction before it even starts. we naturally become able to prevent an epidemic of aggression before it even begins."

"how individuals like you and i relate to being hooked, these days, has global implications. in that neutral moment, that often highly charged moment, when we can go either way, do we consciously strengthen old fear-based habits, or do we stay on the dot, fully experiencing the agitated, restless energy and letting it naturally unwind and flow on? there will be no lack of opportunities and no lack of material to work with.

looking closely at this process, as i have for some years, it's easy to see that it takes courage to simply relax with our own dynamic energy, just as it is, without splitting off and trying to escape."

a stepping stone

all quotes from start where you are by pema chodron

"underneath all that craving or aversion or jealousy or feeling wretched about yourself, underneath all that hopelessness and despair and depression there's something extremely soft. . . when these things arise, train gradually and very gently without making it into a big deal. begin to get the hang of feeling what's underneath the story line. feel the wounded heart that's underneath the addiction, self-loathing, or anger."

"you breathe the anger in; you remove the object. . . now you own the anger completely. you drive all blames into yourself. it takes a lot of bravery, and it's extremely insulting to ego."

"your own pain is like a stepping stone. your heart develops more and more, and even if someone comes up and insults you, you could genuinely understand the whole situation because you understand so well where everybody's coming from."

"part of awakening is to cultivate honesty and clear seeing. sometimes people take the lojong teaching to mean that if you're not to blame others but instead to connect with the feelings beneath your own story line, it would be wrong to say that someone has harmed you. however, part of honesty, clear seeing, and straightforwardness is being able to acknowledge that harm has been done."

"this is tricky business. what's the difference between seeing that harm has been done and blaming? perhaps it is that rather than point the finger of blame, we raise questions: 'how can i communicate? how can i help the harm that has been done unravel itself? how can i help others find their own wisdom, kindness, and sense of humor?'"

"setting goals for others can be aggressive -- really wanting a success story for ourselves. when we do this to others, we are asking them to live up to our ideals. instead, we should just be kind."

defeated

all quotes from start where you are by pema chodron

"it is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. if we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them. . . when we hear about compassion, it naturally brings up working with others, caring for others. the reason we're often not there for others -- whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us -- is that we're not there for ourselves. there are whole parts of ourselves that are so unwanted that whenever they begin to come up we run away."

"only to the degree that we've gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we've related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough. . . to be willing to feel the pain of others."

"the basic message of the lojong teachings is that if it's painful, you can learn to hold your seat and move closer to that pain. reverse the usual pattern, which is to split, to escape. go against the grain and hold your seat. lojong introduces a different attitude toward unwanted stuff: if it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. you learn to embrace it.

if an experience is delightful or pleasant, usually we want to grab it and make it last. we're afraid that it will end. we're not inclined to share it. the lojong teachings encourage us, if we enjoy what we are experiencing, to think of other people and wish for them to feel that. share the wealth. be generous with your joy. give away what you most want. be generous with your insights and delights. instead of fearing that they're going to slip away and holding on to them, share them."

"'gain and victory to others, loss and defeat to myself' . . . in essence what this little saying is getting at is that words like victory and defeat are completely interwoven with how we protect ourselves, how we guard our hearts. our sense of victory just means that we guarded our heart enough so that nothing got through, and we think we won the war. the armor around our soft spot -- our wounded heart -- is now more fortified, and our world is smaller. maybe nothing is getting in to scare us for one whole week, but our courage is weakening, and our sense of caring about others is getting completely obscured. did we really win the war?

on the other hand, our sense of being defeated means that something got in. . . this vulnerability that we've kept armored for ages -- something touched it. . . these words defeat and victory are so tied up with how we stay imprisoned. . . the confusion deepens each time we buy into this win/lose logic: if you touch me, that is defeat, and if i manage to armor myself and not be touched, that's victory."

"the real function of a spiritual friend is to insult you"

all quotes from the places that scare you by pema chodron

"it's important to recognize that we don't usually want to investigate laziness or any other habit. we want to indulge or ignore or condemn. . . we want to continue to escape into comfort orientation, to talk to ourselves endlessly about our loss of heart, or to chew on the fatalism of couldn't care less."

"we train. . . in 'not afraid to be a fool'. we cultivate a simple, direct relationship with our being -- no philosophizing, no moralizing, no judgments. whatever arises in our mind is workable."

"he taught that when we understand that there is no final attainment, no ultimate answer or stopping place, when our mind is free of warring emotions and the belief in separateness, then we will have no fear. . . to the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear. . . by learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear."

"when we start to interrupt our ordinary ways of calling ourselves names and patting ourselves on the back, we are doing something extremely brave. slowly we edge toward the open state, but let's face it, we are moving toward a place of no handholds, no footholds, no mindholds. this may be called liberation, but for a long time it feels like insecurity."

"with ongoing patience and kindness toward this inevitable process, we will never trust that it's wise and compassionate to relax into the egoless state. we have to gradually develop the confidence that it is liberating to let go. . . it takes time to develop enthusiasm for how remaining open really feels."

"when our attitude toward fear becomes more welcoming and inquisitive, there's a fundamental shift that occurs."

"the practice is compassionate inquiry into our moods, our emotions, our thoughts. . . we are encouraged to be curious about the neurosis that's bound to kick in when our coping mechanisms start falling apart. this is how we get to the place where we stop believing in our personal myths, the place where we are not always divided against ourselves, always resisting our own energy."

"this relationship will show us if our heart is big enough to welcome the whole gamut of life -- not just the part that we approve of. to the degree that we are capable of remaining steadfast with our spiritual friend, to this degree we can remain steadfast with the world as it is, with all its violence and tenderness, with its meanness and moments of courage. we find ourselves opening up in a way we never thought was possible."

"once we click into solid views of justification or blaming, our minds become very small. closing down in any form causes suffering to escalate. our solid views could take the form of 'the teacher is perfect and can do no wrong' or 'the teacher is a charlatan and can never be trusted.' both are expressions of freezing the mind. we love to talk about vast, open mind, completely clear and spacious. but can we abide in the openness that presents itself when the bottom falls out of our dream?"

"in working with a spiritual friend we learn to love in an open-ended way -- to love and to be love unconditionally. we're not used to this kind of love. it's what we all want but what we all have difficulty giving. in my case i learned how to love and be loved by watching my teacher. when i saw how unconditionally he loved other people, i began to trust that he could also love me. i saw for myself what it means to never give up on anybody."

"this unconditional commitment to ourselves and to others is what is meant by limitless love. . . this mutual warmth, this heart connection, allows for a meeting of minds."

"anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. it's the kind of place we usually want to avoid. the challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. the challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. when we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. by not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength."

getting free

all quotes from the places that scare you by pema chodron

"because they challenge us to the limits of our open-mindedness, difficult relationships are in many ways the most valuable for practice. the people who irritate us are the ones who inevitably blow our cover. through them we might come to see our defenses very clearly."

"when we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. compassion practice is daring. it involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently towards what scares us. the trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance."

"the essence of bravery is being without self-deception. . . seeing ourselves clearly is initially uncomfortable and embarrassing. as we train in clarity and steadfastness, we see things we'd prefer to deny -- judgmentalness, pettiness, arrogance. these are. . . temporary and workable habits of mind. the more we get to know them, the more they lose their power."

"we can love someone for his own sake, not because he is worthy or unworthy, not because he is loving toward us or he isn't."

"it is our vulnerability in difficult encounters that causes us to shut down. when a relationship brings up old memories and ancient discomforts, we become afraid and harden our hearts. just at the moment when tears could come to our eyes, we pull back and do something mean."

"there are three near enemies of compassion: pity, overwhelm, and idiot compassion. pity or professional warmth is easily mistaken for true compassion. when we identify ourselves as the helper, it means we see others as helpless. instead of feeling the pain of the other person, we set ourselves apart. if we've ever been on the receiving end of pity we know how painful it feels. instead of warmth and support all we feel is distance. with true compassion these up-down identities are stripped away."

"overwhelm is a sense of helplessness. we feel there is so much suffering -- whatever we do is to no avail. we've become discouraged. . . the second way of training with overwhelm is to keep our attention on the other person. this one takes more courage. when someone else's pain triggers fear in us, we turn inward and start erecting walls. we panic because we feel we can't handle the pain. sometimes, we should trust this panic as a sign that we aren't yet ready to open so far. but sometimes instead of closing down or resisting we might have the courage to do something unpredictable: turn our attention back toward the other person. this is the same as keeping our heart open to the pain."

"the third near enemy of compassion is idiot compassion. this is when we avoid conflict and protect our good image by being kind when we should say a definite 'no'. compassion doesn't imply only trying to be good. when we find ourselves in an aggressive relationship, we need to set clear boundaries. the kindest thing we can do for everyone concerned is to know when to say 'enough'. . . it is said that in order not to break our vow of compassion we have to learn when to stop aggression and draw the line. there are times when the only way to bring down the barriers is to set boundaries.

the far enemy or opposite of compassion is cruelty. when we reach the limit of how much suffering we can take, we sometimes use cruelty as a defense against our fear of pain. this is common for anyone who was abused as a child. instead of feeling kindness for those who are defenseless and weak, we can feel an irrational desire to hurt them. we protect our vulnerability and fear by hardening. if we do not recognize that by doing this we hurt ourselves as much as we hurt others, we'll never get free. booker t. washington was right when he said, 'let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him.' cruelty when rationalized or unacknowledged destroys us.

the near enemy of joyfulness is overexcitement. we can churn ourselves into a manic state and mistake riding high above the sorrows of the world for unconditional joy. again, instead of connecting with others, this separates us. authentic joy is not a euphoric state or a feeling of being high. rather, it is a state of appreciation that allows us to participate fully in our lives. we train in rejoicing in the good fortune of self and others.

the far enemy of joy is envy. until i started working with the practice of rejoicing in the good fortune of others, i never realized i could be so envious. to say that this was humbling is an understatement. i was amazed to see how frequently i react to others' success with resentment."

"there is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. first, we acknowledge what we feel - shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. then we forgive ourselves for being human. then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. we don't have to carry the burden with us anymore. we can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. if we practice this way, little by little we'll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. we will also learn self-forgiveness. eventually, at our own speed, we'll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm."

stability

all quotes from the places that scare you by pema chodron

"even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we are training, they are essentially no big deal. if we can't integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. we can trust our experiences as valid, but then we have to move on and learn to get along with our neighbors. then even the most remarkable insights can begin to permeate our lives."

"it is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character we play. that we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. . . self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. we end up bored to death with ourselves and the world. we end up never satisfied."

"it is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strength. . . we expect that what is always changing should be graspable and predictable. we are born with a craving for resolution and security that governs our thoughts, words, and actions. . .  our prejudices and addictions are patterns that arise from the fear of a fluid world. because we mistakenly take what is always changing to be permanent, we suffer."

"only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns."

"training with kindness results in someone who is flexible and confident, who doesn't become upset when situations are unpredictable and insecure. . . we need self-compassion to stabilize our minds. we need it to work with our emotions. we need it in order to stay."

"transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience."

"when our emotions intensify, what we usually feel is fear. thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness of our own energy. we learn to abide with the experience of our emotional distress."

the answer to anger & aggression is patience

By Pema Chödrön


The Buddhist teachings tell us that patience is the antidote to anger and aggression. When we feel aggression in all its many forms—resentment, bitterness, being very critical, complaining and so forth—we can apply the different practices we’ve been given and all the good advice we’ve heard and given to other people. But those often don’t seem to help us. That’s why this teaching about patience caught my interest a few years ago, because it’s so hard to know what to do when one feels anger and aggression.

I thought, if patience is the antidote to aggression, maybe I’ll just try that. In the process I learned a lot about what patience is and about what it isn’t. I would like to share with you what I’ve learned, to encourage you to find out for yourself how patience works with aggression.

To begin with, I learned about patience and the cessation of suffering. It’s said that patience is a way to de-escalate aggression. I’m thinking here of aggression as synonymous with pain. When we’re feeling aggressive—and in some sense this would apply to any strong feeling—there’s an enormous pregnant quality that pulls us in the direction of wanting to get some resolution. It hurts so much to feel the aggression that we want it to be resolved.

So what do we usually do? We do exactly what is going to escalate the aggression and the suffering. We strike out; we hit back. Something hurts our feelings, and initially there is some softness there—if you’re fast, you can catch it—but usually you don’t even realize there is any softness. You find yourself in the middle of a hot, noisy, pulsating, wanting-to-just-get-even-with-someone state of mind: it has a very hard quality to it. With your words or your actions, in order to escape the pain of aggression, you create more aggression and pain.

At that point, patience means getting smart: you stop and wait. You also have to shut up, because if you say anything it’s going to come out aggressive, even if you say, “I love you.”

Once, when I was very angry at a colleague of mine, I called him on the telephone. I can’t even remember now what I was angry about, but at the time I couldn’t sleep because I was so furious. I tried meditating with my anger and working with it and doing practices with it, but nothing helped, so I just got up in the middle of the night and called him. When he answered the phone, all I said was, “Hi, Yeshe.” But he immediately asked, “Did I do something wrong?” I thought I would very sweetly cover over what I was really feeling and say something pleasant about all the bad things he had done, whatever they were. But just by the tone of my greeting to him, he knew. That’s what it’s like with aggression: you can’t speak because everyone will feel the vibes. No matter what is coming out of your mouth, it’s like you’re sitting on top of a keg of dynamite and it’s vibrating.

Patience has a lot to do with getting smart at that point and just waiting: not speaking or doing anything. On the other hand, it also means being completely and totally honest with yourself about the fact that you’re furious. You’re not suppressing anything—patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don’t feed your discursive thought, you can be honest about the fact that you’re angry. But at the same time you can continue to let go of the internal dialogue. In that dialogue you are blaming and criticizing, and then probably feeling guilty and beating yourself up for doing that. It’s torturous, because you feel bad about being so angry at the same time that you really are extremely angry, and you can’t drop it. It’s painful to experience such awful confusion. Still, you just wait and remain patient with your confusion and the pain that comes with it.

Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it, but it also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting. You let the words go and just be there.

This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to the de-escalation of aggression and the cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage. You will really get to know anger and how it breeds violent words and actions. You will see the whole thing without acting it out. When you practice patience, you’re not repressing anger, you’re just sitting there with it—going cold turkey with the aggression. As a result, you really get to know the energy of anger and you also get to know where it leads, even without going there. You’ve expressed your anger so many times, you know where it will lead. The desire to say something mean, to gossip or slander, to complain—to just somehow get rid of that aggression—is like a tidal wave. But you realize that such actions don’t get rid of the aggression; they escalate it. So instead you’re patient, patient with yourself.

Developing patience and fearlessness means learning to sit still with the edginess of the energy. It’s like sitting on a wild horse, or on a wild tiger that could eat you up. There’s a limerick to that effect: “There was a young lady of Niger, who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They came back from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.” Sitting with your discomfort feels like riding on that tiger, because it’s so frightening.

When we examine this process we learn something very interesting: there is no resolution. The resolution that human beings seek comes from a tremendous misunderstanding. We think we can resolve everything! When we human beings feel powerful energy, we tend to be extremely uncomfortable until things are resolved in some kind of secure and comforting way, either on the side of yes or the side of no. Or the side of right or the side of wrong. Or the side of anything at all that we can hold on to.

But the practice we’re doing gives us nothing to hold on to. Actually, the teachings themselves give us nothing to hold on to. In working with patience and fearlessness, we learn to be patient with the fact that we’re human beings, that everyone who is born and dies from the beginning of time until the end of time is naturally going to want some kind of resolution to this edgy, moody energy. And there isn’t any. The only resolution is temporary and just causes more suffering. We discover that as a matter of fact joy and happiness, peace, harmony and being at home with yourself and your world come from sitting still with the moodiness of the energy until it rises, dwells and passes away. The energy never resolves itself into something solid.

So all the while, we stay in the middle of the energy. The path of touching in on the inherent softness of the genuine heart is to sit still and be patient with that kind of energy. We don’t have to criticize ourselves when we fail, even for a moment, because we’re just completely typical human beings; the only thing that’s unique about us is that we’re brave enough to go into these things more deeply and explore beneath our surface reaction of trying to get solid ground under our feet.

Patience is an enormously wonderful and supportive and even magical practice. It’s a way of completely changing the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things by going either to the right or the left, calling things right or calling things wrong. It’s the way to develop courage, the way to find out what life is really about.

Patience is also not ignoring. In fact, patience and curiosity go together. You wonder, Who am I? Who am I at the level of my neurotic patterns? Who am I at the level beyond birth and death? If you wish to look into the nature of your own being, you need to be inquisitive. The path is a journey of investigation, beginning to look more deeply at what’s going on. The teachings give us a lot of suggestions about what we can look for, and the practices give us a lot of suggestions on how to look. Patience is one extremely helpful suggestion. Aggression, on the other hand, prevents us from looking: it puts a tight lid on our curiosity. Aggression is an energy that is determined to resolve the situation into a hard, solid, fixed pattern in which somebody wins and somebody loses.

When you begin to investigate, you notice, for one thing, that whenever there is pain of any kind—the pain of aggression, grieving, loss, irritation, resentment, jealousy, indigestion, physical pain—if you really look into that, you can find out for yourself that behind the pain there is always something we are attached to. There is always something we’re holding on to.

I say that with such confidence, but you have to find out for yourself whether this is really true. You can read about it: the first thing the Buddha ever taught was the truth that suffering comes from attachment. That’s in the books. But when you discover it yourself, it goes a little deeper right away.

As soon as you discover that behind your pain is something you’re holding on to, you are at a place that you will frequently experience on the spiritual path. After a while it seems like almost every moment of your life you’re there, at a point where you realize you actually have a choice. You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or let go, whether to harden or soften.

That choice is presented to you again and again and again. For instance, you’re feeling pain, you look deeply into it, and you notice that there’s something very hard you’re holding on to. And then you have a choice: you can let go of it, which basically means you connect with the softness behind all that hardness. Perhaps each one of us has made the discovery that behind all the hardness of resistance, stress, aggression and jealousy, there is enormous softness that we’re trying to cover over. Aggression usually begins when someone hurts our feelings. The first response is very soft, but before we even notice what we’re doing, we harden. So we can either let go and connect with that softness or we can continue to hold on, which means that the suffering will continue.

It requires enormous patience even to be curious enough to look, to investigate. And then when you realize you have a choice, and that there’s actually something there that you’re attached to, it requires great patience to keep going into it. Because you will want to go into denial, to shut down. You’re going to say to yourself, “I don’t want to see this.” You’ll be afraid, because even if you’re starting to get close to it, the thought of letting go is usually very frightening. You may feel that you’re going to die, or that something is going to die. And you will be right. If you let go, something will die. But it’s something that needs to die and you will benefit greatly from its death.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s easy to let go. If you make this journey of looking to see if there’s something you’re holding on to, often it’s going to be just a little thing. Once when I was stuck with something huge, Trungpa Rinpoche gave me some advice. He said, “It’s too big; you can’t let go of it yet, so practice with the little ones. Just start noticing all the little ways you hold when it’s actually pretty easy and just get the hang of letting go.”

That was extremely good advice. You don’t have to do the big one, because usually you can’t. It’s too threatening. It may even be too harsh to let go right then and there, on the spot. But even with small things, you may—perhaps just intellectually—begin to see that letting go can bring a sense of enormous relief, relaxation and connection with the softness and tenderness of the genuine heart. True joy comes from that.

You can also see that holding on increases the pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to let go, because there’s a lot at stake. What’s at stake is your whole sense of who you are, your whole identity. You’re beginning to move into the territory of egolessness, the insubstantial nature of oneself—and of everything, for that matter. Theoretical, philosophical, distant-sounding teachings can get pretty real when you’re beginning to have an inkling of what they’re actually talking about.

It takes a lot of patience not to beat up on yourself for being a failure at letting go. But if you apply patience to the fact that you can’t let go, somehow that helps you to do it. Patience with the fact that you can’t let go helps you to get to the point of letting go gradually—at a very sane and loving speed, at the speed that your basic wisdom allows you to move. It’s a big moment even to get to the point where you realize you have a choice. Patience is what you need at that point to just wait and soften, to sit with the restlessness and edginess and discomfort of the energy.

I’ve come to find that patience has a lot of humor and playfulness in it. It’s a misunderstanding to think of it as endurance, as in, “Just grin and bear it.” Endurance involves some kind of repression or trying to live up to somebody else’s standards of perfection. Instead, you find you have to be pretty patient with what you see as your own imperfections. Patience is a kind of synonym for loving-kindness, because the speed of loving-kindness can be extremely slow. You are developing patience and loving-kindness for your own imperfections, for your own limitations, for not living up to your own high ideals. There’s a slogan someone once came up with that I like: “Lower your standards and relax as it is.” That’s patience.

One of the Indian Buddhist teacher Atisha’s slogans says, “Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.” It means that if a painful situation occurs, be patient, and if a pleasant situation occurs, be patient. This is an interesting point in terms of patience and the cessation of suffering, patience and fearlessness, and patience and curiosity. We are actually jumping all the time: whether it’s pain or pleasure, we want resolution. So if we’re really happy and something is great, we could also be patient then, in terms of not just filling up the space, going a million miles an hour—impulse buying, impulse speaking, impulse acting.

I’d like to stress that one of the things you most have to be patient with is, “Oops, I did it again!” There’s a slogan that says, “One at the beginning and one at the end.” That means that when you wake up in the morning you make your resolve, and at the end of the day you review, with a caring and gentle attitude, how you have done. Our normal resolve is to say something like, “I am going to be patient today,” or some other such set-up (as someone put it, we plan our next failure). Instead of setting yourself up, you can say, “Today, I’m going to try to the best of my ability to be patient.” And then in the evening you can look back over the whole day with loving-kindness and not beat yourself up. You’re patient with the fact that when you review your day, or even the last forty minutes, you discover, “I’ve talked and filled up all the space, just like I’ve done all my life, as long as I can remember. I was aggressive with the same style of aggression that I’ve used as long as I can remember. I got carried away with irritation exactly the same way that I have for the last...” If you’re twenty years old, it’s been twenty years that you’ve been doing it that way; if you’re seventy-five years old, it’s seventy-five years that you’ve been doing it that way. You see this and you say, “Give me a break!”

The path of developing loving-kindness and compassion is to be patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make these mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right. It seems to work only if you’re aspiring to give yourself a break, to lighten up, as you practice developing patience and other qualities such as generosity, discipline and insight. As with the rest of the teachings, you can’t win and you can’t lose. You don’t get to just say, “Well, since I am never able to do it, I’m not going to try.” You are never able to do it and still you try. And, interestingly enough, that adds up to something; it adds up to loving-kindness for yourself and for others. You look out your eyes and you see yourself wherever you go. You see all these people who are losing it, just like you do. Then, you see all these people who catch themselves and give you the gift of fearlessness. You say, “Oh wow, what a brave one—he or she caught themselves.” You begin to appreciate even the slightest gesture of bravery on the part of others because you know it’s not easy, and that inspires you tremendously. That’s how we can really help each other.

curious.

“Compassion is threatening to the ego. We might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it’s very raw. When we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of 'life not on my terms.' The commitment traditionally known as the bodhisattva vow, or warrior vow, challenges us to dive into these noncozy waters and swim out beyond our comfort zone. We vow to move consciously into the pain of the world in order to help alleviate it. It is, in essence, a vow to take care of one another, even if it sometimes means not liking how that feels.

This commitment is connected deeply and unshakably with bodhichitta, traditionally defined as a longing to awaken so that we can help others do the same, a longing to go beyond the limits of conventional happiness, beyond enslavement to success and failure, praise and blame. Bodhichitta is also a trust in our innate ability to go beyond bias, beyond prejudice and fixed opinions, and open our hearts to everyone: those we like, those we don’t like, those we don’t even notice, those we may never meet. Bodhichitta counteracts our tendency to stay stuck in very narrow thinking. It counteracts our resistance to change.

This degree of openness arises from the trust that we all have basic goodness and that we can interact with one another in ways that bring that out. instead of reacting aggressively when we’re provoked, endlessly perpetuating the cycle of pain, we trust that we can engage with others from a place of curiosity and caring and in that way contact their innate decency and wisdom."

-pema chodron

more falling apart

quotes from when things fall apart (chapters 3&4) by pema chodron

...feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back.

that's being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what's happening or push it away.

there are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it so we don't have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine.

basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good are a sort of death.  we've just lost our ground completely; we are unable to hold it together and feel that we're on top of things.  rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.

the most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be to just keep moving.

rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart... its definitely the path of compassion- the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness.

we might think, as we become more open, that it's going to take bigger catastrophes for us to reach our limit.  the interesting thing is that, as we open more and more, it's the big ones that immediately wake us up and the little things that catch us off guard.  however, no matter what the size, color, or shape is, the point is still to lean toward the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than to protect ourselves from it.

in any case, the point is not to try to get rid of thoughts, but rather to see their true nature.  thoughts will run us around in circles if we buy into them, but really they are like dream images.

ultimately it comes down to the question of just how willing we are to lighten up and loosen our grip.  how honest do we want to be with ourselves?

when things fall apart

quotes from the book when things fall apart by pema chodron.....

the view behind every single talk was that we could step into uncharted territory and relax with the groundlessness of our situation.  the other underlying theme was dissolving the dualistic tension between us and them, this and that, good and bad, by inviting in what we usually avoid.... there is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness.

right now - in the very instant of groundlessness - is the seed of taking care of those who need our care and of discovering our goodness.

fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth... what we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye - not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking.  the truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. the kinds of discoveries that are made through practice... have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.

i once asked the zen master kobun chino roshi how he related with fear, and he said, "i agree.  i agree."

in a place where there was so much practice and study going on, i could not get lost in trying to justify myself and blame others.  that kind of exit was not available.

...that much intimacy with fear caused his dramas to collapse, and the world around him finally got through.

sometimes it's because of illness or death that we find ourselves in this place.  we experience a sense of loss. . . things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.  we think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved.  they come together and they fall apart.  then they come together again and fall apart again... the healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.

we react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to... thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.

when anyone asks me how i got involved in buddhism, i always say that it was because i was so angry with my husband.  the truth is that he saved my life.  when that marriage fell apart, i tried hard - very, very hard - to go back to some kind of comfort, some kind of security, some kind of familiar resting place.  fortunately for me, i could never pull it off.  instinctively i knew that annihilation of my old dependent, clinging self was the only way to go.

only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us... most of us do not take these situations as teachings. we automatically hate them. we run like crazy. we use all kinds of ways to escape -- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. we feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

the naropa institute motto: "love of the truth puts you on the spot"

we don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

as human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. however, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. we don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. we deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

it's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. by waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know… nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

the only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. to the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes... if we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

the greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.