Background Image

...

Meditation Accepts Us Just As We Are-in Both Our Tantrums And Our Bad Habits, In Our Love And Commitments And Happiness. It Allows Us To Have A More Flexible Identity Because We Learn To Accept Ourselves And All Of Our Human Experience With More Tenderness And Openness. We Learn To Accept The Present Moment With An Open Heart. Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

-Pema Chodron

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Meditation Accepts Us Just

Pema Chodron

...

Meditation Accepts Us Just As We Are-in Both Our Tantrums And Our Bad Habits, In Our Love And Commitments And Happiness. It Allows Us To Have A More Flexible Identity Because We Learn To Accept Ourselves And All Of Our Human Experience With More Tenderness And Openness. We Learn To Accept The Present Moment With An Open Heart. Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Pema Chodron

The Teacher Will Never Give Up On The Student No Matter How Mixed Up He Or She Might Be

The Truth You Believe And Cling To Makes You Unavailable To Hear Anything New.

Tonglen Is A Way For You To Be With People Who Need You - Beginning With Yourself.

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allowing Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us.

People Get Into A Heavy-duty Sin And Guilt Trip, Feeling That If Things Are Going Wrong, That Means That They Did Something Bad And They Are Being Punished. That's Not The Idea At All. The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teachings That You Need To Open Your Heart. To The Degree That You Didn't Understand In The Past How To Stop Protecting Your Soft Spot, How To Stop Armoring Your Heart, You're Given This Gift Of Teachings In The Form Of Your Life, To Give You Everything You Need To Open Further.

When We Touch The Center Of Sorrow, When We Sit With Discomfort Without Trying To Fix It, When We Stay Present To The Pain Of Disapproval Or Betrayal And Let It Soften Us, These Are Times That We Connect With Bohdichitta.

To Stay With That Shakiness-to Stay With A Broken Heart, With A Rumbling Stomach, With The Feeling Of Hopelessness And Wanting To Get Revenge-that Is The Path Of True Awakening. Sticking With That Uncertainty, Getting The Knack Of Relaxing In The Midst Of Chaos, Learning Not To Panic-this Is The Spiritual Path.

Although It Is Embarrassing And Painful, It Is Very Healing To Stop Hiding From Yourself. It Is Healing To Know All The Ways That You’re Sneaky, All The Ways That You Hide Out, All The Ways That You Shut Down, Deny, Close Off, Criticize People, All Your Weird Little Ways. You Can Know All Of That With Some Sense Of Humor And Kindness. By Knowing Yourself, You’re Coming To Know Humanness Altogether. We Are All Up Against These Things. We Are All In This Together.

One Way To Practice Staying Present Is To Simply Sit Still For A While And Listen. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds Close To You. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds At A Distance. Just Listen Attentively.

There's Nothing More Important On Our Spiritual Path Than Developing Gentleness To Oneself.

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.

Sometimes We Find That We Like Our Thoughts So Much That We Don't Want To Let Them Go.

When Things Fall Apart” And I Quote “life Is A Good Teacher And A Good Friend. Things Are Always In Transition, If We Could Only Realize It. Nothing Ever Sums Itself Up In The Way That We Like To Dream About. The Off-center, In-between State Is An Ideal Situation, A Situation In Which We Don't Get Caught And We Can Open Our Hearts And Minds Beyond Limit. It's A Very Tender, Nonaggressive, Open-ended State Of Affairs.

According To The Buddhist Belief, You Can Go On And On Indefinitely, So You See Your Life As Just A Brief Moment In Time.

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.

Clarity And Decisiveness Come From The Willingness To Slow Down, To Listen To And Look At What’s Happening.

The Root Of Compassion, Is Compassion For Oneself.

There Isn't Anything Except Your Own Life That Can Be Used As Ground For Your Spiritual Practice. Spiritual Practice Is Your Life, Twenty-four Hours A Day.

The Spiritual Journey Involves Going Beyond Hope And Fear, Stepping Into Unknown Territory, Continually Moving Forward. The Most Important Aspect Of Being On The Spiritual Path May Be Just To Keep Moving.

The Essence Of Practice Is Always The Same: Instead Of Falling Prey To A Chain Reaction Of Revenge Or Self-hatred, We Gradually Learn To Catch The Emotional Reaction And Drop The Story Lines.

Openness Doesn’t Come From Resisting Our Fears But Rather From Getting To Know Them Well.

None Of Us Is Ever Ok, But We All Get Through Everything Just Fine.

As We Learn To Have Compassion For Ourselves, The Circle Of Compassion For Others - What And Whom We Can Work With, And How - Becomes Wider.

Fear Is A Natural Reaction Of Moving Closer To The Truth. If We Commit Ourselves To Staying Right Where We Are, Then Our Experience Becomes Very Vivid. Things Become Very Clear When There Is Nowhere To Escape.

Compassion Becomes Real When We Recognize Our Shared Humanity.

If We Want There To Be Peace In The World, We Have To Be Brave Enough To Soften What Is Rigid In Our Hearts, To Find The Soft Spot And Stay With It. We Have To Have That Kind Of Courage And Take That Kind Of Responsibility. That’s The True Practice Of Peace.

Welcome The Present Moment As If You Had Invited It. Why? Because It Is All We Ever Have.

The Approach Is That The Best Way To Use Unwanted Circumstances On The Path Of Enlightenment Is Not To Resist But To Lean Into Them.

Being Satisfied With What We Already Have Is A Magical Golden Key To Being Alive In A Full, Unrestricted, And Inspired Way.

Each Time You Stay Present With Fear And Uncertainty, You're Letting Go Of A Habitual Way Of Finding Security And Comfort.

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

Few Of Us Are Satisfied With Retreating From The World And Just Working On Ourselves. We Want Our Training To Manifest And To Be Of Benefit. The Bodhisattva-warrior, Therefore, Makes A Vow To Wake Up Not Just For Himself But For The Welfare Of All Beings.

Opening To The World Begins To Benefit Ourselves And Others Simultaneously. The More We Relate With Others, The More Quickly We Discover Where We're Blocked.

That Nothing Is Static Or Fixed, That All Is Fleeting And Impermanent, Is The First Mark Of Existence. Everything Is In Process.

Resistance To Unwanted Circumstances Has The Power To Keep Those Circumstances Alive And Well For A Very Long Time.

What You Do For Yourself, Any Gesture Of Kindness, Any Gesture Of Gentleness, Any Gesture Of Honesty And Clear Seeing Toward Yourself, Will Affect How You Experience Your World. In Fact, It Will Transform How You Experience The World. What You Do For Yourself, You’re Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You’re Doing For Yourself.

At Least Once A Year, I Imagine That I Am About To Die. Looking Back As Truthfully As I Can At My Entire Life, I Give Full Attention To The Things I Wish Hadn’t Occurred. Recognizing These Mistakes Honestly But Without Self-recrimination, I Try To Rejoice In The Innate Wisdom That Allows Me To See So Bravely, And I Feel Compassion For How I So Frequently Messed Up. Then I Can Go Forward. The Future Is Wide Open, And What I Do With It Is Up To Me.

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean.

Life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both...life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both.

Nobody Else Can Really Begin To Sort Out For You What To Accept And What To Reject In Terms Of What Wakes You Up And What Makes You Fall Asleep. No One Else Can Really Sort Out For You What To Accept - What Opens Up Your World - And What To Reject - What Seems To Keep You Going Round And Round In Some Kind Of Repetitive Misery.

Discomfort Of Any Kind Becomes The Basis For Practice. We Breathe In Knowing Our Pain Is Shared.

How Do We Cultivate The Conditions For Joy To Expand? We Train In Staying Present.

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity? When We Are Distracted By Strong Emotion, Do We Remember That It Is Our Path? Can We Feel The Emotion And Breathe It Into Our Hearts For Ourselves And Everyone Else? If We Can Remember To Experiment Like This Even Occasionally, We Are Training As A Warrior. And When We Can't Practice When Distracted But Know We Can't, We Are Still Training Well. Never Underestimate The Power Of Compassionately Recognizing What's Going On.

"be Grateful To Everyone" Is About Making Peace With The Aspects Of Ourselves That We Have Rejected... If We Were To Make A List Of People We Don't Like - People We Find Obnoxious, Threatening, Or Worthy Of Contempt - We Would Discover Much About Those Aspects Of Ourselves That We Can't Face... Other People Trigger The Karma That We Haven't Worked Out.

Resisting What Is Happening Is A Major Cause Of Suffering.

There's A Reason You Can Learn From Everything: You Have Basic Wisdom, Basic Intelligence, And Basic Goodness.

Words Of Wisdom

Finding The Courage To Go To The Places That Scare Us Cannot Happen Without Compassionate Inquiry Into The Workings Of Ego... Openness Doesn't Come From Resisting Our Fears But From Getting To Know Them Well.

Deep Down In The Human Spirit, There Is A Reservoir Of Courage. It Is Always Available, Always Waiting To Be Discovered.

Each Of Us Has A "soft Spot": The Place In Our Experience Where We Feel Vulnerable And Tender. This Soft Spot Is Inherent In Appreciation And Love, And It Is Equally Inherent In Pain.

We See How Beautiful And Wonderful And Amazing Things Are, And We See How Caught Up We Are. It Isn’t That One Is The Bad Part And One Is The Good Part, But That It’s A Kind Of Interesting, Smelly, Rich, Fertile Mess Of Stuff. When It’s All Mixed Up Together, It’s Us: Humanness.

What If Rather Than Being Disheartened By The Ambiguity, The Uncertainty Of Life, We Accepted It And Relaxed Into It?

Uncertainty Of Life

Never Give Up On Yourself. Then You Will Never Give Up On Others.

In Meditation And In Our Daily Lives There Are Three Qualities That We Can Nurture, Cultivate, And Bring Out. We Already Possess These, But They Can Be Ripened: Precision, Gentleness, And The Ability To Let Go.

Feeling Irritated, Restless, Afraid, And Hopeless Is A Reminder To Listen More Carefully.

Usually We Regard Loneliness As An Enemy. Heartache Is Not Something We Choose To Invite In. It's Restless And Pregnant And Hot With The Desire To Escape And Find Something Or Someone To Keep Us Company. When We Can Rest In The Middle, We Begin To Have A Nonthreatening Relationship With Loneliness, A Relaxing And Cooling Loneliness That Completely Turns Our Usual Fearful Patterns Upside Down.

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.

The Happiness We Seek Cannot Be Found Through Grasping, Trying To Hold On To Things. It Cannot Be Found Through Getting Serious And Uptight About Wanting Things To Go In The Direction We Think Will Bring Happiness. We Are Always Taking Hold Of The Wrong End Of The Stick. The Point Is That The Happiness We Seek Is Already Here And It Will Be Found Through Relaxation And Letting Go Rather Than Through Struggle.

This Genuine Heart Of Sadness Can Teach Us Great Compassion. It Can Humble Us When We're Arrogant And Soften Us When We Are Unkind.

Like All Explorers, We Are Drawn To Discover What's Out There Without Knowing Yet If We Have The Courage To Face It.

Until We Stop Clinging To The Concept Of Good And Evil, The World Will Continue To Manifest As Friendly Goddesses And Harmful Demons.

Compassionate Action Starts With Seeing Yourself When You Start To Make Yourself Right And When You Start To Make Yourself Wrong. At That Point You Could Just Contemplate The Fact That There Is A Larger Alternative To Either Of Those, A More Tender, Shaky Kind Of Place Where You Could Live.

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.

Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know. Even If We Run A Hundred Miles An Hour To The Other Side Of The Continent, We Find The Very Same Problem Awaiting Us When We Arrive.

We Don’t Experience The World Fully Unless We Are Willing To Give Everything Away. Samaya Means Not Holding Anything Back, Not Preparing Our Escape Route, Not Looking For Alternatives, Not Thinking That There Is Ample Time To Do Things Later

If We Learn To Open Our Hearts, Anyone, Including The People Who Drive Us Crazy, Can Be Our Teacher.

Inspirational Love

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean. From The Very Beginning To The Very End, Pointing To Our Own Hearts To Discover What Is True Isn’t Just A Matter Of Honesty But Also Of Compassion And Respect For What We See.

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity?

Meditation Is Not A Matter Of Trying To Achieve Ecstasy, Spiritual Bliss, Or Tranquillity, Nor Is It Attempting To Become A Better Person. It Is Simply The Creation Of A Space In Which We Are Able To Expose And Undo Our Neurotic Games, Our Self-deceptions, Our Hidden Fears And Hopes.

Meditation Practice

We Are Undoing A Pattern... It's The Human Pattern: We Project Onto The World A Zillion Possibilities Of Attaining Resolution.

Use What Seems Like Poison As Medicine. Use Your Personal Suffering As The Path To Compassion For All Beings.

Every Day Is A New Opportunity To Work With What You Have Inside Toward Enlightenment.

New Opportunity

This Is The Tendency Of All Living Things: To Avoid Pain And To Cling To Pleasure.

Next, Feel Your Heart, Literally Placing Your Hand On Your Chest If You Find That Helpful. This Is A Way Of Accepting Yourself Just As You Are In That Moment, A Way Of Saying, "this Is My Experience Right Now, And It's Okay." Then Go Into The Next Moment Without Any Agenda.

True Compassion Does Not Come From Wanting To Help Out Those Less Fortunate Than Ourselves But From Realizing Our Kinship With All Beings.

The First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Is That When We Feel Suffering, It Doesn’t Mean That Something Is Wrong. What A Relief. Finally Somebody Told The Truth. Suffering Is Part Of Life, And We Don’t Have To Feel It’s Happening Because We Personally Made The Wrong Move. In Reality, However, When We Feel Suffering, We Think That Something Is Wrong. As Long As We’re Addicted To Hope, We Feel That We Can Tone Our Experience Down Or Liven It Up Or Change It Somehow, And We Continue To Suffer A Lot.

Determination Means To Use Every Challenge You Meet As An Opportunity To Open Your Heart And Soften, Determined To Not Withdraw.

Are You Experiencing Restlessness? Stay! Are Fear And Loathing Out Of Control? Stay! Aching Knees And Throbbing Back? Stay! What's For Lunch? Stay! I Can't Stand This Another Minute! Stay!

Meditation Is About Seeing Clearly The Body That We Have, The Mind That We Have, The Domestic Situation That We Have, The Job That We Have, And The People Who Are In Our Lives. It's About Seeing How We React To All These Things. It's Seeing Our Emotions And Thoughts Just As They Are Right Now, In This Very Moment, In This Very Room, On This Very Seat. It's About Not Trying To Make Them Go Away, Not Trying To Become Better Than We Are, But Just Seeing Clearly With Precision And Gentleness.

Instead Of Making Others Right Or Wrong, Or Bottling Up Right And Wrong In Ourselves, There's A Middle Way, A Very Powerful Middle Way...... Could We Have No Agenda When We Walk Into A Room With Another Person, Not Know What To Say, Not Make That Person Wrong Or Right? Could We See, Hear, Feel Other People As They Really Are? It Is Powerful To Practice This Way..... True Communication Can Happen Only In That Open Space.

We Could Learn To Stop When The Sun Goes Down And When The Sun Comes Up. We Could Learn To Listen To The Wind; We Could Learn To Notice That It's Raining Or Snowing Or Hailing Or Calm. We Could Reconnect With The Weather That Is Ourselves, And We Could Realize That It's Sad. The Sadder It Is, And The Vaster It Is, The More Our Heart Opens. We Can Stop Thinking That Good Practice Is When It's Smooth And Calm, And Bad Practice Is When It's Rough And Dark. If We Can Hold It All In Our Hearts, Then We Can Make A Proper Cup Of Tea.

It's Hard To Know Whether To Laugh Or To Cry At The Human Predicament. Here We Are With So Much Wisdom And Tenderness, And—without Even Knowing It—we Cover It Over To Protect Ourselves From Insecurity. Although We Have The Potential To Experience The Freedom Of A Butterfly, We Mysteriously Prefer The Small And Fearful Cocoon Of Ego.

If We Begin To Get In Touch With Whatever We Feel With Some Kind Of Kindness, Our Protective Shells Will Melt, And We'll Find That More Areas Of Our Lives Are Workable. As We Learn To Have Compassion For Ourselves, The Circle Of Compassion For Others-what And Whom We Can Work With, And How-becomes Wider.

Patience Is Not Learned In Safety.

This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It's With Us Wherever We Go.

All The Terrible Things We Do To Ourselves And Others From Alcoholism To Character Assignation To Abuse To Murder Come From One Cause: The Inability To Stay Present With An Uncomfortable Feeling In The Body And Seek Short-term Relief.

The Buddha Taught That We're Not Actually In Control, Which Is A Pretty Scary Idea. But When You Let Things Be As They Are, You Will Be A Much Happier, More Balanced, Compassionate Person.

In The End, That's What We All Need More Than Anything Else: To Be There For Each Other, In Every Kind Of Situation.

We Can Put Our Whole Heart Into Whatever We Do; But If We Freeze Our Attitude Into For Or Against, We're Setting Ourselves Up For Stress. Instead, We Could Just Go Forward With Curiosity, Wondering Where This Experiment Will Lead. This Kind Of Open-ended Inquisitiveness Captures The Spirit Of Enthusiasm, Or Heroic Perseverance.

The Most Difficult Times For Many Of Us Are The Ones We Give Ourselves.

The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought.

Meditation Accepts Us Just As We Are-in Both Our Tantrums And Our Bad Habits, In Our Love And Commitments And Happiness. It Allows Us To Have A More Flexible Identity Because We Learn To Accept Ourselves And All Of Our Human Experience With More Tenderness And Openness. We Learn To Accept The Present Moment With An Open Heart. Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

Life Is Like That. We Don't Know Anything. We Call Something Bad; We Call It Good. But Really We Just Don't Know.

As Long As Our Orientation Is Toward Perfection Or Success, We Will Never Learn About Unconditional Friendship With Ourselves, Nor Will We Find Compassion.

Share The Wealth. Be Generous With Your Joy. Give Away What You Most Want. Be Generous With Your Insights And Delights.

Remember That This Is Not Something We Do Just Once Or Twice. Interrupting Our Destructive Habits And Awakening Our Heart Is The Work Of A Lifetime.

When You Have Made Good Friends With Yourself, Your Situation Will Be More Friendly Too.

But All The Time Our Warmth And Brilliance Are Right Here. This Is Who We Really Are. We Are One Blink Of An Eye Away From Being Fully Awake.

It's Said That When We Die, The Four Elements - Earth, Air, Fire And Water - Dissolve One By One, Each Into The Other, And Finally Just Dissolve Into Space. But While We're Living, We Share The Energy That Makes Everything, From A Blade Of Grass To An Elephant, Grow And Live And Then Inevitably Wear Out And Die. This Energy, This Life Force, Creates The Whole World.

We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A Burden.

If There's Any Possibility For Enlightenment, It's Right Now, Not At Some Future Time. Now Is The Time.

Live In The Moment

So Even If The Hot Loneliness Is There, And For 1.6 Seconds We Sit With That Restlessness When Yesterday We Couldn't Sit For Even One, That's The Journey Of The Warrior. (68)

Rejoicing In The Good Fortune Of Others Is A Practice That Can Help Us When We Feel Emotionally Shut Down And Unable To Connect With Others. Rejoicing Generates Good Will.

Simply Be Present With Your Own Shifting Energies And With The Unpredictabilit Y Of Life As It Unfolds.

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

If You Follow Your Heart, You're Going To Find That It Is Often Extremely Inconvenient.

Follow Your Heart

To Be Fully Alive, Fully Human, And Completely Awake Is To Be Continually Thrown Out Of The Nest. To Live Fully Is To Be Always In No-man's-land, To Experience Each Moment As Completely New And Fresh. To Live Is To Be Willing To Die Over And Over Again.

That Could Be Applied To Whatever You Feel. Maybe Anger Is Your Thing. You Just Go Out Of Control And You See Red, And The Next Thing You Know You're Yelling Or Throwing Something Or Hitting Someone. At That Time, Begin To Accept The Fact That That's "enraged Buddha." If You Feel Jealous, That's "jealous Buddha." If You Have Indigestion, That's "buddha With Heartburn." If You're Happy, "happy Buddha"; If Bored, "bored Buddha." In Other Words, Anything That You Can Experience Or Think Is Worthy Of Compassion; Anything You Could Think Or Feel Is Worthy Of Appreciation.

Come Back To Square One, Just The Minimum Bare Bones. Relaxing With The Present Moment, Relaxing With Hopelessness, Relaxing With Death, Not Resisting The Fact That Things End, That Things Pass, That Things Have No Lasting Substance, That Everything Is Changing All The Time-that Is The Basic Message.

Letting There Be Room For Not Knowing Is The Most Important Thing Of All. When There's A Big Disappointment, We Don't Know If That's The End Of The Story. It May Just Be The Beginning Of A Great Adventure. Life Is Like That. We Don't Know Anything. We Call Something Bad; We Call It Good. But Really We Just Don't Know.

In A Nutshell, When Life Is Pleasant, Think Of Others. When Life Is A Burden, Think Of Others.

The Very First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Points Out That Suffering Is Inevitable For Human Beings As Long As We Believe That Things Last—that They Don’t Disintegrate, That They Can Be Counted On To Satisfy Our Hunger For Security.

Constantly Apply Cheerfulness, If For No Other Reason Than Because You Are On This Spiritual Path. Have A Sense Of Gratitude To Everything, Even Difficult Emotions, Because Of Their Potential To Wake You Up.

If You Work With Your Mind, Instead Of Trying To Change Everything On The Outside, That's How Your Temper Will Cool Down.

Knowing Pain Is A Very Important Ingredient Of Being There For Another Person.

In Order To Have Compassion For Others, We Have To Have Compassion For Ourselves.

Compassion For Others

We Are Like Children Building A Sand Castle. We Embellish It With Beautiful Shells, Bits Of Driftwood, And Pieces Of Colored Glass. The Castle Is Ours, Off Limits To Others. We’re Willing To Attack If Others Threaten To Hurt It. Yet Despite All Our Attachment, We Know That The Tide Will Inevitably Come In And Sweep The Sand Castle Away. The Trick Is To Enjoy It Fully But Without Clinging, And When The Time Comes, Let It Dissolve Back Into The Sea.

There Comes A Time When The Bubble Of Ego Is Popped And You Can’t Get The Ground Back For An Extended Period Of Time. Those Times, When You Absolutely Cannot Get It Back Together, Are The Most Rich And Powerful Times In Our Lives.

When We Cling To Thoughts And Memories, We Are Clinging To What Cannot Be Grasped. When We Touch These Phantoms And Let Them Go, We May Discover A Space, A Break In The Chatter, A Glimpse Of Open Sky. This Is Our Birthright—the Wisdom With Which We Were Born, The Vast Unfolding Display Of Primordial Richness, Primordial Openness, Primordial Wisdom Itself. When One Thought Has Ended And Another Has Not Yet Begun, We Can Rest In That Space.

We Work On Ourselves In Order To Help Others, But Also We Help Others In Order To Work On Ourselves.

Without Loving-kindness For Ourselves, It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Genuinely Feel It For Others.

We Insist On Being Someone, With A Capital S. We Get Security From Defining Ourselves As Worthless Or Worthy, Superior Or Inferior. We Waste Precious Time Exaggerating Or Romanticizing Or Belittling Ourselves With A Complacent Surety That Yes, That’s Who We Are. We Mistake The Openness Of Our Being—the Inherent Wonder And Surprise Of Each Moment—for A Solid, Irrefutable Self. Because Of This Misunderstanding, We Suffer.

Compassion Starts With Making Friends With Ourselves.

Compassionate Action Involves Working With Ourselves As Much As Working With Others.

Working With Others

It Isn't The Things That Are Happening To Us That Cause Us To Suffer, It's What We Say To Ourselves About The Things That Are Happening. The Truth You Believe And Cling To Makes You Unavailable To Hear Anything New.

If You Aren't Feeding The Fire Of Anger Or The Fire Of Craving By Talking To Yourself, Then The Fire Doesn't Have Anything To Feed On.

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

Feel The Wounded Heart That's Underneath The Addiction, Self-loathing, Or Anger.

Someone Needs To Encourage Us Not To Brush Aside What We Feel. Not To Be Ashamed Of The Love And Grief That It Arouses In Us. Not To Be Afraid Of Pain. Someone Needs To Encourage Us: That This Soft Spot In Us Could Be Awakened, And That To Do This Would Change Our Lives.

Gloriousness And Wretchedness Need Each Other. One Inspires Us, The Other Softens Us.

The Next Time You Encounter Fear, Consider Yourself Lucky. This Is Where The Courage Comes In. Usually We Think That Brave People Have No Fear. The Truth Is That They Are Intimate With Fear. When I Was First Married, My Husband Said I Was One Of The Bravest People He Knew. When I Asked Him Why, He Said Because I Was A Complete Coward But Went Ahead And Did Things Anyhow.

No One Ever Tells Us To Stop Running Away From Fear...the Advice We Usually Get Is To Sweeten It Up, Smooth It Over, Take A Pill, Or Distract Ourselves, But By All Means Make It Go Away. (5)

The Essence Of Generosity Is Letting Go. Pain Is Always A Sign That We Are Holding On To Something - Usually Ourselves.

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

Each Moment Is Just What It Is. It Might Be The Only Moment Of Our Life; It Might Be The Only Strawberry We'll Ever Eat. We Could Get Depressed About It, Or We Could Finally Appreciate It And Delight In The Preciousness Of Every Single Moment Of Our Life.

Generosity Is An Activity That Loosens Us Up. By Offering Whatever We Can - A Dollar, A Flower, A Word Of Encouragement - We Are Training In Letting Go.

Just Pausing For Two To Three Breaths Is A Perfect Way To Stay Present. This Is A Good Use Of Our Life. Indeed, It Is An Excellent, Joyful Use Of Our Life. Instead Of Getting Better And Better At Avoiding, We Can Learn To Accept The Present Moment As If We Had Invited It, And Work With It Instead Of Against It, Making It Our Ally Rather Than Our Enemy.

When We Struggle Agains Our Energy We Reject The Source Of Wisdom. Anger Without The Fixation Is None Other Than Clear-seeing Wisdom. Pride Without Fixation Is Experienced As Equanimity. The Energy Of Passion When It's Free Of Grasping Is Wisdom That Sees All The Angles.

One Very Powerful And Effective Way To Work With This Tendency To Push Away Pain And Hold On To Pleasure Is The Practice Of Tonglen.  in Tonglen Practice, When We See Or Feel Suffering, We  breathe In With The Notion Of Completely Feeling It, Accepting It, And Owning It.

Learning How To Be Kind To Ourselves, Learning How To Respect Ourselves, Is Important. The Reason It's Important Is That, Fundamentally, When We Look Into Our Own Hearts And Begin To Discover What Is Confused And What Is Brilliant, What Is Bitter And What Is Sweet, It Isn't Just Ourselves That We're Discovering. We're Discovering The Universe.

The Still Lake Without Ripples Is An Image Of Our Minds At Ease, So Full Of Unlimited Friendliness For All The Junk At The Bottom Of The Lake That We Don't Feel The Need To Churn Up The Waters Just To Avoid Looking At What's There.

It Becomes Increasingly Clear That We Won’t Be Free Of Self-destructive Patterns Unless We Develop A Compassionate Understanding Of What They Are.

The Next Time You Lose Heart And You Can’t Bear To Experience What You’re Feeling, You Might Recall This Instruction: Change The Way You See It And Lean In. Instead Of Blaming Our Discomfort On Outer Circumstances Or On Our Own Weakness, We Can Choose To Stay Present And Awake To Our Experience, Not Rejecting It, Not Grasping It, Not Buying The Stories That We Relentlessly Tell Ourselves. This Is Priceless Advice That Addresses The True Cause Of Suffering—yours, Mine, And That Of All Living Beings.

It's Also Helpful To Realize That This Very Body That We Have, That's Sitting Right Here Right Now... With Its Aches And It Pleasures... Is Exactly What We Need To Be Fully Human, Fully Awake, Fully Alive.

When Things Fall Apart In Your Life, You Feel As If Your Whole World Is Crumbling. But Actually It’s Your Fixed Identity That’s Crumbling. And As Chögyam Trungpa Used To Tell Us, That’s Cause For Celebration.

Affirmations Are Like Screaming That You're Okay In Order To Overcome This Whisper That You're Not. That's A Big Contrast To Actually Uncovering The Whisper, Realizing That It's A Passing Memory, And Moving Closer To All Those Fears And All Those Edgy Feelings That Maybe You're Not Okay. Well, No Big Deal. None Of Us Is Okay And All Of Us Are Fine. It's Not Just One Way. We Are Walking, Talking Paradoxes.

Rather Than Becoming More Relaxed, You Start Pulling Down The Shades And Locking The Door. When You Do Go Out, You Find The Experience More And More Unsettling And Disagreeable. You Become Touchier, More Fearful, More Irritable Than Ever. The More You Try To Get It Your Way, The Less You Feel At Home.

It Has A Lot To Do With Developing Patience, Not With The Check-out Person So Much, But With Your Own Pain That Arises, The Rawness And The Vulnerability, And Sending Some Kind Of Warmth And Love To That Rawness And Soreness. I Think That's How We Have To Practice.

If You See A Homeless Person On The Street, And They Need Food, Housing, Medical Attention - If You Can Give That, Do It. But At The Same Time, Work With Tonglen, Because That Is How You Start Dissolving The Barrier Between You And Them.

I Dedicate The Merit Of The Occasion To All Beings. This Gesture Of Universal Friendship Has Been Likened To A Drop Of Fresh Spring Water. If We Put It On A Rock In The Sunshine, It Will Soon Evaporate. If We Put It In The Ocean, However, It Will Never Be Lost. Thus The Wish Is Made That We Not Keep The Teachings To Ourselves But To Use Them To Benefit Others.

As For Our Inner Level Of Obstacle, Perhaps The Only Enemy We Have Is That We Don't Like The Way Reality Is Now And Therefore Wish It Would Go Away Fast. But What We Need To Acknowledge Is That Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

The Root Of Suffering Is Resisting The Certainty That No Matter What The Circumstances, Uncertainty Is All We Truly Have.

Impermanence Is A Principle Of Harmony. When We Don't Struggle Against It, We Are In Harmony With Reality.

The Most Fundamental Aggression To Ourselves, The Most Fundamental Harm We Can Do To Ourselves, Is To Remain Ignorant By Not Having The Courage And The Respect To Look At Ourselves Honestly And Gently.

Walking Meditation

In The Most Ordinary Terms, Egolessness Is A Flexible Identity. It Manifests As Inquisitiveness , As Adaptability, As Humor, As Playfulness. It Is Our Capacity To Relax With Not Knowing, Not Figuring Everything Out, With Not Being At All Sure Who We Are, Or Who Anyone Else Is, Either.

We Think That By Protecting Ourselves From Suffering, We Are Being Kind To Ourselves. The Truth Is We Only Become More Fearful, More Hardened And More Alienated. We Experience Ourselves As Being Separate From The Whole. This Separateness Becomes Like A Prison For Us - A Prison That Restricts Us To Our Personal Hopes And Fears, And To Caring Only For The People Nearest To Us. Curiously Enough, If We Primarily Try To Shield Ourselves From Discomfort, We Suffer. Yet, When We Don't Close Off, When We Let Our Hearts Break, We Discover Our Kinship With All Beings.

If We Pause And Breathe In And Out, Then We Can Have The Experience Of Timeless Presence, Of The Inexpressible Wisdom And Goodness Of Our Own Minds. We Can Look At The World With Fresh Eyes And Hear Things With Fresh Ears.

Do I Prefer To Grow Up And Relate To Life Directly, Or Do I Choose To Live And Die In Fear?

Ordinarily We Are Swept Away By Habitual Momentum. We Don't Interrupt Our Patterns Even Slightly. With Practice, However, We Learn To Stay With A Broken Heart, With A Nameless Fear, With The Desire For Revenge. Sticking With Uncertainty Is How We Learn To Relax In The Midst Of Chaos, How We Learn To Be Cool When The Ground Beneath Us Suddenly Disappears.

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

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.

While We Are Sitting In Meditation, We Are Simply Exploring Humanity And All Of Creation In The Form Of Ourselves. We Can Become The World's Greatest Experts On Anger, Jealousy, And Self-deprecatio N, As Well As On Joyfulness, Clarity, And Insight. Everything That Human Beings Feel, We Feel. We Can Become Extremely Wise And Sensitive To All Of Humanity And The Whole Universe Simply By Knowing Ourselves, Just As We Are.

Holding On To Beliefs Limits Our Experience Of Life. That Doesn't Mean That Beliefs Or Ideas Or Thinking Is A Problem; The Stubborn Attitude Of Having To Have Things Be A Particular Way, Grasping On To Our Beliefs And Thoughts, All These Cause The Problems. To Put It Simply, Using Your Belief System This Way Creates A Situation In Which You Choose To Be Blind Instead Of Being Able To See, To Be Deaf Instead Of Being Able To Hear, To Be Dead Rather Than Alive, Asleep Rather Than Awake.

What's Encouraging About Meditation Is That, Even If We Shut Down, We Can No Longer Shut Down In Ignorance. We See Very Clearly That We're Closing Off. That In Itself Begins To Illuminate The Darkness Of Ignorance.

Meditation Practice

Ego Is Something That You Come To Know - Something That You Befriend By Not Acting Out Or By Repressing All The Feelings That You Feel.

When We Are Willing To Stay Even A Moment With Uncomfortable Energy, We Gradually Learn Not To Fear It.

If We Knew That Tonight We Were Going To Go Blind, We Would Take A Long, Last Real Look At Every Blade Of Grass, Every Cloud Formation, Every Speck Of Dust, Every Rainbow, Raindrop-everything.

What You Do For Yourself, You're Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You're Doing For Yourself.

Doing For Others

The Next Step Is To Learn To Communicate With The People That You Feel Are Causing Your Pain And Misery- Not To Learn How To Prove Them Wrong And Yourself Right But How To Communicate From The Heart.

My Experience With Forgiveness Is That It Sort Of Comes Spontaneously At A Certain Point And To Try To Force It It's Not Really Forgiveness. It's Buddhist Philosophy Or Something Spiritual Jargon That You're Trying To Live Up To But You're Just Using It Against Yourself As A Reason Why You're Not Okay.

A Thoroughly Good Relationship With Ourselves Results In Being Still, Which Doesn't Mean We Don't Run And Jump And Dance About. It Means There's No Compulsiveness. We Don't Overwork, Overeat, Oversmoke, Overseduce. In Short, We Begin To Stop Causing Harm.

Good Relationship

Compassion Is Not A Relationship Between The Healer And The Wounded. It’s A Relationship Between Equals.

The Future Is Completely Open And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment.

Live In The Moment

Whatever You Are Doing, Take The Attitude Of Wanting It Directly Or Indirectly To Benefit Others. Take The Attitude Of Wanting It To Increase Your Experience Of Kinship With Your Fellow Beings.

Since Death Is Certain And The Time Of Death Is Uncertain, What Is The Most Important Thing?

Whole-heartedn Ess Is A Precious Gift, But No One Can Actually Give It To You. You Have To Find The Path That Has Heart And Then Walk It Impeccably....it' S Like Someone Laughing In Your Ear, Challenging You To Figure Out What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do. It Humbles You. It Opens Your Heart.

The Central Question Of A Warrior's Training Is Not How We Avoid Uncertainty And Fear But How We Relate To Discomfort.

If We're Willing To Give Up Hope That Insecurity And Pain Can Be Eliminated, Then We Can Have The Courage To Relax With The Groundlessness Of Our Situation. This Is The First Step On The Path.

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

So War And Peace Start In The Human Heart. Whether That Heart Is Open Or Whether That Heart Closes Has Global Implications.

As Our Kindness For Ourselves Grows, So Does Our Kindness For Other People.

There Is No Cultivation Of Patience When Your Pattern Is To Just Try To Seek Harmony And Smooth Everything Out. Patience Implies Willingness To Be Alive Rather Than Trying To Seek Harmony.

Better To Join In With Humanity Than To Set Ourselves Apart.

As Buddhism Moved From One Culture To Another, It Always Adapted.

We Give It Up And Just Look Directly With Compassion And Humor At Who We Are. Then Loneliness Is No Threat And Heartache, No Punishment.

We Can Spend Our Whole Lives Escaping From The Monsters Of Our Minds. (36)

When We Protect Ourselves So We Won't Feel Pain, That Protection Becomes Like Armor, Like Armor That Imprisons The Softness Of Of The Heart.

We Cannot Be Present And Run Our Story-line At The Same Time.

Patience Has Nothing To Do With Suppression. In Fact, It Has Everything To Do With A Gentle, Honest Relationship With Yourself.

You Must Learn To Sit With The Restless, Painful Energy And Not Let The Momentum Pull You Under And Cause You To Do The Same Thing Over And Over That's Ruining Your Life And The Lives Of Those Around You.

We Can Begin To Open Our Hearts To Others When We Have No Hope Of Getting Anything Back. We Just Do It For Its Own Sake.

When You Open The Door And Invite In All Sentient Beings As Your Guests, You Have To Drop Your Agenda.

Meditation Is Not About Getting Out Of Ourselves Or Achieving Something Better. It Is About Getting In Touch With What You Already Are.

Something Better

By Becoming Intimate With How We Close Down And How We Open Up, We Awaken Our Unlimited Potential.

Unlimited Potential

I Equate Ego With Trying To Figure Everything Out Instead Of Going With The Flow. That Closes Your Heart And Your Mind To The Person Or Situation That's Right In Front Of You, And You Miss So Much.

The More We Witness Our Emotional Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain.

The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teaching That You Need To Open Your Heart.

In Practicing Meditation, We're Not Trying To Live Up To Some Kind Of Ideal -- Quite The Opposite. We're Just Being With Our Experience, Whatever It Is.

The Peace That We Are Looking For Is Not Peace That Crumbles As Soon As There Is Difficulty Or Chaos. Whether We’re Seeking Inner Peace Or Global Peace Or A Combination Of The Two, The Way To Experience It Is To Build On The Foundation Of Unconditional Openness To All That Arises. Peace Isn’t An Experience Free Of Challenges, Free Of Rough And Smooth, It’s An Experience That’s Expansive Enough To Include All That Arises Without Feeling Threatened.

The First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Is That When We Feel Suffering, It Doesn’t Mean That Something Is Wrong. What A Relief.

Trending Author

Category