Background Image

...

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.

-Pema Chodron

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Next Time You

Pema Chodron

...

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.

Views: 3

Topic

More From Pema Chodron

So Many Of Us Start Along The Spiritual Path Because We Are Suffering. But You Must Realize That For Real Healing To Occur, There Must First Be Deep Compassion For Yourself, Especially The Parts Of Yourself You Dislike Or Consider Ugly.

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

Blaming Is A Way To Protect Your Heart, Trying To Protect What Is Soft And Open And Tender In Yourself.

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

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.

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

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

The Only Way To Ease Our Pain Is To Experience It Fully. Learn To Stay With Uneasiness, Learn To Stay With The Tightening, So That The Habitual Chain Reaction Doesn't Continue To Rule Your Life.

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

Follow Your Heart

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Compassion For Others

The Wisdom, The Strength, The Confidence - The Awakened Heart And Mind Are Always Accessible -- Here, Now, Always.

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.

Appreciate Everything, Even The Ordinary... Especially The Ordinary.

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

Live In The Moment

At The Root Of All The Harm We Cause Is Ignorance.

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. They Teach Us To Perk Up And Lean In When We Feel We’d Rather Collapse And Back Away. They’re Like Messengers That Show Us, With Terrifying Clarity, Exactly Where We’re Stuck. This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It’s With Us Wherever We Are.

At Some Point, We Realize That What We Do For Ourselves Benefits Others, And What We Do For Others Benefits Us.

By Not Knowing, Not Hoping To Know And Not Acting Like We Know What's Happening, We Begin To Access Our Inner Strength.

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.

We Can Stop Struggling With What Occurs And See Its True Face Without Calling It The Enemy. It Helps To Remember That Our Spiritual Practice Is Not About Accomplishing Anything - Not About Winning Or Losing - But About Ceasing To Struggle And Relaxing As It Is. That Is What We Are Doing When We Sit Down To Meditate. That Attitude Spreads Into The Rest Of Our Lives.

It's Helpful To Remind Yourself That Meditation Is About Opening And Relaxing With Whatever Arises, Without Picking And Choosing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Inspirational Love

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

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

Take Three Conscious Breaths. Just Pause. Let It Be A Contrast To Being All Caught Up. Let It Be Like Popping A Bubble. Let It Be Just A Moment In Time, And Then Go On. Maybe You Are On Your Way To Whatever You Need To Do For The Day. You Are In Your Car, Or On The Bus, Or Standing In Line. But You Can Still Create That Gap By Taking Three Conscious Breaths And Being Right There With The Immediacy Of Your Experience, Right There With Whatever You Are Seeing, With Whatever You Are Doing, With Whatever You Are Feeling.

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)

Tonglen Practice Begins To Dissolve The Illusion That Each Of Us Is Alone With This Personal Suffering That No One Else Can Understand.

Although We Have The Potential To Experience The Freedom Of A Butterfly, We Mysteriously Prefer The Small And Fearful Cocoon Of Ego.

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.

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

If Your Mind Is Expansive And Unfettered, You Will Find Yourself In A More Accommodating World, A Place That's Endlessly Interesting And Alive. That Quality Isn't Inherent In The Place But In Your State Of Mind.

Finding Yourself

It's A Transformative Experience To Simply Pause Instead Of Immediately Filling Up Space.

Sitting Meditation Gives Us A Way To Move Closer To Our Thoughts And Emotions And To Get In Touch With Our Bodies.

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

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.

When Things Are Shaky And Nothing Is Working, We Might Realize That We Are On The Verge Of Something. We Might Realize That This Is A Very Vulnerable And Tender Place, And That Tenderness Can Go Either Way. We Can Shut Down And Feel Resentful Or We Can Touch In On That Throbbing Quality. (9)

My Moods Are Continuously Shifting Like The Weather.

When You Begin To Touch Your Heart Or Let Your Heart Be Touched, You Begin To Discover That It's Bottomless.

Opening Our Hearts

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 It’s Dynamic Quality, That’s Called Enlightenment

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.

To Put It Concisely, We Suffer When We Resist The Noble And Irrefutable Truth Of Impermanence And Death.

The Painful Thing Is That When We Buy Into Disapproval, We Are Practicing Disapproval. When We Buy Into Harshness, We Are Practicing Harshness. The More We Do It, The Stronger These Qualities Become. How Sad It Is That We Become So Expert At Causing Harm To Ourselves And Others. The Trick Then Is To Practice Gentleness And Letting Go. We Can Learn To Meet Whatever Arises With Curiosity And Not Make It Such A Big Deal.

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.

When We Start Out On A Spiritual Path We Often Have Ideals We Think We're Supposed To Live Up To. We Feel We're Supposed To Be Better Than We Are In Some Way. But With This Practice You Take Yourself Completely As You Are. Then Ironically, Taking In Pain - Breathing It In For Yourself And All Others In The Same Boat As You Are Heightens Your Awareness Of Exactly Where You're Stuck.

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.

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. -pema Chodron, From "when Things Fall Apart

Meditation Isn't Really About Getting Rid Of Thoughts, It's About Changing The Pattern Of Grasping On To Things, Which In Our Everyday Experience Is Our Thoughts.

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.

Our Wisdom Is All Mixed Up With What We Call Our Neurosis. Our Brilliance, Our Juiciness, Our Spiciness, Is All Mixed Up With Our Craziness And Our Confusion, And Therefore It Doesn’t Do Any Good To Try To Get Rid Of Our So-called Negative Aspects, Because In That Process We Also Get Rid Of Our Basic Wonderfulness. We Can Lead Our Life So As To Become More Awake To Who We Are And What We’re Doing Rather Than Trying To Improve Or Change Or Get Rid Of Who We Are Or What We’re Doing. The Key Is To Wake Up, To Become More Alert, More Inquisitive And Curious About Ourselves.

We Think That The Point Is To Pass The Test Or 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. It's Just Like That. The Healing Comes From Letting There Be Room For All Of This To Happen: Room For Grief, For Relief, For Misery, For Joy. (10)

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.

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.

Buddhist Words Such As Compassion And Emptiness Don't Mean Much Until We Start Cultivating Our Innate Ability Simply To Be There With Pain With An Open Heart And The Willingness Not To Instantly Try To Get Ground Under Our Feet. For Instance, If What We're Feeling Is Rage, We Usually Assume That There Are Only Two Ways To Relate To It. One Is To Blame Others. Lay It All On Somebody Else; Drive All Blames Into Everyone Else. The Other Alternative Is To Feel Guilty About Our Rage And Blame Ourselves.

Be Kinder To Yourself. And Then Let Your Kindness Flood The World.

Mindfulness Is Loving All The Details Of Our Lives, And Awareness Is The Natural Thing That Happens: Life Begins To Open Up, And You Realize That You're Always Standing At The Center Of The World.

When You Begin To Touch Your Heart Or Let Your Heart Be Touched, You Begin To Discover That It's Bottomless, That It Doesn't Have Any Resolution, That This Heart Is Huge, Vast, And Limitless. You Begin To Discover How Much Warmth And Gentleness Is There, As Well As How Much Space.

The Ego Seeks To Divide And Separate. Spirit Seeks To Unify And Heal.

A Heartfelt Sense Of Aspiring Cuts Through Negativity About Yourself; It Cuts Through The Heavy Trips You Lay On Yourself.

We Have Two Alternatives: Either We Question Our Beliefs - Or We Don't. Either We Accept Our Fixed Versions Of Reality- Or We Begin To Challenge Them. In Buddha's Opinion, To Train In Staying Open And Curious - To Train In Dissolving Our Assumptions And Beliefs - Is The Best Use Of Our Human Lives.

Inner #‎ Peace Begins The Moment You Choose Not To Allow Another Person Or Event To Control Your #‎ Emotions

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

Everybody Loves Something, Even If It's Only Tortillas.

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.

It Is Only To The Extent That We Are Willing To Expose Ourselves Again And Again To Annihilation That We Are Able To Find That Part Of Ourselves That Is Indestructible.

Again And Again

The Future Is The Result Of What We Do Right Now.

Rejoicing In Ordinary Things Is Not Sentimental Or Trite. It Actually Takes Guts. Each Time We Drop Our Complaints And Allow Everyday Good Fortune To Inspire Us, We Enter The Warrior's World.

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

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.

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

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.

The Biggest Obstacle To Taking A Bigger Perspective On Life Is That Our Emotions Capture And Blind Us.

We Are All Capable Of Becoming Fundamentalists Because We Get Addicted To Other People's Wrongness.

The Third Noble Truth Says That The Cessation Of Suffering Is Letting Go Of Holding On To Ourselves.

Patience Is The Training In Abiding With The Restlessness Of Our Energy And Letting Things Evolve At Their Own Speed.

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

New Opportunity

It's Important To Remember, When We're Out There Aggressively Working For Reform, That, Even If Our Particular Issue Doesn't Get Resolved, We Are Adding Peace To The World. We Have To Do Our Best And At The Same Time Give Up All Hope Of Fruition.

Patience Takes Courage. It Is Not An Ideal State Of Calm. In Fact, When We Practice Patience We Will See Our Agitation Far More Clearly.

All You Need To Know Is That The Future Is Wide Open And You Are About To Create It By What You Do.

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.

When We Feel Left Out, Inadequate, Or Lonely, Can We Take A Warrior’s Perspective And Contact Bodhichitta?

Patience Is Not Learned In Safety.

We Sow The Seeds Of Our Future Hells Or Happiness By The Way We Open Or Close Our Minds Right Now.

It Is A Commitment To Respect Whatever Life Brings That We Develop Wholehearted Determination To Use Discomfort As An Opportunity For Awakening, Rather Than Trying To Make It Disappear.

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.

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

Somehow, In The Process Of Trying To Deny That Things Are Always Changing, We Lose Our Sense Of The Sacredness Of Life. We Tend To Forget That We Are Part Of The Natural Scheme Of Things.

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

Doing For Others

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

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.

I'm Here To Tell You That The Path To Peace Is Right There, When You Want To Get Away.

The Idea Is To Develop Sympathy For Your Own Confusion.

It's Not A Terrible Thing That We Feel Fear When Faced With The Unknown. It Is A Part Of Being Alive, Something We All Share. We React Against The Possibility Of Loneliness, Of Death, Of Not Having Anything To Hold On To. Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth.

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.

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.

The Real Thing That We Renounce Is The Tenacious Hope That We Could Be Saved From Being Who We Are.

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.

The Way I Regard Those Who Hurt Me Today Will Affect How I Experience The World In The Future. In Any Encounter, We Have A Choice: We Can Strengthen Our Resentment Or Our Understanding And Empathy. We Can Widen The Gap Between Ourselves And Others Or Lessen It.

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

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.

When Things Are Shaky And Nothing Is Working, We Might Realize That We Are On The Verge Of Something.

Being Preoccupied With Our Self-image Is Like Being Deaf And Blind. It's Like Standing In The Middle Of A Vast Field Of Wildflowers With A Black Hood Over Our Heads. It's Like Coming Upon A Tree Of Singing Birds While Wearing Earplugs.

Wholeheartedly Do What It Takes To Awaken Your Clear-seeing Intelligence, But One Day At A Time, One Moment At A Time. If We Live That Way, We Will Benefit This Earth.

One Day At A Time

Difficult Things Provoke All Your Irritations And Bring Your Habitual Patterns To The Surface. And That Becomes The Moment Of Truth. You Have The Choice To Launch Into Your Lousy Habitual Patterns, Or To Stay With The Rawness And Discomfort Of The Situation And Let It Transform You.

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

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.

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

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

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

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.

We Are Not Human Beings Having A Spiritual Experience, We Are Spiritual Beings Having A Human Experience And Infinite Love Is The Only Truth; Everything Else Is An Illusion.

Positive Thinking

If You're Invested In Security And Certainty, You Are On The Wrong Planet.

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

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.

If You Work With Your Mind, That Will Alleviate All The Suffering That Seems To Come From The Outside.

We Don’t Sit In Meditation To Become Good Meditators. We Sit In Meditation So That We’ll Be More Awake 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.

The Best Spiritual Instruction Is When You Wake Up In The Morning And Say, 'i Wonder What's Going To Happen Today.' And Then Carry That Kind Of Curiosity Through Your Life.

Never Underestimate The Desire To Bolt.

Never Underestimate

It Is Only When We Begin To Relax With Ourselves That Meditation Becomes A Transformative Process. Only When We Relate With Ourselves Without Moralizing, Without Harshness, Without Deception, Can We Let Go Of Harmful Patterns. Without Maitri (metta), Renunciation Of Old Habits Becomes Abusive. This Is An Important Point.

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.

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.

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.

Words Themselves Are Neutral. It's The Charge We Add To Them That Matters

We Are Not Given Any Promises That, Because Of Our Noble Intentions, Everything Will Be Okay. We Learn That What Truly Heals Is Gratitude And Tenderness. We [need] To Transform Our Minds And Actions For The Sake Of Other People And For The Future Of The World.

When People Are Hurting, What They Really Need Is Someone Who Is Fully There For Them - Not Someone Who Is Condescending Or Officious. The Only Way For You To Be There For Them Is By Facing Your Fear Or Anger, Whatever Feelings Cause You To Shut Down.

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

It Isn't The Things That Happen To Us In Our Lives That Cause Us To Suffer, It's How We Relate To The Things That Happen To Us That Causes Us To Suffer.

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

Live In The Moment

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.

Meditation Practice Isn't About Trying To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It's About Befriending Who We Are Already.

Meditation And Yoga

Lean Into The Sharp Points And Fully Experience Them. The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception. Wisdom Is Inherent In (understanding) Emotions.

Things Falling Apart Is A Kind Of Testing And Also A Kind Of Healing.

Loving Kindness Towards Ourselves Doesn't Mean Getting Rid Of Anything. It Means We Can Still Be Crazy After All These Years. We Can Still Be Angry After All These Years. We Can Still Be Timid Or Jealous Or Full Of Feelings Of Unworthiness. The Point Is Not To Try To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It's About Befriending Who We Are Already.

Don’t Get Caught Up In Hopes Of What You’ll Achieve And How Good Your Situation Will Be Some Day In The Future. What You Do Right Now Is What Matters.

Ordinarily We Are Swept Away By Habitual Momentum And Don't Interrupt Our Patterns Slightly. When We Feel Betrayed Or Disappointed, Does It Occur To Us To Practice?

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

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.

We Tend To Forget That We Are Part Of The Natural Scheme Of Things.

We Can Let The Circumstances Of Our Lives Harden Us So That We Become Increasingly Resentful And Afraid, Or We Can Let Them Soften Us And Make Us Kinder And More Open To What Scares Us. We Always Have This Choice.

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

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

On The Journey Of The Warrior-bodhisattva, The Path Goes Down, Not Up, As If The Mountain Pointed Toward The Earth Instead Of The Sky. Instead Of Transcending The Suffering Of All Creatures, We Move Toward Turbulence And Doubt However We Can. We Explore The Reality And Unpredictability Of Insecurity And Pain, And We Try Not To Push It Away. If It Takes Years, If It Takes Lifetimes, We Let It Be As It Is. At Our Own Pace, Without Speed Or Aggression, We Move Down And Down And Down. With Us Move Millions Of Others, Companions In Awakening From Fear.

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.

Let Difficulty Transform You. And It Will. In My Experience, We Just Need Help In Learning How Not To Run Away.

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!

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

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.

The Buddha Taught That Flexibility And Openness Bring Strength And That Running From Groundlessness Weakens Us And Brings Pain. But Do We Understand That Becoming Familiar With The Running Away Is The Key? Openness Doesn't Come From Resisting Our Fears But From Getting To Know Them Well

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

Our Neurosis And Our Wisdom Are Made Out Of The Same Material. If You Throw Out Your Neurosis, You Also Throw Out Your Wisdom.

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

When We Sit Down To Meditate, We Connect With Something Unconditional - A State Of Mind, A Basic Environment That Does Not Grasp Or Reject Anything. Meditation Is Probably The Only Activity That Doesn't Add Anything To The Picture. Everything Is Allowed To Come And Go Without Further Embellishment. Meditation Is A Totally Nonviolent, Non Aggressive Occupation. Not Filling The Space, Allowing For The Possibility Of Connecting With Unconditional Openness - This Provides The Basis For Real Change.

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

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

By The Way That We Think And By The Way That We Believe In Things, In That Way Our World Is Created.

Everything Is Material For The Seed Of Happiness, If You Look Into It With Inquisitiveness And Curiosity. The Future Is Completely Open, And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment. There Always Is The Potential To Create An Environment Of Blame -or One That Is Conducive To Loving-kindness.

If You Ask Why We Meditate, I Would Say It's So We Can Become More Flexible And Tolerant To The Present Moment.

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

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.

Most Spiritual Experiences Begin With Suffering. They Begin With Groundlessness. They Begin When The Rug Has Been Pulled Out From Under Us.

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)

If You’re Aggressive In Your Dealings, That’s How You’ll Be Regarded In The World. You Might Smile And Give Generously, But If You Frequently Explode In Anger, People Never Feel Comfortable In Your Presence And You’ll Never Have Peace Of Mind.

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

For Arousing Compassion, The Nineteenth-century Yogi Patrul Rinpoche Suggested Imagining Beings In Torment - An Animal About To Be Slaughtered, A Person Awaiting Execution. To Make It More Immediate, He Recommended Imagining Ourselves In Their Place. Particularly Painful Is His Image Of A Mother With No Arms Watching As A Raging River Sweeps Her Child Away. To Contact The Suffering Of Another Being Fully And Directly Is As Painful As Being In The Woman's Shoes.

The Difference Between Theism And Nontheism Is Not Whether One Does Or Does Not Believe In God. . . Theism Is A Deep-seated Conviction That There's Some Hand To Hold: If We Just Do The Right Things, Someone Will Appreciate Us And Take Care Of Us. . . Nontheism Is Relaxing With The Ambiguity And Uncertainty Of The Present Moment Without Reaching For Anything To Protect Ourselves.

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.

Each Person's Life Is Like A Mandala - A Vast, Limitless Circle. We Stand In The Center Of Our Own Circle, And Everything We See, Hear And Think Forms The Mandala Of Our Life ... Everything That Shows Up In Your Mandala Is A Vehicle For Your Awakening.

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

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

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.

One Of The Deepest Habitual Patterns That We Have Is To Feel That Now Is Not Enough.

When There's A Disappointment, I Don't Know If It's The End Of The Story. It May Just Be The Beginning Of A Great Adventure.

Whatever Happens In Your Life, Joyful Or Painful, Do Not Be Swept Away By Reactivity. Be Patient With Yourself And Don't Lose Your Sense Of Perspective.

You See, There Really Is No Separation Between You And Everyone Else.

Not Causing Harm Requires Staying Awake. Part Of Being Awake Is Slowing Down Enough To Notice What We Say And Do. The More We Witness Our Emotional Chain Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain. It Becomes A Way Of Life To Stay Awake, Slow Down, And Notice.

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

Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

What Happens With You When You Begin To Feel Uneasy, Unsettled, Queasy? Notice The Panic, Notice When You Instantly Grab For Something. (51)

We Already Have Everything We Need. There Is No Need For Self-improvement. All These Trips That We Lay On Ourselves—the Heavy-duty Fearing That We’re Bad And Hoping That We’re Good, The Identities That We So Dearly Cling To, The Rage, The Jealousy And The Addictions Of All Kinds—never Touch Our Basic Wealth. They Are Like Clouds That Temporarily Block The Sun. 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.

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

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

To Live Is To Be Willing To Die Over And Over Again.

"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.

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.

Right Down There In The Thick Of Things, We Discover The Love That Will Not Die.

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

When We Scratch The Wound And Give Into Our Addictions We Do Not Allow The Wound To Heal.

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

Uncertainty Of Life

That Nothing Is Static Or Fixed, That All Is Fleeting And Impermanent, Is The First Mark Of Existence. It Is The Ordinary State Of Affairs. Everything Is In Process. Everything - Every Tree, Every Blade Of Grass, All The Animals, Insects, Human Beings, Buildings, The Animate And The Inanimate - Is Always Changing, Moment To Moment.

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.

Compassion Starts With Making Friends With Ourselves.

Trending Author

Anthony Jeselnik

Arthur C. Brooks

Category