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by
Pema Chödrön
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May 4 - May 14, 2023
Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness.
The Places That Scare You A GUIDE TO FEARLESSNESS IN DIFFICULT TIMES PEMA CHÖDRÖN
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go. Go to places that scare you.
Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, “Live your life as an experiment.”
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.
Chitta means “mind” and also “heart” or “attitude.” Bodhi means “awake,” “enlightened,” or “completely open.”
Trungpa Rinpoche put it, “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”
An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart.
bodhisattvas or warriors
examples of master warriors—people like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King
A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next.
truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty.
not knowing is part of the adventure, and it’s also what makes us afraid.
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 the times that we connect with bodhichitta.
Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
Butterfly Cocoon
Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego.
What are the stories I tell myself?
Do I prefer retreating into the beauty of nature or into the delicious world provided by a really good book?
She felt instinctively that she and the universe were one.
“They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.”
what goes up must come down,
When we don’t run from everyday uncertainty, we can contact bodhichitta. It’s a natural force that wants to emerge. It is, in fact, unstoppable.
today is today and now it is new.
three principal characteristics of human existence: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction.
Stillness is followed by movement, movement flows back into stillness.
Life does continually go up and down. People and situations are unpredictable and so is everything else.
life isn’t always going to go our way.
“We are always in transition.”
“If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”
We know that all is im...
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Every cell in the body is continuously changing. Thoughts and emotions rise and fall away unceasingly.
We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us. Nothing and no one is fixed.
Whether the reality of change is a source of freedom for us or a source of horrific anxiety makes a significant difference.
egolessness is called no-self.
Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes.
When we train in awakening bodhichitta, we are nurturing the flexibility of our mind.
It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out,
Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.
To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.
we look for happiness in all the wrong places.
We can relax and be fully present for our lives.
Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness-awareness practice, is the foundation of bodhichitta training.
Sitting meditation cultivates loving-kindness and compassion,
We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the openended awareness that already exists in our minds.
maitri, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.
Thinking becomes a code word for seeing “just what is”—both our clarity and our confusion.
We also see our kindness, our bravery, our wisdom.
Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.
