The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

by Pema Chödrön

As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

This approach reflects what are called the three noble principles: good in the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end.

As my teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, “Live your life as an experiment.”

“Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.”

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.

Hatred never ceases by hatred But by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law.

The problem isn’t with the beliefs themselves but with how we use them to get ground under our feet, how we use them to feel right and to make someone else wrong, how we use them to avoid feeling the uneasiness of not knowing what is going on.

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.

To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

Sitting meditation cultivates loving-kindness and compassion, the relative qualities of bodhichitta. It gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies. It is a method of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward ourselves and for parting the curtain of indifference that distances us from the suffering of others. It is our vehicle for learning to be a truly loving person.

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.

In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness.

Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.

Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.

OUR PERSONAL ATTEMPTS to live humanely in this world are never wasted.

In cultivating loving-kindness, we train first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves.

The main point of doing this practice is to uncover the ability to love without bias.

Compassion, however, is more emotionally challenging than loving-kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain.

We cultivate bravery through making aspirations. We make the wish that all beings, including ourselves and those we dislike, be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience—our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way.

This is a good time to remember that when we harden our heart against anyone, we hurt ourselves.

the best way to serve ourselves is to love and care for others.

We can practice the first step of the aspiration by learning to rejoice in our own good fortune. We can train in rejoicing in even the smallest blessings our life holds.

In the Zen tradition, students are taught to bow to other people as well as ordinary objects as a way of expressing their respect. They are taught to take equal care of brooms and toilets and plants in order to show their gratitude to these things.

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. We can do this even at the most difficult moments. Everything we see, hear, taste, and smell has the power to strengthen and uplift us. As Longchenpa says, the quality of joy is like finding cool, refreshing shade.

In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.

Whenever someone asked a certain Zen master how he was, he would always answer, “I’m okay.” Finally one of his students said, “Roshi, how can you always be okay? Don’t you ever have a bad day?” The Zen master answered, “Sure I do. On bad days, I’m okay. On good days, I’m also okay.” This is equanimity.

The traditional image for equanimity is a banquet to which everyone is invited. That means that everyone and everything, without exception, is on the guest list. Consider your worst enemy. Consider someone who would do you harm. Consider Pol Pot and Hitler and drug pushers hooking young people. Imagine inviting them to this feast.

THE ESSENCE OF BRAVERY is being without self-deception.

These are not sins but temporary and workable habits of mind. The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power. This is how we come to trust that our basic nature is utterly simple, free of struggle between good and bad.

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.