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by
Pema Chödrön
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October 27 - November 1, 2020
“How can I use this suffering and this joy as a vehicle for transformation?”
The point of reproach is to develop enough self-respect that when we catch ourselves getting hooked in familiar ways we can stop. We aren’t disciplining our badness; we’re simply getting smart about what brings suffering and what brings happiness. We’re finally giving ourselves a break.
So these are the five strengths we can utilize in our practice of awakening bodhichitta: Cultivating strong determination and commitment to relate openly with whatever life presents, including our emotional distress.
relating to laziness or any troubling
From a gesture of generosity, true letting go will evolve. Our conventional perspective will begin to change.
The intention to open the heart and mind is what’s essential. If we do good deeds with an attitude of superiority or outrage, we simply add more aggression to the planet.
Then he remembered hearing that in practicing patience we see our anger far more clearly.
Being ambitious about paramita practice is a setup for failure. When we give up the hope of doing it right and the fear of getting it wrong, we realize that winning and losing are both acceptable.
We practice what is called the threefold purity—no big deal about the doer, no big deal about the action, no big deal about the result. This joyful exertion is rooted in no expectation, no ambition, no hope of fruition. We just eagerly put one foot in front of the other and are not discouraged when we fall flat on our faces. We act without self-congratulation or self-censure, without fearing criticism or expecting applause.
Through continual practice we find out how to cross over the boundary between stuckness and waking up. It depends on our willingness to experience directly feelings we’ve been avoiding for many years. This willingness to stay open to what scares us weakens our habits of avoidance. It’s the way that ego-clinging becomes ventilated and begins to fade.
So these are the six activities of the warrior: Generosity. Giving as a path of learning to let go. Discipline. Training in not causing harm in a way that is daring and flexible. Patience. Training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed. If waking up takes forever, still we go moment by moment, giving up all hope of fruition and enjoying the process. Joyful enthusiasm. Letting go of our perfectionism and connecting with the living quality of every moment. Meditation. Training in coming back to being right here with gentleness and precision.
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We train, as Trungpa Rinpoche said, 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.
The “secret” of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment—even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness. —CHARLOTTE JOKO BECK
Moving in the direction of nothing to hold on to is daring.
If we train to become a “good” warrior or to escape from being a “bad” person, then our thinking will remain just as polarized, just as stuck in right and wrong, as before. We will use the training against ourselves, trying to jump over issues that we’re avoiding so as to attain some idealized notion of allrightness. I’m not meaning to imply that this is unusual. Welcome to the human race. But because of our training we can start seeing clearly what we do and begin to practice compassionate inquiry into our own process.
Practicing compassionate inquiry into our reactions and strategies is fundamental to the process of awakening.
Don’t be swayed by external circumstances. —MIND-TRAINING SLOGAN OF ATISHA
1. not setting up the target for the arrow, 2. connecting with the heart, 3. seeing obstacles as teachers, and 4. regarding all that occurs as a dream.
The teacher is always with us. The teacher is always showing us precisely where we’re at—encouraging us not to speak and act in the same old neurotic ways, encouraging us also not to repress or dissociate, encouraging us not to sow the seeds of suffering. So with this person who is scaring us or insulting us, do we retaliate as we have one hundred thousand times before, or do we start to get smart and finally hold our seat?
Right at the point when we are about to blow our top or withdraw into oblivion, we can remember this: we are warriors-in-training being taught how to sit with edginess and discomfort. We are being challenged to remain and to relax where we are.
Moving closer to someone who is so dangerous to the ego takes time.
We don’t, however, think of the teacher as having all the wisdom while we have none. There’s too much hope and fear in that kind of setup. If I had been advised never to question my teachers, I wouldn’t have lasted very long as a student. I was always encouraged to use my critical intelligence and express my concerns without fear. I was actually advised to question authority and rules.
It’s important to understand that the minds of the teacher and the student meet, not by making the teacher all right or all wrong, but in the ambiguity between those two views, in the capacity to contain uncertainty and paradox. Otherwise our adulation inevitably flips into disillusionment. We bolt when the teacher doesn’t fit our preconceptions. We don’t like her political views or the fact that she eats meat, drinks alcohol, smokes cigarettes. We’re out of there because we don’t like a change in the organizational policy or because we feel unappreciated or neglected. We’ll hang in for a
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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.
Yet it seems reasonable to want some kind of relief. If we can make the situation right or wrong, if we can pin it down in any way, then we are on familiar ground. But something has shaken up our habitual patterns and frequently they no longer work. Staying with volatile energy gradually becomes more comfortable than acting it out or repressing it. This open-ended tender place is called bodhichitta. Staying with it is what heals. It allows us to let go of our self-importance. It’s how the warrior learns to love.
9. In all activities, train with slogans.
Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.
Don’t be swayed by external circumstances.
“May I be free from suffering and the root of suffering,”
May I enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May you enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
Trungpa, Chögyam. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior.
