When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics)

by Pema Chödrön

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to 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.

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 be just the beginning of a great adventure.

Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it.

Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.

Every day we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, “Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?” Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?”

Each day, we’re given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening.

The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward.

This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that’s been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time. Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.

We carry around an image of ourselves, an image we hold in our minds.

Sem is what we experience as discursive thoughts, a stream of chatter that’s always reinforcing an image of ourselves.

Rikpa literally means “intelligence” or “brightness.”

The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness. When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead. When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on forever.

Being able to appreciate, being able to look closely, being able to open our minds—this is the core of maitri.

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.

Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

We don’t waste the gift of speech in expressing our neurosis.

Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen.

The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.

If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.

ye tang che means totally tired out.

“totally fed up.”

It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of comple...

Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax...

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.

dharma isn’t a belief; it isn’t dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change.

dharma was never meant to be a belief that we blindly follow. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.

Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally

made the wron...

The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa;

the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two.

Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, the...

This re-dok is the root o...

“Abandon hope”

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something;

We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there’s something missing in us, and therefore som...

Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not b...

renunciation of the hope that our experience could be different, renunciation of the hope that we could be better.

The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.

If hope and fear are two sides of one coin, so are hopelessness and confidence.

If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.

Begin the journey without hope of getting ground under your feet. Begin with hopelessness.

We don’t go so far as to say, “No way, I’m not going to die,” because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later. That’s the biggest hope.

Death in everyday life could also be defined as experiencing all the things that we don’t want.