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

by Pema Chödrön

So 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.

Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly. The

SamsarA

“Too busy to live life!” Sometimes it seems we have a preference for darkness and speed. We can protest and complain and hold a grudge for a thousand years. But in the midst of the bitterness and resentment, we have a glimpse of the possibility of maitri. We hear a child crying or smell that someone is baking bread. We feel the coolness of the air or see the first crocus of spring. Despite ourselves we are drawn out by the beauty in our own backyard.

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. After we have died, the ebb and flow will still continue. Like the tides of the sea, like day and night—this is the nature of things. Being able to appreciate, being able to look closely, being able to open our minds—this is the core of maitri.

When we talk about hopelessness and death, we’re talking about facing the facts. No escapism. We may still have addictions of all kinds, but we cease to believe in them as a gateway to happiness. So many times we’ve indulged the short-term pleasure of addiction. We’ve done it so many times that we know that grasping at this hope is a source of misery that makes a short-term pleasure a long-term hell.

It’s also pretty obvious that people need help and that there’s no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves.

That’s the beginning of growing up. As long as we don’t want to be honest and kind with ourselves, then we are always going to be infants. When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably. Finally there’s room for genuine inquisitiveness, and we find we have an appetite for what’s out there.