The Wisdom of No Escape: How to love yourself and your world

by Pema Chödrön

‘Thoroughly pacifying,’ number seven, gives specific instructions about the obstacles and antidotes. It talks about passion, aggression, and ignorance, which we consider to be obstacles to practice. It says that if you are experiencing extreme aggression in your practice, first you can take that sense of fresh start, and then you can emphasize the airy, windy, fresh quality of your breath. You have learned the meditation technique, you have posture and labeling and all kinds of tools, but if aggression has its claws in you and you can’t let go of those resentful, bitter, angry thoughts and plans, then you should emphasize the windy, airy, fresh quality of the breath as it goes out, which helps you connect with freshness and spaciousness. If it’s passion or lust that has taken hold of you – you can’t stop thinking about that person or that thing that you want so much – then the instruction, interestingly enough, is to flash back to your sense of body, emphasize your posture. The antidote to being completely caught by lust and passion, wanting so much that it hurts, is your posture. Just resettle and have this sense of mindfulness of body. Just emphasize feeling your hands on your thighs and feeling your bottom on the cushion. You could even mentally go through your whole body from the top of your head all the way down. Come into your body completely to ground yourself.