Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World

by Pema Chödrön

bodhichitta. In Sanskrit, bodhi means “awake” and chitta means “heart” or “mind.” Our aim is to fully awaken our heart and mind, not just for our own greater well-being but also to bring benefit, solace, and wisdom to other living beings.

Bodhichitta, the awakened heart, begins with the wish to be free from whatever gets in the way of our helping others.

Bodhichitta is also a commitment. We commit to doing all it takes to free ourselves completely from all our varieties of confusion and unconscious habit and suffering, because these prevent us from being fully there for others.

Trungpa Rinpoche said that the way to arouse bodhichitta was to “begin with a broken heart.” Protecting ourselves from pain—our own and that of others—has never worked. Everybody wants to be free from their suffering, but the majority of us go about it in ways that only make things worse. Shielding ourselves from the vulnerability of all living beings—which includes our own vulnerability—cuts us off from the full experience of life. Our world shrinks. When our main goals are to gain comfort and avoid discomfort, we begin to feel disconnected from, and even threatened by, others. We enclose ourselves in a mesh of fear. And when many people and countries engage in this kind of approach, the result is a messy global situation with lots of pain and conflict.

But if we gradually increase our capacity to be present with our pain and the sufferings of the world, we will surprise ourselves with our growing sense of courage.

Some people work hard, day and night, in the field of helping others, but their strongest motivation is to stay busy so they can avoid feeling their own pain. Some are driven by an idea of being “good,” instilled in them by their family or culture. Some are motivated by feelings of obligation or guilt. Some do good to keep themselves out of trouble. Some are driven by the prospect of rewards, in this life or maybe in a future existence. Some are even motivated by resentment, anger, or a need to control. If we take a good look within, we will probably discover that motivations like these are mixed with our genuine desire to help others. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up about this because all these motivations come from our natural human tendency to look for happiness and to protect ourselves from pain. But they do keep us from becoming more connected with our own hearts and with the hearts of other people. This makes it difficult for us to benefit others in any deep way.

In contrast, the motivation of bodhichitta leads to more profound and long-lasting results because it’s based on understanding where suffering comes from.

The Buddha’s main concern was always to help people become free of suffering. With the understanding that our suffering originates from confusion in our mind, his objective was to help us wake up out of that confused state. He therefore encouraged or discouraged certain forms of behavior based on whether they promoted or hindered that process of awakening.

Though we can’t predict or control what will come up next or how we will feel about it, we can do something about how we react. We can work on how we relate to whatever comes up. This is where “Does it matter?” comes in. The question implies that we always have a choice in how we respond. And the more we go through our days with payu in our minds, the more that choice will be accessible to us.

We’re never quite satisfied with ourselves as we are, other people as they are, things as they are. Often, we feel this as an aversion to whatever we’re experiencing. We don’t like what’s happening and we want to get rid of it. This can start out as a subtle level of aversion, which can grow into more obvious irritation.

Other times our feeling of opposition has to do with desire or craving. For instance, we may want an object or situation very badly because we think it will make us happy. But these desires are also based on seeing things as separate from us—seeing them as “other.” In either case—aversion or desire—we’re caught in some form of polarization. Whether we are “for” or “against,” there is a lack of openness and relaxation in our minds.

we are naturally motivated to apply payu, heedfulness. We can gradually refine our payu so that it’s present at more subtle levels of our behavior, beginning with our words.

If we develop a healthy caution about the destructive power of our thoughts, we’ll have much more incentive to nip our judgmental thinking in the bud. Then we’ll be able to feel more at ease in all situations, especially when we’re with people who push our buttons.

There’s a practice I like called “Just like me.” You go to a public place and sit there and look around. Traffic jams are very good for this. You zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as “Just like me, this person doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn’t want to be disliked. Just like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.”

If you commit to overcoming polarization in your own mind, it’s a life changer, and it will help the world as well.

If we can go beyond blame and other escapes and just feel the bleeding, raw meat quality of our vulnerability, we can enter a space where the best part of us comes out.

The Buddha spoke a lot about the importance of working with one’s ego. But what did he mean by “ego”? There are various ways to talk about this word, but one definition I particularly like is “that which resists what is.” Ego struggles against reality, against the open-endedness and natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being quite sure how to pin things down.

When we fail—in other words, when things don’t work out the way we want them to—we feel our vulnerability in a raw and powerful way. Our uncomfortable ego tries to escape from that rawness.

There’s a third way, however, which is to train ourselves simply to feel what we feel. I like to call this “holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart.” When we’re resisting or trying to escape from “what is,”

The ego wants resolution, wants to control impermanence, wants something secure and certain to hold on to. It freezes what is actually fluid, it grasps at what is in motion, it tries to escape the beautiful truth of the fully alive nature of everything. As a result, we feel dissatisfied, haunted, threatened. We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.

The alternative to this struggle is to train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart. Through this practice, we can eventually accustom our nervous systems to relaxing with the truth, to relaxing with the impermanent, uncontrollable nature of things. We can slowly increase our ability to expand rather than contract, to let go rather than cling.

When any unwanted feeling comes up, the first step is to feel it as fully as you can at the present moment. In other words, hold the rawness of vulnerability in your heart. Breathe with it, allow it to touch you, to inhabit you—open to it as fully as you currently can. Then make that feeling even stronger, even more intense. Do this in any way that works for you—in any way that makes the feeling stronger and more solid. Do this until the feeling becomes so heavy you could hold it in your hand. At that point, grab the feeling. And then just let it go. Let it float where it will, like a balloon, anywhere in the vast realm of empty space. Let it float out and out into the universe, dispersing into smaller and smaller particles, which become inconceivably tiny and distant.

The second non-rejecting method is tonglen, which in Tibetan means “sending and taking.” With this radical practice, we reverse our habitual tendencies to cling to pleasure and reject pain,

You start by breathing in something that you’re personally feeling, but then you widen your scope to include all the people who are feeling the same thing. You aim to cultivate the brave attitude of being willing to take it on for everyone.

The “sending” aspect of tonglen comes from another angle, but it also fosters this feeling of openness and connection to the experience of others. Each time we exhale, we imagine sending other beings all the beneficial and pleasurable things we normally desire for ourselves.

We can make better use of our good fortune—and enjoy it even more wholeheartedly—by incorporating it into tonglen. Good health, delicious food, beautiful weather, warm family time, a sense of accomplishment or recognition, a feeling of inner peace—when any of the pleasant experiences that everyone desires come our way, we can mentally share them with others. We can wish that they enjoy these pleasures just as much as we do, or even more.

When we inhale and open ourselves up to our own unwanted feelings and those of others—when we welcome the unwelcome—we discover greater spaciousness in our hearts and minds. We feel relieved to be no longer fighting off each unpleasant experience that arises. When we exhale, we can send this spaciousness and relief to others who are similarly struggling against their feelings.

The wonderful irony about this spiritual journey is that we find it only leads us to become just as we are. The exalted state of enlightenment is nothing more than fully knowing ourselves and our world, just as we are.

The wonderful irony about this spiritual journey is that we find it only leads us to become just as we are. The exalted state of enlightenment is nothing more than fully knowing ourselves and our world, just as we are. In other words, the ultimate fruition of this path is simply to be fully human. And the ultimate benefit we can bring to others is to help them also realize their full humanity, just as they are.

The more willing you are to step out of your comfort zone, the more comfortable you feel in your life. Situations that used to arouse fear and nausea become easier to relax in. On the other hand, if you stay in the comfort zone all the time, it shrinks.

The interesting thing is that the more willing you are to step out of your comfort zone, the more comfortable you feel in your life. Situations that used to arouse fear and nausea become easier to relax in. On the other hand, if you stay in the comfort zone all the time, it shrinks.

Sometimes we just have to say, “I need to be in my comfort zone right now because I’m stressed out and it would help me.” If that’s the case, honor that.

falling in love. That beginning glow part—the honeymoon stage—can last a couple of years. Then you have two people living together, which is when you really start dwelling in the learning zone. This is why relationships can be so powerful for our spiritual growth. If the relationship is to continue, stretching will be inevitable. That’s when you start to deepen.

Status quo is not very helpful for spiritual growth, for using this short interval between birth and death. On the other hand, expanding our ability to feel comfortable in our own skin and in the world, so that we can be there as much as possible for other people, is a very worthy way to spend a human life.

Speaking from the heart brings us closer together. It comes from seeing that our true state is interconnected. Our speech uncovers that interconnectedness instead of reinforcing the misunderstanding that we’re separate. On the other hand, if we look down on someone, seeing him or her as inherently problematic or threatening, our speech will reflect the polarization in our mind.

ego, “that which resists what is.”

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche talks about how all of us, whether we want to or not, live in a bubble. This is our own version of reality, created by our ego, which is always turning away from the open-ended nature of how things are and trying to maintain the familiar. Most of the time, we are able to keep this sense of familiarity intact. Everything in our bubble is fairly predictable and seems to make sense. Even if we’re going through a hard time, at some level we’re able to hold it all together. We get up in the morning, we enter a familiar world, we go through our day with many familiar routines. How we prepare our food, how we have our coffee, how we relate to particular people in particular ways—it’s all pretty unsurprising. This isn’t something we consciously choose to do. Whatever kind of life we have, we have our own version of a bubble. It’s our default way of being, and most of the time, we don’t even know we’re doing it.

Cultivating the experience of emptiness will give us a context for what’s going on when the bottom falls out of our lives. It will give us a way of facing the most difficult and disorienting times—such as illness, loss, and eventually our own death—without so much despair and rejection.

ONCE WE BEGIN TO SEE EMPTINESS AS AN EXPERIENCE to cultivate rather than avoid, we can take advantage of the many opportunities that arise in our lives to learn more about it. These don’t have to be sudden shocks where the bottom falls out and we end up in freefall. Sometimes we can connect to emptiness through less dramatic but equally unwanted emotions and states of mind. Boredom, loneliness, insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and even depression are all potential starting points for learning how to go beyond our bubble of imputed meanings and experience things just as they are.

when boredom, loneliness, depression, and other unwanted feelings arise, we can use them to help wean ourselves from imputed meaning. Every time we turn in the direction of inquiry and exploration—as opposed to struggle and running away—we are dismantling the whole way we impute meaning onto things.

In the Zen tradition, teachers make use of koans, which are questions that have no answers—at least according to fixed mind and dualistic thinking. Perhaps the most famous Zen koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” This may sound like a highly esoteric practice, but if we are tuned in to the way things really are in this world—free from imputed meaning and impossible to pin down—we will notice that life continually presents us with koans.

poignancy

Instead of getting rid of ego, the idea is to become very conscious of ego and how it works. Only by getting to know ego intimately will it lose its power to keep us spinning in samsara.

Accepting something, by the way, isn’t the same as liking it. To accept a feeling that we habitually associate with discomfort doesn’t mean we immediately turn around and start enjoying it. It means being okay with it as part of the texture of human life. It means understanding that, if we want to become fully awakened human beings, we have to learn how not to shy away from or reject any human experience. It’s like accepting the weather.

Being able to laugh at ourselves connects us with our humanness. This in turn helps us connect to and have empathy with other people. We realize how all of us are fundamentally equal. We all have our natural goodness as well as plenty of bothersome and neurotic habits. If we scorn and criticize ourselves for our weaknesses, we’ll inevitably scorn and criticize others. But if we appreciate ourselves just as we are, without judgment, it will be that much easier to do the same in regard to others.

Humor lightens up the spiritual path and prevents it from becoming a drag. It gives us the openness to go deeper into the teachings, rather than become fixated on what we think they mean.

The Buddha famously advised that one should always try to be “not too tight and not too loose.” It takes a certain flexibility of mind to navigate the various situations of our lives without falling into either of these extremes. The key ingredient in that flexibility is humor.

brocade

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person whom we know to be hurting and wish to help. For instance, if we know of a child who is being hurt, we breathe in with the wish to take away all of that child’s pain and fear. Then, as we breathe out, we send happiness, joy, or whatever would relieve the child. This is the core of the practice: breathing in others’ pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open—breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever we feel would bring them relief and happiness.

The practice dissolves the walls we’ve built around our hearts. It dissolves the layers of self-protection we’ve tried so hard to create. In Buddhist language, one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.