Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

by Pema Chödrön

bodhisattva is one who aspires to act from an awakened heart. In terms of the Shambhala teachings, it is the path of warriorship.

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have. Pema’s teachings encourage us to experiment with becoming comfortable with uncertainty, then see what happens.

What we call uncertainty is actually the open quality of any given moment. When we can be present for this openness—as it is always present for us—we discover that our capacity to love and care for others is limitless.

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.

Bodhichitta is a Sanskrit word that means “noble or awakened heart.”

the soft spot of bodhichitta is inherent in you and me. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love.

the genuine heart of bodhichitta cannot be lost. It is here in all that lives, never ma...

It is said that in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing ...

This tenderness for life, bodhichitta, awakens when we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. It awakens through kinship with the suffering of others. We train in the bodhichitta practices in order to become so open that we can take the pain of the world in, let it touch our hearts, and turn it into compassion.

THOSE WHO TRAIN wholeheartedly in awakening bodhichitta are called bodhisattvas or warriors—not warriors who kill but warriors of nonaggression who hear the cries of the world. Warrior-bodhisattvas enter challenging situations in order to alleviate suffering. They are willing to cut through personal reactivity and self-deception. They are dedicated to uncovering the basic, undistorted energy of bodhichitta.

warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next.

Wherever we are, we can train as a warrior. Our tools are sitting meditation, tonglen, slogan practice, and cultivating the four limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. With the help of these practices, we will find the tenderness of bodhichitta in sorrow and in gratitude, behind the hardness of rage and in the shakiness of fear. In loneliness as well as in kindness, we can uncover the soft spot of basic goodness.

“Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

THE CENTRAL QUESTION of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?

For those of us with a hunger to know the truth, painful emotions are like flags going up to say, “You’re stuck!” We regard disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, jealousy, and fear as moments that show us where we’re holding back, how we’re shutting down. Such uncomfortable feelings are messages that tell us to perk up and lean into a situation when we’d rather cave in and back away.

When the flag goes up, we have an opportunity: we can stay with our painful emotion instead of spinning out. Staying is how we get the hang of gently catching ourselves when we’re about to let resentment harden into blame, righteousness, or alienation. It’s also how we keep from smoot...

Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.

FOR AN ASPIRING BODHISATTVA, the essential practice is to cultivate maitri, or loving-kindness.

In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves. Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness. Sometimes we feel good and strong. Sometimes we feel inadequate and weak. But like mother-love, maitri is unconditional; no matter how we feel, we can aspire that we be happy. We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being. Gradually, we become more aware about what causes happiness as well as what causes distress.

Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open.

When you come to have this kind of honesty, gentleness, and good-heartedness, combined with clarity about yourself, there’s no obstacle to feeling loving-kindness for others as well.

To be encouraged to stay with our vulnerability is news that we can use. Sitting meditation is our support for learning how to do this. Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness-awareness practice, is the foundation of bodhichitta training. It is the home ground of the warrior-bodhisattva.

Gradually, through meditation, we begin to notice that there are gaps in our internal dialogue. In the midst of continually talking to ourselves, we experience a pause, as if awakening from a dream. We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exist in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered. This coming back to the immediacy of our experience is training in unconditional, or absolute, bodhichitta.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them “thinking,” and return to the breath. If

In fact, like thoughts, all these constructs are constantly changing. Each situation, each thought, each word, each feeling, is just a passing memory.

Wisdom is a fluid process, not something concrete that can be added up or measured.

Breathing out, touch your breath as it goes. Sense the breath going out into big space and dissolving. You’re not trying to clutch or catch that breath, you’re simply relaxing outward with it. There’s no particular instruction about what to do during the in-breath—there’s nothing to hold on to until the next out-breath.

Labeling our thoughts during meditation practice is a powerful support that reconnects us with the fresh, open, unbiased dimension of our mind. When we become aware that we are thinking, we say to ourselves, “thinking,” with an unbiased attitude and with tremendous gentleness. Then we return our focus to the breath. We regard the thoughts as bubbles and the labeling like touching them with a feather. There’s just this light touch—“thinking”—and they dissolve back into the space. Even if you still feel anxious and tense when the thoughts go, simply allow that feeling to be there, with space around it. Just let it be. When thoughts come up again, see them for what they are. It’s no big deal. You can loosen up and lighten up.

Saying “thinking” is an interesting point in the meditation practice. It’s the point at which we can consciously train in gentleness and in developing a nonjudgmental attitude. Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness. So each time you say to yourself “thinking,” you are cultivating unconditional friendliness toward whatever arises in your mind. Since this kind of unconditional compass...

This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is a simple, direct relationship with our being. We call this maitri.

There are four qualities of maitri that are cultivated when we meditate: Steadfastness. When we practice meditation we are strengthening our ability to be steadfast with ourselves, in body as well as mind. Clear seeing. Clear seeing is another way of saying that we have less self-deception. Through the process of practicing the technique day in and day out, year after year, we begin to be very honest with ourselves.

Experiencing our emotional distress. We practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions and the fear. We stay with the emotion, experience it, and leave it as it is, without proliferating. Thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness of our own energy. We learn to abide with the experience of our emotional distress. Attention to the present moment. We make the choice, moment by moment, to be fully here. Attending to our present-moment mind and body is...

WHAT KEEPS US unhappy and stuck in a limited view of reality is our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. This is how we keep ourselves enclosed in a cocoon.

Our mind is always seeking zones of safety. We’re in this zone of safety and that’s what we consider life, getting it all together, security. Death is losing that. We fear losing our illusion of security—that’s what makes us anxious. We fear being confused and not knowing which way to turn. We want to know what’s happening. The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart.

We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara—the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.

The first noble truth says that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort.

The second noble truth says that resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

The third noble truth says that suffering ceases when we let go of trying to maintain the huge ME at any cost.

The essence of the fourth noble truth is that we can use everything we do to help us to realize that we’re part of the energy that creates everything.

ACCORDING TO THE BUDDHA, the lives of all beings are marked by three characteristics: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction. Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are.

The first mark is impermanence. That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and changing, is the first mark of existence.

The Buddhist teachings aspire to set us free from this limited way of relating to impermanence. They encourage us to relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change. Acknowledging this truth doesn’t mean that we’re looking on the dark side. What it means is that we begin to understand that we’re not the only one who can’t keep it all together. We no longer believe that there are people who have managed to avoid uncertainty.

LEARNING NOT TO CAUSE HARM to ourselves or others is a basic Buddhist teaching. Nonaggression has the power to heal. Not harming ourselves or others is the basis of enlightened society.

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.

The ground of not causing harm is mindfulness, a sense of clear seeing with respect and compassion for what it is we see. This is what basic practice shows us. But mindfulness doesn’t stop with formal meditation. It helps us relate with all the details of our lives. It helps us see and hear and smell without closing our eyes or our ears or our noses. It’s a lifetime’s journey to relate honestly to the immediacy of our experience and to respect ourselves enough not to judge it. As we become more wholehearted in this ...

Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy, and our ignorance. We don’t act on them; we just see them. Without mindfulness, we don’t see them and they proliferate.

THE DHARMA—the Buddha’s teaching—is about letting go of the story line and opening to what is: to the people in our life, to the situations we’re in, to our thoughts, to our emotions. We have a certain life, and whatever life we’re in is a vehicle for waking up.

“The everyday practice is simply to develop complete acceptance of all situations, emotions, and people.”