Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

by Pema Chödrön

The most basic of these is sitting meditation, which allows us to become familiar with the groundlessness and spaciousness of our nature. Another key practice is mind training (lojong in Tibetan), our inheritance from the eleventh-century Buddhist master Atisha Dipankara. Mind training includes two elements: sending-and-taking practice (tonglen in Tibetan), in which we take in pain and send out pleasure, and slogan practice, in which we use pithy slogans to reverse our habitual attitude of self-absorption. These methods instruct us in using what might seem like our greatest obstacles—anger, resentment, fear, jealousy—as fuel for awakening.

The basis for all these practices is the cultivation of maitri, an unconditional loving-kindness with ourselves that says, “Start where you are.”

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It’s also what makes us afraid.

Staying is how we get the hang of gently catching ourselves when we’re about to let resentment harden into blame, righteousness, or alienation.

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge.

Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.

Awaken loving-kindness for yourself. “May I enjoy happiness and the root of happiness,” or use your own words. Awaken it for someone for whom you spontaneously feel unequivocal goodwill and tenderness, such as your mother, your child, your spouse, your dog. “May (name) enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” Awaken loving-kindness for someone slightly more distant, such as a friend or neighbor, again saying their name and aspiring for their happiness, using the same words. Awaken loving-kindness for someone about whom you feel neutral or indifferent, using the same words. Awaken loving-kindness for someone you find difficult or offensive. Let the loving-kindness grow big enough to include all the beings in the five steps above. (This step is called “dissolving the barriers.”) Say, “May I, my beloved, my friend, the neutral person, the difficult person all together enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.” Extend loving-kindness toward all beings throughout the universe. You can start close to home and widen the circle even bigger. “May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.”

But in wholeheartedly practicing and wholeheartedly following the path, this inconvenience is not an obstacle. It’s simply a certain texture of life, a certain energy of life.

And the inquiring mind of prajna—seeing things just as they are—is the key to this training, because without prajnaparamita, or unconditional bodhichitta, the other five activities can be used to give us the illusion of gaining ground.

By offering whatever we can—a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement—we are training in letting go.

There are so many ways to practice generosity. The main point isn’t so much what we give, but that we unlock our habit of clinging.

The journey of patience involves relaxing, opening to what’s happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.

Avoiding unnecessary activities means that we stop looking for something to entertain us or to save us.

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

Total fearlessness is full enlightenment—wholehearted, open-minded interaction with our world. Meanwhile we train in patiently moving in that direction. By learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear.

The truth is that things are always in transition. “Nothing to hold on to” is the root of happiness.

The “one” in “Drive all blames into one” is our tendency to protect ourselves: ego-clinging. When we drive all blames into this tendency by staying with our feelings and feeling them fully, the ongoing monolithic ME begins to lighten up, because it is fabricated with our opinions, our moods, and a lot of ephemeral—but at the same time vivid and convincing—stuff.

Mind training includes two elements: sending-and-taking practice (tonglen), in which we take in pain and send out pleasure, and slogan practice, in which we use pithy slogans to reverse our habitual attitude of self-absorption.

MAITRI (Skt.) “Unconditional loving-kindness.” A direct, unconditional relationship with all aspects of ourselves and others.