Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

by Pema Chödrön

loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

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

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

In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure about who we are, or who anyone else is, either.

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.

What I mean by that is working with your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff. Then when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having worked with loving-kindness for yourself.

We can thank others, but we should give up all hope of getting thanked in return. Simply keep the door open without expectations.

The opposite of patience is aggression—the desire to jump and move, to push against our lives, to try to fill up space. The journey of patience involves relaxing, opening to what’s happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.

When we can recognize our own confusion with compassion, we can extend that compassion to others who are equally confused. In this step of widening the circle of compassion lies the magic of bodhichitta training.

BE GRATEFUL to everyone” is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected. Through doing that, we also make peace with the people we dislike.