Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

by Pema Chödrön

keep opening our hearts to suffering without shutting down.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

suffering ceases when we let go of trying to maintain the huge ME at any cost.

we can use everything we do to help us to realize that we’re part of the energy that creates everything.

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.

“what does this really mean?”

Ask this question frequently

Being on the spot, even if it hurts, is preferable to avoiding.

This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky—that’s called liberation.

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. Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh. For a warrior-in-training, egolessness is a cause of joy rather than a cause of fear.

OPENNESS doesn’t come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.

We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.

we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach is to get to know them intimately, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren’t all that solid.

it’s sometimes helpful just to change the pattern. Anything out of the ordinary will help.

truth of impermanence.

You’re cultivating innate fundamental wakefulness by aspiring to let go of the habitual way you proceed and doing something different. You’re the only one who can do this.

A BIG, BURLY SAMURAI comes to a Zen master and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.” The Zen master looks him in the face and says, “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?” Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and raises it to cut off the master’s head. The Zen master says, “That’s hell.” Instantly, the samurai understands that he has just created his own hell—black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight. The Zen master says, “That’s heaven.”

Try fully experiencing whatever you’ve been resisting—without exiting in your habitual ways. Become inquisitive about your habits.

What have I been resisting?

“May I enjoy loving-kindness.” Then we include a loved one in the aspiration: “May you enjoy loving-kindness.” We then extend our wish to all sentient beings: “May all beings enjoy loving-kindness.”

When we extend attention and appreciation toward our environment and other people, our experience of joy expands even further.

thinking bigger than right and wrong.

There’s no problem with being where you are right now.

fear has to do with wanting to protect your heart:

As unwanted feelings and emotions arise, you actually breathe them in and connect with what all humans feel.

If you can know it in yourself, you can know it in everyone.

if you feel some sense of delight—if you connect with what for you is inspiring, opening, relieving, relaxing—you breathe it out, you give it away, you send it out to everyone

ignorance become our wealth.

Start now, just as you are.

Fear is a natural reaction of moving closer to the truth.

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.