Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

by Pema Chödrön

Mahayana means the “greater vehicle,” the path that gradually leads us out of our cramped world of self-preoccupation into the greater world of fellowship with all human beings.

Bodhichitta is often presented in two aspects: absolute and relative. Absolute bodhichitta is our natural state, experienced as the basic goodness that links us to every other living being on the planet. It has many names: openness, ultimate truth, our true nature, soft spot, tender heart, or simply what is. It combines the qualities of compassion, unconditional openness, and keen intelligence. It is free from concepts, opinions, and dualistic notions of “self” and “other.”

Although absolute bodhichitta is our natural state, we are intimidated by its unconditional openness. Our heart feels so vulnerable and tender that we fabricate walls to protect it. It takes determined inner work even to see the walls, and a gentle approach to dismantling them. We don’t have to tear them down all at once or “go at them with a sledgehammer,” as Pema puts it. Learning to rest in openhearted basic goodness is a lifelong process.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves.

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.

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.

Refraining—not habitually acting out impulsively—has something to do with giving up the entertainment mentality. Through refraining, we see that there’s something between the arising of the craving—or the aggression or the loneliness or whatever it might be—and whatever action we take as a result. There’s something there in us that we don’t want to experience, and we never do experience, because we’re so quick to act. The practice of mindfulness and refraining is a way to get in touch with basic groundlessness—by noticing how we try to avoid it.

That intention is that we want to wake up, we want to ripen our compassion, and we want to ripen our ability to let go, we want to realize our connection with all beings.

Skandha mara has to do with how we try to recreate ourselves when things fall apart. We return to the solid ground of our self-concept as quickly as possible. Trungpa Rinpoche used to call this “nostalgia for samsara.” When things fall apart, instead of struggling to regain our concept of who we are, we can use it as an opportunity to be open and inquisitive about what has just happened and what will happen next. That is how to turn this arrow into a flower.

the meantime, we discover that we would rather feel fully present to our lives than be off trying to make everything solid and secure by engaging our fantasies or our addictive patterns.

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

Egolessness means that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes. We

Either we accept our fixed versions of reality, or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha’s opinion, to train in staying open and curious—to train in dissolving the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world—is the best use of our human lives.

Out of nowhere, we stop struggling and relax. We see our story line, drop it, and come back to the freshness of the present moment.

That is why it’s so good to meditate every single day and continue to make friends with our hopes and fears again and again. This sows the seeds that enable us to be more awake in the midst of everyday chaos.

First, we like pleasure; we are attached to it. Conversely, we don’t like pain. Second, we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. We dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don’t like losing what we have. According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites—pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace, and gain and loss—is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara. We

This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives—including practice—this goal-oriented, we’re-going-to-do-it-or-else attitude,

the world’s greatest killjoy. There’s no sense of appreciation because we’re so solemn about everything. In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed. So lighten up. Don’t make such a big deal.

When your aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, payi...

We are so locked into this sense of burden—Big Deal Joy and Big Deal Unhappiness—that it’s sometimes helpful just to change the pattern.