The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

by Pema Chödrön

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way. One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ourselves, because, for some reason or other, we don’t feel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way. Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

The interesting thing is that at first he didn’t talk about the unconditional; he didn’t talk about basic goodness, clarity, space, bliss, wonder, or openness. In the first teaching of the Buddha—the teachings on the four noble truths—he talked about suffering. I’ve always experienced these teachings as a tremendous affirmation that there is no need to resist being fully alive in this world, that we are in fact part of the web. All of life is interconnected. If something lives, it has life force, the quality of which is energy, a sense of spiritedness.

It’s very curious that because we as human beings have consciousness, we are also subject to a little twist where we resist life’s energies.

Why do we resist our energy? Why do we resist the life force that flows through us? The first noble truth says that if you are alive, if you have a heart, if you can love, if you

can be compassionate, if you can realize the life energy that makes everything change and move and grow and die, then you won’t have any resentment or resistance. The first noble truth says simply that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort.

We don’t even have to call it suffering anymore, we don’t even have to call it discomfort. It’s simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentlenes...

The first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We do that, and there’s no reason to resist it. If we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.

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

In my case, worrying about things that are going to happen is very unpleasant; it’s an addiction. It’s also unpleasant to get drunk again if you’re an alcoholic, or to have to keep shooting up if you’re a drug addict, or to keep eating if you have overeating addiction, or whatever it is. All these things are very strange. We all know what addiction is; we are primarily addicted to ME.

The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering

is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the path quality of that, the magic instruction that we have all received, the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.”

You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.

It’s as if, curiously enough, instead of sitting still in the middle of the fire, we have developed this self-created device for fanning it, keeping it going.

Then you let go and come back to that original fluttering feeling that might be very edgy but is basically the wind, the fire, the earth, the water.

I’m not talking about turning a hurricane into a calm day. I’m talking about realizing hurricane-ness, or, if it’s a calm day, calmness. I’m not talking about turning a forest fire into a cozy fire in the fireplace or something that’s under your cooking pot that heats your stew. I’m saying that when there’s a forest fire, don’t resist that kind of power—that’s you. When it’s warm and cozy, don’t resist that or nest in it. I’m not saying turn an earthquake into a garden of flowers. When there’s an earthquake, let the ground tremble and rip apart, and when it’s a rich garden with flowers, let that be also. I’m talking about not resisting, not grasping, not getting caught in hope and in fear, in good and in bad, but actually living completely.

The essence of the fourth noble truth is the eightfold path. Everything we do—our discipline, effort, meditation, livelihood, and every single thing that we do from the moment we’re born until the moment we die—we can use to help...

For me to do what usually would be called strict practice is still pretty relaxed, because I do it in a relaxed way. So strict practice is good for me.

In a poem in First Thought, Best Thought, Trungpa Rinpoche says something like, “Buddhism doesn’t tell you what is false and what is true, but it encourages you to find out for yourself.”

The humor and the beauty of practice is that going from one extreme to another is not considered to be an obstacle; sometimes we’re like a drill sergeant, sometimes we’re like mashed potatoes.

Basically, once we have some sort of joyful curiosity about the whole thing, it’s simply all information, gathering the information we need to find our own balance.

First of all, don’t regard these nine ways as linear, even though the last one seems to have more of a fruition quality than some of the others.

You could say these are instructions on how to find out what is the natural state.

What is balance? What is a sense of equanimity? We’d all like to know that. The basic guideline is to see what’s too tight for you and what’s too loose for you, and you’ll discover it.

These nine ways have funny names; they all sound the same with a little bit of difference. The first one is called resting, the second one is called continuously resting, the third one is called naively resting, the fourth one is called thoroughly resting, and so on.

The first one is “resting the mind.”

You put the main part of your attention, the main part of your mindfulness, onto the breath as it goes out. At the beginning of each session, there’s some sense of simplifying down to just that breath.

In the second instruction, “continually resting,” you are encouraged to prolong that sense of being fully with the breath. Sometimes it could be sort of a one-shot deal, and then the rest could be softer. But sometimes it happens naturally that you can elongate that sense of feeling the breath as it goes out, that sense of being fully with the breath.

The instruction for continuously resting is to train yourself not to be distracted by every little thing,

So the first instruction is something you can do, and the second one is something that tends to be an attitude and an experience that evolves: you are not drawn off by every sound, not distracted by every sight, not completely captured by every movement of your mind. You are able to prolong t...

The third one is “naively resting,” sometimes called “l...

a childlike attitude toward your practice, keepin...

It says: when your mind wanders off, without making any big deal whatsoe...

Usually we don’t just simply come back. Either we don’t even notice that we’re thinking and then we come back, or we’re very militant and judgmental. So nai...

It’s very simple. The baby doesn’t say, “Oh, bad baby! I was thinking.” The baby just says “Food!” and comes back.

The fourth of the nine ways, is “thoroughly resting.” The instruction here is to let yourself settle down, let your mind calm down. If you then find there are no 3-D movies going on, then try to catch each flicker of thought, the tiniest flickers of thought. The example given is that sometimes your thought is like a little flea touching you on the nose and jumping off, whereas other times it’s like an elephant sitting on you.

The fifth one is called “taming the mind.” This has to do with the importance of a basic attitude of friendliness.

For the first time you might feel, “My goodness! There’s so much space, and it’s always been here.”

It’s important to realize that meditation doesn’t prefer the flea to the elephant, or vice versa. It is simply a process of seeing what is, noticing that, accepting that, and then going on with life, which, in terms of the technique, is coming back to the simplicity of nowness, the simplicity of the out-breath.

So taming teaches that meditation is developing a nonaggressive attitude to whatever occurs in your mind. It teaches that meditation is not considering yourself an obstacle to yourself; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Number six, “pacifying,” is further instruction on how to deal with negativity. Taming basically gave the view, which is so crucial, that meditation is cultivating nonaggression and a good relationship with ourselves. Pacifying acknowledges that when we’ve really committed ourselves to practice, when we have some passion for practice and we put our whole

self into it, a very curious thing always happens: we get fed up, we lose heart,...

It says, “First of all, recognize that a letdown feeling accompanies good practice, that this is the experience of someone who is very committed and has started on a journey, and pacify yourself. When that happens, see that there’s some humor in it, and just talk to yourself, encourage yourself.” You can say things like, “Oh! Here it comes again. I thought I had gotten rid of this one, but here it is. Oh, my goodness! I had never experienced this, but this is just what she was talking about.” You can actually talk to yourself about how precious our human life is and how uncertain the length of it is, and realize that it’s a rare and precious opportunity to be able to make friends with yourself so completely and thoroughly.

So pacifying is realizing the human condition with a lot of heart and a lot of sympathy, and appreciating the rareness and preciousness of being able to practice and make friends with yourself.

“Thoroughly pacifying,” number seven, gives specific instructions about the obstacles and antidotes. It talks about passion, aggression, and ignorance, which we consider to be obstacles to practice. It says that if you are experiencing extreme aggression in your practice, first you can take that sense of fresh start, and then you can emphasize the airy, windy, fresh quality of your breath.

If it’s passion or lust that has taken hold of you—you can’t stop thinking about that person or that thing that you want so much—then the instruction, interestingly enough, is to flash back to your sense of body, emphasize your posture. The antidote to being completely caught by lust and passion, wanting so much that it hurts, is your posture.

Come into your body completely to ground yourself.

The antidote for ignorance or drowsiness is connecting with spaciousness, the opposite of the antidote for passion, which is connecting with sense of body.

You connect with a sense of big space to wake yourself up, brighten things up. Rather than having your eyes somewhat lowered, you can raise your gaze, but without starting to look around.

Number eight, “one-pointedness,” has two parts, with the main emphasis on this notion of fresh start.