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

by Pema Chödrön

If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Inquisitiveness or curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open. Gentleness is a sense of goodheartedness toward ourselves. Precision is being able to see very clearly, not being afraid to see what’s really there, just as a scientist is not afraid to look into the microscope. Openness is being able to let go and to open.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.

“The sun has only one day. You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won’t have wasted precious time.” Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

now. The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.

we’re always standing at the center of the world in the middle of sacred space, and everything that comes into that circle and exists with us there has come to teach us what we need to know.

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.

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

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

The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

We can use our lives, in other words, to wake up to the fact that we’re not separate: the energy that causes us to live and be whole and awake and alive is just the energy that creates everything, and we’re part of that.

The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you’ve come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening. This is yet another opportunity to develop loving-kindness for yourself, which results in playfulness—learning to play like a raven in the wind.

What I’m saying here is that ego can use anything to re-create itself, whether it’s occurrence or spaciousness, whether it’s what we call samsara or what we call nirvana.