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

by Pema Chödrön

we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is,

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.

It’s about befriending who we are already.

So the ground of maitri is ourselves. We’re here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.

fruition of maitri—playfulness.

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.

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

called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of

our basic wonder...

The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

“Actually you were very good. You were very good right from the beginning, but I knew if I told you that you were good, you would stop trying.”

but everybody who has ever felt even a moment of arrogance knows that arrogance is just a cover-up for really feeling that you’re the worst horse, and always trying to prove

otherwise.

In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it’s actually the motivation. When you find yourself slumping, that’s the motivation to sit up, not out of self-denigration but actually out of pride in everything that occurs to you, pride in who you are just as you are, pride in the goodness or the fairnes...

They are good examples of people who never gave up on themselves and were not afraid to be themselves,

who therefore found their own genuine quality and their own true nature.

our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. It’s who we are right now, and that’s what we can ...

but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness.

The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.

Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom. Someone who is very angry also has a lot of energy; that energy is what’s so juicy about him or her.

That’s the reason people love that person. The idea isn’t to try to get rid of your anger, but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and ...

That means not judging yourself as a bad person, but also not bols...

It involves learning how, once you have fully acknowledged the feeling of anger and the knowledge of who you are and what you do, to let it go.

So whether it’s anger or craving or jealousy or fear or depression—whatever it might be—the notion is not to try to get rid of it, but to make friends with it.

meditation technique itself cultivates precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go—

qualities that are innate within us.

They are not something that we have to gain, but ...

could bring out, cultivate, rediscover...

the out-breath cultivates the precision of your mind,

cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.

But letting go is not so easy. Rather, it’s something that

happens as a result of working with precision and gentleness.

This is probably one of the most amazing tools that you could be given, the ability to just let things go, not to be caught in the grip of your own angry thoughts of passionate thoughts or worried thoughts or depressed thoughts.

means that nobody but yourself can tell you what to accept and what to reject.

what’s going on in our minds, follow the out-breath, label our thoughts “thinking,” come back to the present moment,