lotusinthemud

growing up

To take refuge in the Buddha is to take refuge in someone who let go of holding back just as you can do. To take refuge in the dharma is to take refuge in all the teachings that encourage you and nurture your inherent ability to let go of holding back. And to take refuge in the sangha is to take refuge in the community of people who share this longing to let go and open rather than shield themselves.

The support that we give each other as practitioners is not the usual kind of samsaric support in which we all join the same team and complain about someone else. It's more that you're on your own, completely alone, but it's helpful to know that there are forty other people who are also going through this all by themselves. That's very supportive and encouraging. Fundamentally, even though other people can give you support, you do it yourself, and that's how you grow up in this process, rather than becoming more dependent.

~ Pema Chödrön

pema chödrön’s teaching schedule 2008

May 29 - June 1, 2008

Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York

“All In The Same Boat”

........................................................

June 6 - 8 Columbia University

International School of Conflict Resolution in New York City

“Practicing Peace in Times of War”

::more details here

befriending who we are already

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. 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.

~ Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness

renouncing closing down and shutting off from life

Renunciation does not have to be regarded as negative. I was taught that it has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. You could say that renunciation is the same thing as opening to the teachings of the present moment.... Renunciation is realizing that our nostalgia for wanting to stay in a protected, limited, petty world is insane. Once you begin to get the feeling of how big the world is and how vast our potential for experiencing life is, then you really begin to understand renunciation. When we sit in meditation, we feel our breath as it goes out, and we have some sense of willingness just to be open to the present moment. Then our minds wander off into all kinds of stories and fabrications and manufactured realities, and we say to ourselves, "It's thinking." We say that with a lot of gentleness and a lot of precision. Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the outbreath, thats fundamental renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back

. ~ Pema Chodron, Tricycle, The Buddhist Review

oprah talks to pema chödrön

There's an excellent interview ::here, including a link to an audio. I do like being able to hear Pema's voice!
An excerpt:

Oprah Talks to Pema Chödrön

.

Listen in on Pema and Oprah's conversation.

.........
Pema: Yeah, I mean the problem is, I think for people is that we have so little tolerance for uncomfortable feelings. I'm not even talking about unpleasant outer circumstances but for that feeling in your stomach that—or heart—that I don't want this to be happening.

Oprah: Right.

Pema: And if somehow you could touch the rawness of the experience, touch the heart of the rawness of the experience—

Oprah: Meaning don't run from it. Don't run from it.

Pema: Don't run from it, yeah.

Oprah: What should you be saying to yourself, when you say touch the rawness and feel? Feel what? I'm already feeling, I'm sure people are thinking, I'm feeling pain, I'm feeling discomfort, I'm feeling I don't want to have to deal with this.

Pema: Well let me give you what I think is—for—seems to be for people the most accessible thing is that if you can—for instance, just go to your body at that point—

Oprah: Um hm.

Pema: ̬and connect with the sensation.

Oprah: And the sensation—

Pema: Of what it feels like, which is always—feels really bad, and it's usually in the throat or the heart or the solar plexus. And it feels like a tightening. If you can stay with that feeling and breathe very deeply in and very deeply out, and say to yourself, millions of people all over the world share this kind of fear, discomfort what—I don't even have to call it anything—they share this not wanting things to be this way. And it's my link with humanity. And why—and it gives birth to a chain reaction which causes people to strike out and hurt other people or self-destruct. In other words, not staying with the feeling cuts you off from your compassion for others, your empathy for others, and also from the largeness of your own heart and mind. So somehow it seems to me with the people that I've been working with, if they can connect with the idea that this moment in time is shared by—it's sort of a shared experience all over the world. And not staying with it gives birth to a lot of pain and a lot of destruction that we see in the world today. And so then what do you do? How do you stay with it? And I think the most straightforward way is to breathe in very deeply, try to connect with the feeling. And then just relax on the out breath. And breathe in very deeply and connect with the feeling, and breathe out on the out breath. And I call it compassionate abiding. Because it's staying with yourself when for your whole lifetime you've always run away at that point.
::more

we get blocked

The river flows rapidly down the mountain, and then all of a sudden it gets blocked with big boulders and a lot of trees. The water can't go any farther, even though it has tremendous force and forward energy. It just gets blocked there. That's what happens with us, too; we get blocked like that. Letting go at the end of the out-breath, letting the thoughts go, is like moving one of those boulders away so that the water can keep flowing, so that our energy and our life force can keep evolving and going forward. We don't, out of fear of the unknown, have to put up these blocks, these dams, that basically say no to life and to feeling life.

~ Pema Chodron, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. I, #1

we ebb and flow like the tides

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 dont even have to call it discomfort. It's simply coming to know the fireyness 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 gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth. Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. The four elements take on different qualities; they're like magicians. Sometimes they manifest in one form and sometimes in another.... 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.

~ Pema Chodron, Awakening Loving-Kindness

pema chodron on idiot compassion

This fell, serendipitously, into my computer via another search this morning. As ever, Pema puts her finger right on what I need to hear:

Idiot compassion is a great expression, which was actually coined by Trungpa Rinpoche. It refers to something we all do a lot of and call it compassion. In some ways, it's whats called enabling. It's the general tendency to give people what they want because you can't bear to see them suffering. Basically, you're not giving them what they need. You're trying to get away from your feeling of I can't bear to see them suffering. In other words, you're doing it for yourself. You're not really doing it for them.

When you get clear on this kind of thing, setting good boundaries and so forth, you know that if someone is violent, for instance, and is being violent towards you — to use that as the example — it's not the compassionate thing to keep allowing that to happen, allowing someone to keep being able to feed their violence and their aggression. So of course, they're going to freak out and be extremely upset. And it will be quite difficult for you to go through the process of actually leaving the situation. But that's the compassionate thing to do.

It's the compassionate thing to do for yourself, because you're part of that dynamic, and before you always stayed. So now you're going to do something frightening, groundless, and quite different. But it's the compassionate thing to do for yourself, rather than stay in a demeaning, destructive, abusive relationship.

And it's the most compassionate thing you can do for them too. They will certainly not thank you for it, and they will certainly not be glad. They'll go through a lot. But if there's any chance for them to wake up or start to work on their side of the problem, their abusive behavior or whatever it might be, that's the only chance, is for you to actually draw the line and get out of there.

We all know a lot of stories of people who had to hit that kind of bottom, where the people that they loved stopped giving them the wrong kind of compassion and just walked out. Then sometimes that wakes a person up and they start to do what they need to do.

::link

crossing the river

When we study Buddhism, we learn about the view and the meditation as supports for encouraging us to let go of ego and just be with things as they are.... These supports are often likened to a raft. You need the raft to cross the river, to get to the other side; when you get over there, you leave the raft behind. Thats an interesting image, but in experience its more like the raft gives out on you in the middle of the river and you never really get to solid ground.

~ Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are

how are we ever going to change anything?

This leads to a bigger underlying issue for all of us: How are we ever going to change anything? How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? In a potentially violent encounter, how do I communicate so that neither of us becomes increasingly furious and aggressive? How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen?  

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.

~ Pema Chodron