Comfortable With Uncertainty (14 page)

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Authors: Pema Chodron

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The point is that we will bring our habitual ways of gluing ourselves together right into bodhichitta practice, right into the training in
un
gluing. But because of our practice, we can start to look compassionately at what we do. What is happening to us psychologically? Do we feel inadequate? Do we continue to believe in our same old dramas? Are we using spirituality to bypass what scares us? It’s easy not to see where we are still seeking ground in the same old ways. We have to gradually develop the confidence that it is liberating to let go. Continually we train in maitri. It takes time to develop enthusiasm for how remaining open really feels.

107

Compassionate Inquiry

W
HEN OUR ATTITUDE
toward fear becomes more welcoming and inquisitive, a fundamental shift occurs. Instead of spending our lives tensing up, we learn that we can connect with the freshness of the moment and relax.

The practice is compassionate inquiry into our moods, our emotions, our thoughts. Compassionate inquiry into our reactions and strategies is fundamental to the process of awakening. We are encouraged to be curious about the neurosis that’s bound to kick in when our coping mechanisms start falling apart. This is how we get to the place where we stop believing in our personal myths, the place where we are not always divided against ourselves, always resisting our own energy. This is how we learn to abide in basic goodness.

It’s an ongoing practice. From the instant we begin training as a bodhisattva until we completely trust the freedom of our unconditional, unbiased mind, we are surrendering moment by moment to whatever is happening in this very instant of time. With precision and gentleness, we surrender our cherished ways of regarding ourselves and others, our cherished ways of holding it all together, our cherished ways of blocking our tender heart. In the process of doing this again and again over many challenging and inspiring years, we develop an appetite for groundlessness.

108

Slogan: “Always maintain only a joyful mind”

A
LWAYS MAINTAIN
only a joyful mind” might sound like an impossible aspiration. As one man said to me, “Always is a very long time.” Yet as we train in unblocking our hearts, we’ll find that every moment contains the free-flowing openness and warmth that characterize unlimited joy.

This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don’t do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle and nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get the flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.

But as we use the bodhichitta practices to train, we may come to the point where we see the magic of the present moment; we may gradually wake up to the truth that we have always been warriors living in a sacred world. This is the ongoing experience of limitless joy. We won’t always experience this, it’s true. But year by year it becomes more and more accessible.

DEDICATION OF MERIT

By this merit, may all attain omniscience,

May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing,

From the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death,

From the ocean of samsara, may I free all beings.

By the confidence of the golden sun of the great east,

May the lotus garden of the Rigden’s wisdom bloom.

May the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled.

May all beings enjoy profound brilliant glory.

GLOSSARY

ASPIRATION PRACTICE
A practice in which we aspire to expand the four limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity by extending them to others.

BODHICHITTA
(Skt.) The awakened heart of loving-kindness and compassion.
Absolute bodhichitta
is our natural state, experienced as the basic goodness that links us to every other living being. It has been defined as 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.”
Relative bodhichitta
is the courage to realize this tender openhearted quality by tapping into our capacity to love and care for others.

B
UDDHA
(Skt.) “Awakened one.” The founder of Buddhism, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama, born in the sixth century BCE in what is now Nepal. He left his palace at the age of twenty-nine and set out on a spiritual journey that resulted in his attaining enlightenment and becoming the Buddha. He devoted the rest of his life to showing others how to experience this awakening and liberation from suffering. We too are buddhas. We are the awakened ones—the ones who continually leap, who continually open, who continually go forward.

DHARMA
(Skt.) “Cosmic law.” The teachings of the Buddha, the truth of what is.

THE EIGHT WORDLY DHARMAS
These are four pairs of opposites—four things that we like and become attached to and four things that we don’t like and try to avoid. The eight worldly dharmas are pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace, gain and loss. The basic message is that when we are caught up in the eight worldly dharmas, we suffer.

THE FOUR LIMITLESS QUALITIES
Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. They are called limitless because our capacity to experience and extend them has no limit.

LOJONG
(Tib.) “Mind training,” our inheritance from the eleventh-century Buddhist master Atisha Dipankara. Mind training includes two elements: sending-and-taking practice (tonglen), 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. These methods instruct us in using what might seem like our greatest obstacles—anger, resentment, fear, jealousy—as fuel for awakening.

MAITRI
(Skt.) “Unconditional loving-kindness.” A direct, unconditional relationship with all aspects of ourselves and others. Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

PARAMITAS
(Skt.) “That which has reached the other shore.” These are six qualities that take us beyond our habitual ways of seeking solidity and security. The six paramitas are generosity, patience, discipline, exertion, meditation, and prajna, or wisdom.

PRAJNA
(Skt.) “Wisdom.” As the sixth paramita, prajna is the highest form of knowledge, the wisdom that experiences reality directly, without concept.

SAMSARA
(Skt.) “Journeying.” The vicious cycle of suffering that results from the mistaken belief in the solidity and permanence of self and other.

THE THREE JEWELS
The Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha.

TONGLEN
(Tib.) “Sending and receiving.” Also described as exchanging self for other. In the practice of tonglen, we breathe in whatever feels bad and send out whatever feels good.

SANGHA
(Skt.) “Crowd, host.” The Buddhist community. All others on the path of the bodhisattva-warrior.

WARRIOR-BODHISATTVA
One who aspires to act from the awakened heart of bodhichitta for the benefit of others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B
OOKS FROM WHICH
T
HESE
T
EACHINGS
W
ERE
E
XCERPTED OR
A
DAPTED

Chödrön, Pema.
The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of
Loving-Kindness
. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991; London: Element, 2005.

______.
Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate
Living
. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994; London: Element, 2005.

______.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult
Times
. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996; London: Element, 2005.

______.
The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness
in Difficult Times
. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001; London: Element, 2005.

G
ENERAL
T
EACHINGS ON
B
ODHICHITTA

Patrul Rinpoche.
The Words of My Perfect Teacher.
Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1998, pp. 195–261.

Shantideva.
The Way of the Bodhisattva.
Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.

______.
A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.
Translated by Stephen Batchelor. Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1998.

Sogyal Rinpoche.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Edited by Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

Trungpa, Chögyam.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987, pp. 167–216.

______.
The Myth of Freedom.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988, pp. 103–126.

T
HE
F
OUR
L
IMITLESS
Q
UALITIES

Kamalashila.
Meditation: The Buddhist Way of Tranquility
and Insight.
Glasgow: Windhorse, 1992, pp. 23–32, 192–206.

Longchenpa.
Kindly Bent to Ease Us.
Translated by H. V. Guenther. Berkeley, Calif.: Dharma Publications, 1975–76, pp. 106–122.

Patrul Rinpoche.
The Words of My Perfect Teacher.
Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1998, pp. 195–217.

Salzberg, Sharon.
Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of
Happiness.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995.

Thich Nhat Hanh.
Teachings on Love
. Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press, 1997.

T
HE
L
OJONG
S
LOGANS

Chödrön, Pema.
Always Maintain a Joyful Mind: And
Other Lojong Teachings on Awakening Compassion and Fearlessness.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2007.

Chödrön, Pema.
The Compassion Box: Book, CD, and
Card Deck.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005.

Chödrön, Pema.
Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.

Khyentse, Dilgo.
Enlightened Courage
. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1993.

Kongtrul, Jamgon.
The Great Path of Awakening: A Commentary on the Mahayana Teaching of the Seven Points of Mind Training
. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987.

Trungpa, Chögyam.
Training the Mind and Cultivating
Loving-Kindness.
Edited by Judith L. Lief. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1993.

Wallace, Alan B.
A Passage from Solitude: Training the
Mind in a Life Embracing the World.
Edited by Zara Houshmand. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1992.

T
ONGLEN
P
RACTICE

Chödron, Pema.
Tonglen: The Path of Transformation.
Edited by Tingdzin Ötro. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Vajradhatu Publications, 2000.

Sogyal Rinpoche.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Edited by Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, pp. 201–208.

A
DDITIONAL
R
EADING