Practicing Peace in Times of War (6 page)

So the next time you feel yourself getting hooked, see if you can catch it. Can you feel yourself tightening? Can you feel yourself starting to erect protective barriers? Then pause and breathe with that un-settling energy. Somehow right there, in these moments that we’re given over and over, we can realize that the insecurity that we’re feeling has the potential of creating a new culture, one based on love and compassion rather than on fear and aggression. We can be part of creating a new culture for ourselves individually and for the world.

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You’re able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently, endless opportunities to dissolve the seeds of war where they originate—in the hearts and minds of individuals like you and me.

Resources

Heart Advice: Weekly Quotes from Pema Chödrön

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For information about meditation instruction or to find a practice center near you, please contact one of the following:

Shambhala International

1084 Tower Road

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Canada B3H 2Y5

phone: (902) 425-4275

fax: (902) 423-2750

website:
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Karmê Chöling

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Barnet, Vermont 05821

phone: (802) 633-2384

fax: (802) 633-3012

e-mail:
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Shambhala Mountain Center

4921 Country Road 68C

Red Feather Lakes, Colorado 80545

phone: (970) 881-2184

fax: (970) 881-2909

e-mail:
[email protected]

Gampo Abbey

Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia

Canada B0E 2P0

phone: (902) 224-2752

e-mail:
[email protected]

Naropa University is the only accredited, Buddhist-inspired university in North America. For more information, contact:

Naropa University

2130 Arapahoe Avenue

Boulder, Colorado 80302

phone: (303) 444-0202

e-mail:
[email protected]

website:
www.naropa.edu

Audio and video recordings of talks and seminars by Pema Chödrön are available from:

Great Path Tapes and Books

330 East Van Hoesen Boulevard

Portage, Michigan 49002

phone: (269) 384-4167

fax: (425) 940-8456

e-mail:
[email protected]

website:
www.pemachodrontapes.org

Kalapa Recordings

1084 Tower Road

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Canada B3H 2Y5

phone: (902) 420-1118, ext. 19

fax: (902) 423-2750

e-mail:
[email protected]

website:
www.shambhalamedia.org

Sounds True

413 S. Arthur Avenue

Lousville, CO 80027

phone: (800) 333-9185

website:
www.soundstrue.com

About the Author

P
EMA
C
HÖDRÖN
is an American Buddhist nun in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa, the renowned Tibetan meditation master. She is resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery in North America established for Westerners. She is the author of eight books including the best-selling
When Things Fall Apart
and
The Places That Scare You.

Books and Audio by Pema Chödrön

BOOKS

Always Maintain a Joyful Mind

Awakening Loving-Kindness

Comfortable with Uncertainty

No Time to Lose

The Places That Scare You

Practicing Peace in Times of War

Start Where You Are

When Things Fall Apart

The Wisdom of No Escape

AUDIO

Don’t Bite the Hook

Practicing Peace in Times of War: Four Talks

This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher

When Things Fall Apart

For more information please visit
www.shambhala.com
.

Excerpt from
Taking the Leap
by Pema Chödrön

eISBN  978-0-8348-2101-9

1

F
EEDING THE
R
IGHT
W
OLF

A
s human beings we have the potential to disentangle ourselves from old habits, and the potential to love and care about each other. We have the capacity to wake up and live consciously, but, you may have noticed, we also have a strong inclination to stay asleep. It’s as if we are always at a crossroad, continuously choosing which way to go. Moment by moment we can choose to go toward further clarity and happiness or toward confusion and pain.

In order to make this choice skillfully, many of us turn to spiritual practices of various kinds with the wish that our lives will lighten up and that we’ll find the strength to cope with our difficulties. Yet in these times it seems crucial that we also keep in mind the wider context in which we make choices about how to live: this is the context of our beloved earth and the rather rocky condition it’s in.

For many, spiritual practice represents a way to relax and a way to access peace of mind. We want to feel more calm, more focused; and with our frantic and stressful lives, who can blame us? Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to think bigger than that these days. If spiritual practice is relaxing, if it gives us some peace of mind, that’s great—but is this personal satisfaction helping us to address what’s happening in the world? The main question is, are we living in a way that adds further aggression and self-centeredness to the mix, or are we adding some much-needed sanity?

Many of us feel deeply concerned about the state of the world. I know how sincerely people wish for things to change and for beings everywhere to be free of suffering. But if we’re honest with ourselves, do we have any idea how to put this aspiration into practice when it comes to our own lives? Do we have any clarity about how our own words and actions may be causing suffering? And even if we do recognize that we’re making a mess of things, do we have a clue about how to stop? These have always been important questions, but they are especially so today. This is a time when disentangling ourselves is about more than our personal happiness. Working on ourselves and becoming more conscious about our own minds and emotions may be the only way for us to find solutions that address the welfare of all beings and the survival of the earth itself.

There was a story that was widely circulated a few days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that illustrates our dilemma. A Native American grandfather was speaking to his grandson about violence and cruelty in the world and how it comes about. He said it was as if two wolves were fighting in his heart. One wolf was vengeful and angry, and the other wolf was understanding and kind. The young man asked his grandfather which wolf would win the fight in his heart. And the grandfather answered, “The one that wins will be the one I choose to feed.”

So this is our challenge, the challenge for our spiritual practice and the challenge for the world—how can we train right now, not later, in feeding the right wolf? How can we call on our innate intelligence to see what helps and what hurts, what escalates aggression and what uncovers our good-heartedness? With the global economy in chaos and the environment of the planet at risk, with war raging and suffering escalating, it is time for each of us in our own lives to take the leap and do whatever we can to help turn things around. Even the slightest gesture toward feeding the right wolf will help. Now more than ever, we are all in this together.

Taking the leap involves making a commitment to ourselves and to the earth itself—making a commitment to let go of old grudges, to not avoid people and situations and emotions that make us feel uneasy, to not cling to our fears, our closed-mindedness, our hard-heartedness, our hesitation. Now is the time to develop trust in our basic goodness and the basic goodness of our sisters and brothers on this earth; a time to develop confidence in our ability to drop our old ways of staying stuck and to choose wisely. We could do that right here and right now.

In our everyday encounters, we can live in a way that will help us learn to do this. When we talk to someone we don’t like and don’t agree with—maybe a family member or a person at work—we tend to spend a great amount of energy sending anger their way. Yet our resentments and self-centeredness, as familiar as they are, are not our basic nature. We all have the natural ability to interrupt old habits. All of us know how healing it is to be kind, how transformative it is to love, what a relief it is to have old grudges drop away. With just a slight shift in perspective, we can realize that people strike out and say mean things for the same reasons we do. With a sense of humor we can see that our sisters and brothers, our partners, our children, our coworkers are driving us crazy the same way we drive other people crazy.