When things fall apart

Heart advice for difficult times

by Pema Chodron (kam's notes from the book)

Listening to talks about the dharma, or the teachings of Buddha or practicing meditation is nothing other than studying ourselves. Whether we’re eating or working or meditating or listening or talking, the reason that we’re here in this world at all is to study ourselves.

Only in an open, non-judgemental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we’re not caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

We cannot run our old story lines and be fully present at the same time.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

It was all about letting go of everything.

Nevertheless, when the bottom falls out and we can’t find anything to grasp, it hurts a lot.

When we are nailed to the truth, we suffer.

Things are always in transition from one state to another. The off-centre, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.

Everyday we could think about the aggression in the world. Everyday we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, “Am I going to add to this aggression in the world?” We can ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?

For practitioners or spiritual warriors-people who have a certain hunger for what is true-feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealously and fear, instead of being bad news are actually very clear moments that teach us where we are holding back.

This very moment is our perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.

Those events and people in our lives who trigger our unresolved issues could be regarded as good news.

The first thing that happens in meditation is that we start to see what’s happening. Even though we still run away and we still indulge, we see clearly what we are doing.

We’re being with our experience, whatever it is.

Open your minds and relax.

We were encouraged to relax more completely with our environment and to appreciate the world around us and the ordinary truth that takes place in every moment.

Zen teachers talk about meditation as the willingness to die over and over again.

The word Sanskrit word Maitri means loving-kindness or unconditional friendliness.

Meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking or choosing.

The point is not to get rid of thoughts but to see their true nature. They are like an illusion- not really all that solid.

We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

The people who give themselves such a hard time come in all ages, shapes and colours.  The thing they have in common is that they have no loving kindness for themselves. The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

The painful thing is that when we buy into disapproval, we are practicing disapproval. The more we do it the stronger it becomes.

How sad is it that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others.

Awakening has three parts:

1  Awakening from the dream of ordinary sleep

2  Awakening at death from the dream of life

3  Awakening into full enlightenment

A lot happens to a mountain. It hails, and the winds come up, and it rains and maybe snows. The sun gets very hot, clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash, and other people clean it up. Many things come and go on this mountain, but it just sits there. When we’ve seen ourselves completely, there’s a stillness of the body that is like a mountain. We no longer get jumpy and have to scratch our noses, pull our ears, punch somebody, go running from the room or drink ourselves into oblivion.

Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen.

The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of the situation.

Without giving up hope-that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be-we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone “out there” is to blame for our pain-one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking.

We sometimes think that Dharma is something outside of ourselves-something to believe in, something to measure up to. However, Dharma isn’t a belief; it isn’t dogma. It is a total appreciation of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. Dharma gives us nothing to hold onto at all.

Renunciation is renunciation of the hope that our experiences could be different, renunciation of the hope that we could be better. Renunciation is a teaching to inspire us to investigate what’s happening every time we grab something because we can’t stand to face what’s coming. We’ve done it so many times that we know that grasping at this hope is a source of misery that makes a short-term pleasure a long-term hell.

"Life is like getting into a boat that’s about to sail out to sea and sink."

                                                                         Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.

One of the classic Buddhist teachings is known as the eight worldly dharmas. These are four pairs of opposites, four things that we like and become attached to-pleasure, gain, praise and fame and four things that we don’t like and try to avoid-pain, loss, blame and disgrace. The basic message is that when we are caught up in the eight worldly dharmas, we suffer. Becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara. Our reactions to these four pairs of opposites causes our pain.

In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to make it work out one way or the other. Years and years of going to the left or the right, going to yes or no, going to right or wrong has never really changed anything.

We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.

We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

We are fundamentally alone in our reality, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. There is no certainty about anything.

We don’t even seek the companionship of our own constant conversation with ourselves about how it is or how it isn’t, whether it should or whether it shouldn’t, whether it can or whether it can’t.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be or who we think other people think we want to be or ought be.

There are three truths-traditionally called three marks of our existence: impermanence, suffering and egolessness.

Impermanence is meeting becoming parting, pleasure becoming pain, wretchedness becoming inspiration, new things becoming old things, day becoming night, dark becoming light, the continual change of the four seasons, babies becoming children, children becoming teenagers, teenagers becoming adults, adults becoming old people, and somewhere along the way dropping dead. Impermanence is bittersweet, its the principle of harmony. The pendulum is the symbol of impermanence and duality.

With only inspiration we become arrogant and think that the world is wonderful. With only wretchedness we lose our vision and become humbled.

The acknowledgement of egolessness, our natural state, is like regaining eyesight after having been blind or regaining hearing after having been deaf. Egolessness is the same thing as Buddha nature, our unconditional being. Its what we always have and never really lose. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well-being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.

When impermanence presents itself in our lives, we can recognise it as impermanence. When someone dies or is born, something is stolen or lost, something wears out or is bought, our relationship ends or begins, something doesn’t work properly or begins to work for the first time, we can recognise all these as some of the countless examples of momentary impermanence. Then we recognise our reaction to impermanence. Usually we just react habitually to events in out lives. We become resentful or delighted, excited or disappointed.

When suffering arises in our lives, we can recognise it as suffering. When we get what we don’t want, when we don’t get what we want, when we become ill, when we’re getting old, when we are dying-when we see any of these in our lives, we can recognise suffering as suffering.

When egolessness arises, we can recognise it as egolessness-a fresh moment, a clear perception of a smell or a sight or a sound, a feeling of opening to emotions or thoughts rather than closing off into our narrow limited selves.

We also experience egolessness when we don’t know what’s happening, when we’ve lost our reference point, when we get a shock and our mind is stopped.

Often peace is taught as the fourth mark of existence. This peace isn’t peace that’s the opposite of war. It’s well-being that comes when we see the infinite pairs of opposites as complimentary. If there is beauty, there must be ugliness. If there is wisdom, there is ignorance.

What we call obstacles are really the world and our entire experience teaching us we’re stuck. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from an obstacle, we find the same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully what we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

The four maras (nature of obstacles/selfish temptations):

1  devapura mara-Seeking pleasure or comfort or certainty or security/avoiding pain

2  skandha mara-How we always try to recreate ourselves after our world has shattered

    around us, try to get some ground back, try to be who we think we are. Just as we

    are on the verge of really understanding something, allowing our heart to truly open,

    just as we have the opportunity to see clearly with wisdom mind, to awaken our

    intelligence and connect with fundamental Buddha nature, we fall back and revert to

    old habitual patterns of thinking.

3  Klesha mara-How we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. We begin to

    weave our thoughts into a story line, which gives rise to bigger emotions. We won’t let

    go.

4  Yama mara-Fear of death or challenges from and in life

Instead of trying to avoid uneasiness and off-centeredness by running away, we could begin to open our hearts to the human dilemma that causes so much misery in this world.

With enormous gentleness and clarity, we could look at how weak we are.

When everything falls apart and we feel uncertainty, disappointment, shock, embarrassment, what’s left is a mind that is clear, unbiased and fresh. But we don’t see that. Instead, we feel the queasiness and uncertainty of being in no-man’s land and enlarge the feeling and march it down the street with banners that proclaim how bad everything is. We knock on every door asking people to sign petitions until there is a whole army of people who agree with us that everything is wrong. We could just sit with the emotional energy and let it pass. There’s no need to spread blame and self-justification. Instead, we throw kerosene on the emotion so it will feel more real.

Without the maras (selfish temptations), would Buddhas become awakened or enlightened? All the maras point the way to being completely awake and alive by letting go, by letting ourselves die moment after moment, at the end of each out breath. When we wake-up, we can live fully without seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, without re-creating ourselves when we fall apart. We can let ourselves feel our emotions to keep ourselves ignorant or dumb. We can give up being perfect and experience each moment to its fullest.

“Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha”

                                                                                    Zen master Bodhidharma

Bodhidarma’s big discovery was that by looking into our own heart, we find the awakened Buddha, the completely unclouded experience of how things are. Just like Bodhidarma, we each have to find out for ourselves what is true.

All the wisdom about how we cause ourselves to suffer and all the wisdom about how joyful and vast and uncomplicated our true nature is-these two things, the understanding of what we might call neurosis and the wisdom of unconditioned, unbiased truth-can only be found in our own experience.

We begin to find that, to the degree that there is bravery in ourselves-the willingness to look, to point directly at our own hearts-and to the degree that there is kindness towards ourselves, there is confidence that we can actually forget ourselves and open to the world.

It’s difficult to hear that what we reject out there is what we reject in ourselves and what we reject in ourselves is what we reject out there.

When it hurts so bad, it’s because I am hanging on so tight. What it implies is that pain comes from holding on so tight to having our own way and that one of the main exits we take when we find ourselves in an unwanted situation or an unwanted place, is to blame.

If what we are feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

Instead of making the other right or wrong, or bottling up right or wrong in ourselves, there’s a middle way, a very powerful middle way. We could see it as sitting on the razor’s edge, not falling off to the right or the left. This middle way involves not hanging on to our version so tightly. Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we’re not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong. Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person. Trying to find absolute rights and wrongs is a trick we play on ourselves to feel secure and comfortable.

Bodhichitta means “noble or awakened heart”

We awaken this Bodhichitta, this tenderness for life, when we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion. No matter how committed we are to unkindness, selfishness, or greed, the genuine heart of Bodhichitta cannot be lost.

There are two kinds of selfish people: the unwise and the wise. Unwise selfish people think only of themselves, and the result is confusion and pain. Wise selfish people know that the best thing they can do for themselves is to be there for others. As a result, they experience joy.

The out-breath is a metaphor for opening our whole being.

Bodhichitta is available in moments of caring for things, when we clean our glasses or brush our hair. It’s available in moments of appreciation, when we notice the blue sky or pause and listen to the rain. It is available in moments of gratitude, when we recall a kindness or recognise another person’s courage. It is available in music and dance, in art, and in poetry. Whenever we connect with joy, whenever we drop our resentment and complaint, in those moments Bodhichitta is here.

The six Paramitas (paramita means “going to the other shore”)

These actions are like a raft that carries us across the ocean of samsara.

The paramitas are also called transcendent actions because they are based on going beyond the conventional notions of virtue and non-virtue. They become the means for making everything we do a way of living the art of peace. We learn that what is truly healing is gratitude and tenderness. There are no promises of any fruitions to our activities at all.We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.

What makes the paramitas different from ordinary actions is that they are based on prajna. Prajna is a way of seeing which continually dissolves any tendency to use things to get ground under our feet, a kind of bullshit-detector that protects us from becoming righteous.

The six activities of the servants of peace:

1  Generosity-we learn the art of giving from our fundamental richness, wealth is the nature of everything. The journey of generosity is one of connecting with this wealth, we build confidence in all-pervading richness, cherishing it so profoundly that we are willing to begin to give away whatever blocks it. Real transformation takes place when we let go our attachment and give away what we think we can’t. What we do has the power to loosen up deep-rooted pattern of holding on to ourselves.

2  Discipline-It’s a sort of undoing process that supports us in going against the grain of our painful habitual patterns. At the inner level, the discipline is to find the balance between not too-tight and not too loose-between not too laid back and not too rigid.

3  Patience-is the antidote to anger, a way to learn love and care for whatever we meet on the path.

4  Exertion-is touching with the energetic joy of life and our appetite for enlightenment.

5  Meditation-is unconditional openness and primordial wisdom itself. We train to return to the unchanging heart of this very moment. All compassion and inspiration come from that.

6  Prajna-turns all actions into gold. It is said that the other five paramitas could give us reference points, but prajna cuts through the whole thing. Prajna makes us homeless; we have no place to dwell on anything. Because of this we can finally relax.

All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real and the absolute truth about how things are. There is no justification for generating negative emotional feelings over an issue or increasing the negativity in yourself or on this planet. We realise the difference between opinions and clear-seeing intelligence. Even if our particular issue doesn’t get resolved we have added more peacefulness to the world. We do our best but at the same time we give up all hope of fruition.

Do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn’t matter at all.

                                                                                              Carlos Casteneda

We can kid ourselves for a while that we understand meditation and the teachings, but at some point we have to face it. None of what we’ve learned seems very relevant when our lover leaves us, when our child has a tantrum in the supermarket, when we’re insulted by a colleague. How do we work with our resentment when our boss walks into the room and yells at us? How do we reconcile that frustration and humiliation with our longing to be open and compassionate and not harm ourselves and others? How do we mix our intention to be alert and gentle in meditation with reality that we sit down and immediately fall asleep? What about when we sit down and spend the entire time thinking about how we crave someone or something we saw on the way to the meditation hall? Or we sit down and squirm the whole morning because our knees hurt and our back hurts and we’re bored and fed up? Instead of calm, wakeful and egoless, we find ourselves getting more edgy, irritable and solid. We continually find ourselves in that squeeze. It’s a place where we look for alternatives to just being there. It’s an uncomfortable, embarrassing place and it’s often the place where people like ourselves give up. We liked meditation and the teachings when we felt inspired and in touch with ourselves and on the right path. But what about when it begins to feel like a burden, like we made the wrong choice and it’s not living up to our expectations at all? The people we are meeting are not at all sane. In fact, they seem pretty confused. The way the place is run is not up to par. Even the teacher is questionable. This place of the squeeze is the very point of our meditation and in our lives where we can really learn something. The point where we are not able to take it or leave it, where we are caught between a rock and a hard place, caught with both the up-lifted-ness of our ideas and the rawness of what’s happening in front of our eyes-that is indeed a very fruitful place.

When we feel squeezed, there’s a tendency for mind to become small. We feel like a victim, like a pathetic, hopeless case. So believe it or not, at that moment of hassle or bewilderment, our minds could become bigger. Instead of taking what’s occurred as a statement of personal weakness or someone else’s power, instead of feeling we are stupid or someone else is unkind, we could drop all the complaints about ourselves and others. We could be there, off guard, not knowing what to do, just hanging out there with raw and tender energy of the moment. This is a place where we begin to learn the meaning behind the concepts and the words. We’re so used to running around from discomfort, we’re so predictable. If we don’t like it, we strike out at someone or beat up on ourselves. We want to have security and certainty of some kind when actually we have no ground to stand on at all. The next time there’s no ground to stand on, don’t consider it an obstacle. Consider it a stroke of luck. We have no ground to stand on, and at the same time it could soften and inspire us. Finally, after all these years, we could truly grow up. As Trungpa Rinpoche once said, the best mantra is “Om-grow up-swaha.”

We are given changes all the time. We can either cling to security or we can let ourselves feel exposed, as if we had just been born, as if we had just popped out into the brightness of life and were completely naked. Maybe that sounds too uncomfortable or frightening, but on the other hand, it’s our chance to realise that this mundane world is all there is, and we could see it with new eyes and at long last wake up from our ancient sleep of preconceptions. The truth, said an ancient Chinese master, is neither like this nor like that. It is like a dog yearning over a bowl of burning oil. He can’t leave it, because it is too desirable, and he can’t lick it, because it is too hot. So how do we relate to that squeeze? Somehow, someone finally needs to encourage us to be inquisitive about this unknown territory and about the unanswerable question of what’s going to happen next.

The state of now-ness is available in that moment of squeeze. In that awkward, ambiguous moment is our own wisdom mind. Right there in the uncertainty of everyday chaos is our own wisdom mind. We need encouragement to experiment and try this kind of thing. It’s quite daring, and maybe we feel we aren’t up to it. But that’s the point. Right there in that inadequate, restless feeling is our wisdom mind. We can simply experiment. There’s absolutely nothing to lose. We could experiment with not getting tossed around by right and wrong and with learning to relax with groundlessness. When I was a child, I had a picture book called Lives of the Saints. It was filled with stories of men and women who never had an angry or mean thought and had never hurt a fly. I found the book totally useless as a guide for how we humans were supposed to live a good life. For me, the life of Milarepa is a lot more instructive. Over the years, as I read and reread Milarepa’s story, I find myself getting advise for where I am stuck and can’t seem to move forward. To begin with, Milarepa was a murderer, and like most of us when we blow it, he wanted to atone for his errors. And like most of us, in the process of seeking liberation, he frequently fell flat on his face. He lied and stole to get what he wanted, he got so depressed he was suicidal and he experienced nostalgia for the good old days. Like most of us, he had one person in his life who continually tested him and blew his saintly cover. Even when almost everyone regarded him as one of Tibet’s most holy men, his vindictive old aunt continued to beat him with sticks and call him names, and he continued to have to figure out what to do with that kind of humiliating squeeze.

One can be grateful that a long lineage of teachers has worked with holding their seats with the big squeeze. They were tested and failed and still kept exploring how to just stay there, not seeking solid ground. They trained again and again throughout their lives not to give up on themselves and not run away when the bottom fell out of their concepts and noble ideals. From their own experience they have passed along to us the encouragement not jump over the big squeeze, but to look at it just as it is, not just out of the corner of an eye. They showed us how to experience it fully not as good and bad, but simply as unconditioned and ordinary.

The main point of these methods is to dissolve the dualistic struggle, our habitual tendency to struggle against what’s happening to us or in us. These methods instruct us to move toward difficulties rather than backing away.

We practice to liberate ourselves from a burden-the burden of a narrow perspective caused by craving, aggression, ignorance and fear. Through practice, we realise we don’t have to obscure the joy and openness that is present in every moment of our existence. Then life feels spacious like the sky and the sea.

1  The no-more-struggle method-Vipassana-returning to pristine awareness free from

     concepts, emotions, moods or circumstances

2  Using poison as medicine method-transforming all circumstances into the path

3  Seeing whatever arises as enlightened wisdom method

Everything that occurs is not only useable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens as the means for waking up.

“When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps and difficulties, should be transformed into the path of enlightenment.”

                                                                                                     Lojong slogan

Whether we regard our situation as heaven or hell depends on our perception.

We don’t experience the world fully unless we are willing to give everything away.

Thinking that we have ample time to do things later is the greatest myth, the greatest hang-up, and the greatest poison.

Samaya bond-(sacred oath)-It’s a pact that they make to attain enlightenment together, The teacher will never give up on the student no matter how mixed up he or she might be, and the student will also never leave the teacher.

We take what we hear to heart and we do our best to put it into practice in our everyday life.

When we find our essential wisdom and Buddha Nature, it’s like finding that the sky and the sun are always there and that it’s the storms and the clouds that come and go.

Our relationship with the phenomenal world has always been choice-less. The choice we think we have is called ego.

The dharma can heal our wounds, our vary ancient wounds that come not from original sin but from a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it.

Marpa’s principle student was Milarepa, and initially their relationship was a tough one. Milarepa had no doubt that Marpa could lead him to enlightenment. Therefore, Milarepa told him, “I commit myself to you totally with body, speech and mind. Please help me realise my true nature.” Then the challenges began. Milarepa had accumulated a lot of karmic baggage. In particular, he had killed a lot of people and caused a lot of pain. In order for him to put down that load, he had to undergo many trials. Marpa kept making him build towers; when they were almost complete, he would yell at Milarepa to tear them down. Milarepa suffered much in his early days with Marpa. He couldn’t get any teachings, and he was continually insulted, and he built towers until his hands and back were one big sore. Nevertheless, Milarepa never doubted Marpa’s motivation and in truth, although he rarely displayed it, Marpa loved Milarepa with his whole heart and wanted only to help him wake up fully. Each time Milarepa surrendered to the situation, each time he dropped his resentment, depression, and pride, he was so naked that he had nothing left to lose. Then Marpa gave him the teachings and their relationship entered a new phase of tenderness and warmth. But it’s a process. In the beginning, our habit of running away is so deep-seated that we just experiment with this trick of being bound. We do this by practicing meditation. At first the meditation instruction is all we have to keep us from disassociating from our body, speech and mind. Year after year, we just keep coming back to our own experience of being in the present moment.

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