Living Fully with Change and Uncertainty
By Pema Chödrön
"My granddaughter's college professor asked students not to bring their cell phones to class. My granddaughter was struck by how much more present and attentive she became as a result. She noticed that her entire generation is undergoing an intensive, immersive training to be distracted. For me, this underscores the importance for her generation and those that follow, as well as for the generations that came before, to push back against this tendency by taking an intensive course in being present. When you practice being present, one thing you discover quickly is how persistent the storyline is. (...)
I had a dream about my ex-husband: I had just settled in for a peaceful evening at home when he arrived with six unknown guests and then disappeared, leaving me to attend to them. I was furious. When I woke up, I lamented: “How hard it is to let go of anger; I think the tendency is still there.” Then I remembered an incident that had happened the day before and started getting furious all over again. This left me completely bewildered, and I realized that whether sleeping or awake, it's all the same thing. It's not the content of our movie that needs attention, but the projector. The root of our pain doesn't lie in the current storyline; it lies, above all, in our tendency to be bothered by things.
The tendency to feel sorry for ourselves, to feel envious, to feel angry; our emotional reactions so familiar are like seeds that we simply keep watering and nourishing. Yet each time we pause and stay in contact with the underlying energy, we stop reinforcing these tendencies and begin to open ourselves to new and refreshing possibilities.
As you respond differently to an old habit, you'll notice the changes. In the past, when you got irritated, you might take up to three days to calm down, but if you keep interrupting angry thoughts, you may reach a point where it takes only a day to let go of that anger. Finally, just hours or even a minute and a half. You're beginning to free yourself from suffering.
It's important to note that interrupting thoughts is not the same as suppressing them. Suppression is a denial of what's happening, and it only buries thoughts where they can rot. At the same time, we don't want to chase after thoughts and get hooked by them. Interrupting thoughts falls somewhere between holding onto them and pushing them away. It's a way of allowing thoughts to come and go, to arise and pass, so they're not seen as a big deal.
The practice consists of training yourself not to follow thoughts, not to get rid of them completely. That would be impossible. As your practice deepens, you may experience moments free of thoughts, longer stretches of time without thinking, but they always come back. That's the nature of mind. However, you don't need to make thoughts your villains. Just train yourself to be able to interrupt their momentum. The basic instruction is to let thoughts pass; or label them as “thinking”; and stay with the immediacy of experience.
Your whole being will want to do the habitual thing, will want to follow the storyline. The storyline is associated with certainty and comfort. It sustains your very limited and static sense of self, and it offers the promise of security and happiness. But the promise is false, and any happiness it brings is only temporary. The more you practice not fleeing into the fantasy world of your thoughts and instead stay in contact with the sense of groundlessness you have, the more accustomed you'll become to experiencing emotions as simple sensations; free of concepts, free of storyline, free of fixed ideas about good and bad.
(...) In a book I read recently, the author spoke about human beings as beings in transition; beings who are neither entirely trapped nor entirely free, but rather in the process of waking up. I find it useful to think of myself that way. I'm in the process of becoming, in the process of evolving. I'm not condemned nor completely free, but I create my future with each word, each action, each thought. I find myself in a very dynamic situation, with unimaginable potential. I have all the support I need to simply relax and live with the transitional quality of my life as it unfolds. I have everything I need to engage in the process of waking up.
Instead of living a life of resistance and trying to deny our basic situation of impermanence and change, we could stay in contact with essential ambiguity and welcome it. We don't like to think of ourselves as fixed and unchanging, but emotionally we invest in it. We simply don't want the frightening, unsettling discomfort of feeling groundless, unrooted. Yet it's not necessary to shut down when we feel groundlessness in any form.
Instead, we can turn toward it and say: “This is what the liberation of a fixed mind feels like. This is the sensation of a closed heart opening. This is the sensation of impartial, unrestricted kindness. Maybe I'll get curious and see if I can move beyond my resistance and experience kindness.”
Buddhism teaches that the true nature of mind is as vast as the sky, and that thoughts and emotions are like clouds that, from our perspective, obscure it. We're taught that if we want to experience the infinity of the sky, we need to get curious about these clouds. When we look deeply at the clouds, they dissolve and there is the vastness of the sky. It never went anywhere. It was always there, momentarily hidden from us by fleeting, passing clouds. The journey of waking up requires discipline and courage. At first, letting go of our thoughts and emotions like clouds is a matter of habit. Thoughts and emotions can make it hard for us to contact the openness of our mind, but they're like old friends who have been with us for as long as we can remember, and we become very resistant to saying goodbye. But each time you sit down to meditate, you can decide that you're going to try to let go of thoughts and stay right there with the immediacy of your experience. Maybe you can stay there for only five seconds today, but any progress toward not being distracted is positive.
Chögyam Trungpa had an image for our tendency to obscure the openness of our being; he called it “putting makeup on space.” We might want to experience space without makeup. Staying open and receptive, even if only for a short time, begins to interrupt our deep-rooted resistance to feeling what we're feeling, to being present where we are.
Believing in the storyline; it's something deeply rooted in us. We declare our opinions as if they were indisputable: “Jane is inherently horrible. That's a fact.” “Ralph is inherently charming. There's no doubt about it.” The way to weaken the habit of clinging to fixed ideas is to shift your focus to a broader perspective. Instead of staying stuck in the drama, see if you can feel the dynamic energy of thoughts and emotions. See if you can experience the space around the thoughts: experience how they arise in space, stay for a while, and then return to space. If you don't suppress thoughts and emotions and you don't run with them, you'll be in an interesting position. The position of neither rejecting nor justifying sits right in the middle of nowhere. That's where you can finally embrace what you're feeling. That's where you can see the sky.
While you meditate, memories of something distressing that happened in the past may arise. Seeing all of it can be quite liberating. But if you're always visiting the memory of something distressing, reprocessing what happened, and you become obsessed with the storyline, it becomes part of your static identity. You're only strengthening your tendency to experience yourself as the wronged one, the victim. You're strengthening a pre-existing tendency to blame others; your parents and someone else; as those who treated you unfairly. Continuing to recycle the old storyline is a way of avoiding essential ambiguity. Emotions keep going, without interruption, when we fuel them with words. It's like pouring kerosene on a spark to inflame it. Without words, without repetitive thoughts, emotions don't last longer than a minute and a half.
Our identity, which seems so reliable, so concrete, is actually very fluid, very dynamic. The possibilities of what we think and feel and the way we can experience reality are unlimited. We have what it takes to free ourselves from the suffering of a fixed identity and connect with the fleeting and mysterious nature of our being, which has no fixed identity. Your sense of yourself; of who you think you are at the relative level; is a very restricted version of who you really are. But the good news is that your immediate experience; who you seem to be in this precise moment; can be used as an entry point to your true nature. Through full engagement with this relative moment in time; the sound you hear, the smell you sense, the pain or comfort you feel now; being fully present in your experience, you come into contact with the unlimited openness of your being. All our habitual patterns are efforts to maintain a predictable identity: “I'm an angry person”; “I'm a friendly person”; “I'm a worm.” We can work with these mental habits when they arise and stay with our experience, not only when we're meditating, but also in daily life. Whether we're alone or in the company of others, no matter what we're doing, unease can come to the surface at any moment. We might think that these poignant, penetrating feelings are signs of danger, but they're actually signs that we've just come into contact with the essential fluidity of life. Instead of hiding from these feelings by staying in the bubble of ego, we can let the truth of how things really are pass through us. These moments are great opportunities. Even if we're surrounded by people; in a business meeting, say; when we feel unease arising, we can simply breathe and face the feelings. There's no need to panic and close ourselves off. There's no need to react in the habitual way. There's no need to fight or flee. We can stay engaged with others and at the same time recognize what we're feeling.
The instructions, in their simple form, follow three basic steps:
Be fully present.
Feel your heart.
And engage with the next moment without any agenda.
I work with this method in action, right in the middle of things. The more I stay present in formal meditation, the more familiar the process becomes and the easier it is to do this in the midst of everyday situations. But regardless of where we practice being present, it will put us in contact with the uncertainty and change that are inherent in being alive. It will give us the chance to train ourselves to stay awake to everything we previously ran away from.
The three commitments represent three levels of working with groundlessness. The basic instruction is to sustain them so you become your own friend; to be honest with yourself and kind. This begins with the willingness to stay present whenever you experience unease. As these feelings arise, instead of running away, you lean into them. Instead of trying to get rid of thoughts and feelings, you get curious about them. As you become accustomed to experiencing the sensation of being free from interpretation, you'll come to understand that coming into contact with the essential ambiguity of being human offers a precious opportunity; the opportunity to stay with life just as it is, the opportunity to experience the freedom of life without a storyline.”
This was an excerpt from the book “A Beleza da Vida; A incerteza, a mudança, a felicidade” by Pema Chödrön, one of the most brilliant meditation teachers of our time. Full of practical guidance, the book suggests a shift in perspective, greater clarity about mind, speech, and action. “We all carry heavy baggage from old habits, which fortunately can be removed. They don't need to weigh us down permanently. Instead of letting our guilt drag us down, we can use it to inspire us not to repeat harmful actions,” the nun emphasizes. Pema Chödrön reminds us that each person has their own personal escape valves, such as shutting down in front of the TV, compulsively checking email, overeating, or working excessively. The teachings gathered in the book, known as “the three commitments,” offer evolutionary growth for those who wish to become more confident and fearless in the face of life's challenges.
I had a dream about my ex-husband: I had just settled in for a peaceful evening at home when he arrived with six unknown guests and then disappeared, leaving me to attend to them. I was furious. When I woke up, I lamented: “How hard it is to let go of anger; I think the tendency is still there.” Then I remembered an incident that had happened the day before and started getting furious all over again. This left me completely bewildered, and I realized that whether sleeping or awake, it's all the same thing. It's not the content of our movie that needs attention, but the projector. The root of our pain doesn't lie in the current storyline; it lies, above all, in our tendency to be bothered by things.
The tendency to feel sorry for ourselves, to feel envious, to feel angry; our emotional reactions so familiar are like seeds that we simply keep watering and nourishing. Yet each time we pause and stay in contact with the underlying energy, we stop reinforcing these tendencies and begin to open ourselves to new and refreshing possibilities.
As you respond differently to an old habit, you'll notice the changes. In the past, when you got irritated, you might take up to three days to calm down, but if you keep interrupting angry thoughts, you may reach a point where it takes only a day to let go of that anger. Finally, just hours or even a minute and a half. You're beginning to free yourself from suffering.
It's important to note that interrupting thoughts is not the same as suppressing them. Suppression is a denial of what's happening, and it only buries thoughts where they can rot. At the same time, we don't want to chase after thoughts and get hooked by them. Interrupting thoughts falls somewhere between holding onto them and pushing them away. It's a way of allowing thoughts to come and go, to arise and pass, so they're not seen as a big deal.
The practice consists of training yourself not to follow thoughts, not to get rid of them completely. That would be impossible. As your practice deepens, you may experience moments free of thoughts, longer stretches of time without thinking, but they always come back. That's the nature of mind. However, you don't need to make thoughts your villains. Just train yourself to be able to interrupt their momentum. The basic instruction is to let thoughts pass; or label them as “thinking”; and stay with the immediacy of experience.
Your whole being will want to do the habitual thing, will want to follow the storyline. The storyline is associated with certainty and comfort. It sustains your very limited and static sense of self, and it offers the promise of security and happiness. But the promise is false, and any happiness it brings is only temporary. The more you practice not fleeing into the fantasy world of your thoughts and instead stay in contact with the sense of groundlessness you have, the more accustomed you'll become to experiencing emotions as simple sensations; free of concepts, free of storyline, free of fixed ideas about good and bad.
(...) In a book I read recently, the author spoke about human beings as beings in transition; beings who are neither entirely trapped nor entirely free, but rather in the process of waking up. I find it useful to think of myself that way. I'm in the process of becoming, in the process of evolving. I'm not condemned nor completely free, but I create my future with each word, each action, each thought. I find myself in a very dynamic situation, with unimaginable potential. I have all the support I need to simply relax and live with the transitional quality of my life as it unfolds. I have everything I need to engage in the process of waking up.
Instead of living a life of resistance and trying to deny our basic situation of impermanence and change, we could stay in contact with essential ambiguity and welcome it. We don't like to think of ourselves as fixed and unchanging, but emotionally we invest in it. We simply don't want the frightening, unsettling discomfort of feeling groundless, unrooted. Yet it's not necessary to shut down when we feel groundlessness in any form.
Instead, we can turn toward it and say: “This is what the liberation of a fixed mind feels like. This is the sensation of a closed heart opening. This is the sensation of impartial, unrestricted kindness. Maybe I'll get curious and see if I can move beyond my resistance and experience kindness.”
Buddhism teaches that the true nature of mind is as vast as the sky, and that thoughts and emotions are like clouds that, from our perspective, obscure it. We're taught that if we want to experience the infinity of the sky, we need to get curious about these clouds. When we look deeply at the clouds, they dissolve and there is the vastness of the sky. It never went anywhere. It was always there, momentarily hidden from us by fleeting, passing clouds. The journey of waking up requires discipline and courage. At first, letting go of our thoughts and emotions like clouds is a matter of habit. Thoughts and emotions can make it hard for us to contact the openness of our mind, but they're like old friends who have been with us for as long as we can remember, and we become very resistant to saying goodbye. But each time you sit down to meditate, you can decide that you're going to try to let go of thoughts and stay right there with the immediacy of your experience. Maybe you can stay there for only five seconds today, but any progress toward not being distracted is positive.
Chögyam Trungpa had an image for our tendency to obscure the openness of our being; he called it “putting makeup on space.” We might want to experience space without makeup. Staying open and receptive, even if only for a short time, begins to interrupt our deep-rooted resistance to feeling what we're feeling, to being present where we are.
Believing in the storyline; it's something deeply rooted in us. We declare our opinions as if they were indisputable: “Jane is inherently horrible. That's a fact.” “Ralph is inherently charming. There's no doubt about it.” The way to weaken the habit of clinging to fixed ideas is to shift your focus to a broader perspective. Instead of staying stuck in the drama, see if you can feel the dynamic energy of thoughts and emotions. See if you can experience the space around the thoughts: experience how they arise in space, stay for a while, and then return to space. If you don't suppress thoughts and emotions and you don't run with them, you'll be in an interesting position. The position of neither rejecting nor justifying sits right in the middle of nowhere. That's where you can finally embrace what you're feeling. That's where you can see the sky.
While you meditate, memories of something distressing that happened in the past may arise. Seeing all of it can be quite liberating. But if you're always visiting the memory of something distressing, reprocessing what happened, and you become obsessed with the storyline, it becomes part of your static identity. You're only strengthening your tendency to experience yourself as the wronged one, the victim. You're strengthening a pre-existing tendency to blame others; your parents and someone else; as those who treated you unfairly. Continuing to recycle the old storyline is a way of avoiding essential ambiguity. Emotions keep going, without interruption, when we fuel them with words. It's like pouring kerosene on a spark to inflame it. Without words, without repetitive thoughts, emotions don't last longer than a minute and a half.
Our identity, which seems so reliable, so concrete, is actually very fluid, very dynamic. The possibilities of what we think and feel and the way we can experience reality are unlimited. We have what it takes to free ourselves from the suffering of a fixed identity and connect with the fleeting and mysterious nature of our being, which has no fixed identity. Your sense of yourself; of who you think you are at the relative level; is a very restricted version of who you really are. But the good news is that your immediate experience; who you seem to be in this precise moment; can be used as an entry point to your true nature. Through full engagement with this relative moment in time; the sound you hear, the smell you sense, the pain or comfort you feel now; being fully present in your experience, you come into contact with the unlimited openness of your being. All our habitual patterns are efforts to maintain a predictable identity: “I'm an angry person”; “I'm a friendly person”; “I'm a worm.” We can work with these mental habits when they arise and stay with our experience, not only when we're meditating, but also in daily life. Whether we're alone or in the company of others, no matter what we're doing, unease can come to the surface at any moment. We might think that these poignant, penetrating feelings are signs of danger, but they're actually signs that we've just come into contact with the essential fluidity of life. Instead of hiding from these feelings by staying in the bubble of ego, we can let the truth of how things really are pass through us. These moments are great opportunities. Even if we're surrounded by people; in a business meeting, say; when we feel unease arising, we can simply breathe and face the feelings. There's no need to panic and close ourselves off. There's no need to react in the habitual way. There's no need to fight or flee. We can stay engaged with others and at the same time recognize what we're feeling.
The instructions, in their simple form, follow three basic steps:
Be fully present.
Feel your heart.
And engage with the next moment without any agenda.
I work with this method in action, right in the middle of things. The more I stay present in formal meditation, the more familiar the process becomes and the easier it is to do this in the midst of everyday situations. But regardless of where we practice being present, it will put us in contact with the uncertainty and change that are inherent in being alive. It will give us the chance to train ourselves to stay awake to everything we previously ran away from.
The three commitments represent three levels of working with groundlessness. The basic instruction is to sustain them so you become your own friend; to be honest with yourself and kind. This begins with the willingness to stay present whenever you experience unease. As these feelings arise, instead of running away, you lean into them. Instead of trying to get rid of thoughts and feelings, you get curious about them. As you become accustomed to experiencing the sensation of being free from interpretation, you'll come to understand that coming into contact with the essential ambiguity of being human offers a precious opportunity; the opportunity to stay with life just as it is, the opportunity to experience the freedom of life without a storyline.”
This was an excerpt from the book “A Beleza da Vida; A incerteza, a mudança, a felicidade” by Pema Chödrön, one of the most brilliant meditation teachers of our time. Full of practical guidance, the book suggests a shift in perspective, greater clarity about mind, speech, and action. “We all carry heavy baggage from old habits, which fortunately can be removed. They don't need to weigh us down permanently. Instead of letting our guilt drag us down, we can use it to inspire us not to repeat harmful actions,” the nun emphasizes. Pema Chödrön reminds us that each person has their own personal escape valves, such as shutting down in front of the TV, compulsively checking email, overeating, or working excessively. The teachings gathered in the book, known as “the three commitments,” offer evolutionary growth for those who wish to become more confident and fearless in the face of life's challenges.