Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America. Here in her most beloved and acclaimed work, Pema shows how moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.
Reflection
Every now and then, I think it's perfectly acceptable to step outside of the Christian church and go looking for healing and wholeness from another religion or an entirely different set of spirituality teachings. I know I needed to. And Chodron's book was what I stumbled upon, and am I ever glad I did. No other book was underlined as much as this one.
If you're lucky, between the ages of 5 and 9, there really isn't much suffering that is endured. Outside of that sweet and relatively innocent timeframe though, we all will either create or receive instances of pain and loss over and over again, and the better we are able to make sense of and move on from those experiences, the more stable and healthy we will become. It's not a matter of if, but when and how often life becomes difficult. Every religion has their own way of responding to suffering, but I really like how she frames the path to healing:
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. Pg. 9
As much as I love the teachings of Jesus, I cannot deny that there is a significant amount of emphasis placed on the need for people to tolerate suffering, that everyone "has a cross to bear." And given the trajectory of the Jesus story, what usually follows that teaching is the focal point of our Christian faith: resurrection and heaven--new and eternal life, etc. Pain hits and we are immediately taught to "keep our eyes above" or "on the prize that awaits us" - a nudge, a push, a release from this life to what's next. And that can be a fine way of getting through the hard times. But at what point does that line of thinking become really harmful to our experience of the present life, troubles and all?
The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly. Pg. 10
I was deeply impacted by these Buddhist concepts of how to be "awake" and "fully present" to the difficult circumstances that a person is continually navigating throughout the course of life. As a big believer in the idea that we learn best just outside our comfort zone, it never ceases to amaze me how blind or ignorant we can become to those times when we forget that our internal turmoil, anxiety and discomfort are in fact prime opportunities to grow and mature. She terms these moments as being "out of the nest."
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again...Death is wanting to hold on to what you have..and to congratulate you and make you feel completely together...From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. pg 71
From meditation tips to a plethora of profound statements of healing truth, this is a book for anyone looking for a new way of contemplating pain and loss. Its a deep read, I'd recommend it for those able to digest slowly and thoughtfully. It should go without saying that "close-minded need not apply" as this is clearly Buddhist thought and practice on display, which, for those curious and open-minded about other religions, is a great place to start.
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future.
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