This Brief Lifetime
How are we going to spend this brief lifetime? Are we going to strengthen our well-perfected ability to struggle against uncertainty, or are we going to train in letting go? Are we going to hold on stubbornly to "I'm like this and your like that"? Or are we going to move beyond that narrow mind? Could we start to train as a warrior, aspiring to reconnect with the natural flexibility of our being and to help others do the same? If we start to move in this direction, limitless possibilities will begin to open up.
Beyond Right and Wrong
Compassionate action, being there for others, being able to act and speak in a way that communicates, starts with seeing ourselves when we start to make ourselves right or make ourselves wrong. At that particular point, we could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where we could live. This place, if we can touch it, will help us train ourselves throughout our lives to open further to whatever we feel, to open further rather than shut down more. We'll find that as we begin to commit ourselves to this practice, as we begin to have a sense of celebrating the aspects of ourselves that we found so impossible before, something will shift in us. Something will shift permanently in us. Our ancient habitual patterns will begin to soften, and we'll begin to see the faces and hear the words of people who are talking to us.
Overcoming Self-Deception
The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. However, it's not so easy to take a straight look at what we do. Seeing ourselves clearly is initially uncomfortable and embarrassing. As we train in clarity and steadfastness, we see things we'd prefer to deny ― judgmentalness, pettiness, arrogance. These are not sins bu temporary and workable habits of mid. The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power. This i how we come to trust that our basic nature is utterly simple, free of struggle between good and bad.
We Have Met the Enemy ―
And the Friend
It was Pogo, a cartoon character created by Walt Kelly, who said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." This particular slogan now appears a lot in the environment movement. It isn't somebody else who's polluting the rivers ― it's us. The cause of confusion and bewilderment and pollution and violence isn't really someone else's problem: it's something we can come to know in ourselves. But in order to do that we have to understand that we have met the friend and his is me. The more we make friends with ourselves, the more we can see that our ways of shutting down and closing off are rooted in the mistaken thinking that the way to get happy is to blame someone else.
It's a little uncertain who is "us" and who is "them." Bernard Glassman Roshi, who does a lot of work with the homeless in New York, said that he doesn't work with the homeless because he's such a great guy but because going into the areas of society that he has rejected is the only way to make friends with parts of himself that he's rejected. It's all interrelated. We work on ourselves in order to help others, but we also help other in order to work on ourselves. That's a very important point.
The Only Reason We Don't
Open Our Hearts
The only reason that we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
Moving Beyond Self-Protection
We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet when we don't close off and we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.
― Pema Chödrön
From The Pocket Pema Chödrön
Also found in The Places that Scare You
and When Things Fall Apart
and Start Where You Are
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