If One Wishes For Suffering Not to
Happen to the People and the Earth,
It Begins With a Kind Heart
War and peace start in the human heart — and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
Being open and receptive to whatever is happening is always more important than getting worked up and adding further aggression to the planet, adding further pollution to the atmosphere.
Each of us can be an active participant in creating a nonviolent future simply by how we work with attachment as it arises. How individuals relate to being hooked has global implications. In that neutral moment, that often highly charged moment, when we can go either way, do we consciously strengthen old fear-based habits, or do we stay on the dot, fully experiencing the agitated, restless energy and letting it naturally unwind and flow on? There will be no lack of opportunities and no lack of material to work with.
Sometimes when things fall apart, well, that’s the big opportunity to change.
Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.
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-mans-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart.
If you are invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.
Rather than being disheartened by the uncertainty of life, what if we accepted it and relaxed into it? What if we said, yes, this is the way it is; this is what it means to be human, and decided to sit down and enjoy the ride.
We think that the point is to pass the test 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.
Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don’t cop out on that. Don’t run away and hide under your cover. Lean into it.
Learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path.
Precision, gentleness and the ability to let go are not something that we have to gain, but something that we could bring out, cultivate, rediscover in ourselves.
This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky that's called liberation.
It’s a nice feeling to just be.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
Just where you are — that's the place to start.
If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.
— Pema Chödrön
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