PEMA CHODRON |You have to do it alone

“Taking refuge in the Buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake.

Every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality.

We’re not trying to be something we aren’t; rather, we’re reconnecting with who we are.

So when we say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” that means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine.

I am awake; I will spend my life taking this armor off.

Nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it’s sewed up tight, where it’s going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied.

You have to do it alone.”

~ Pema Chodron

Happy Birthday to Pema Chodron

14 July is Ani Pema Chodron's birthday. I am grateful to her for her teachings of the dharma. Her teachings carried me through an unpleasant period of my life. It has taught me some things about my delusions about my practice (or my neglect of my practice).

May all beings be happy.

I leave everyone with this little anecdote from Pema Chodron. It's about karma, and every time I struggle through the little difficulties in life, I find this story helpful:

I remember my first interview with my teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche very well because I was hesitant to talk to him about what was really the problem in my life. Instead, I wasted the whole interview chattering. Every once in a while he said, "How's your meditation?" and I said, "Oh, fine," and then just chattered on. When it was almost over I blurted out, in the last half-second, "I'm having this terrible time and I'm full of anger."

Rinpoche walked me to toward the door and said, "Well, what that feels like is a big wave that comes along and knocks you down. You find yourself lying in the bottom of the ocean with your face in the sand, and even though all the sand is going up your nose and into your mouth and your eyes and your ears, you stand up and you begin walking again. The next wave comes and knocks you down. The waves just keep coming, but each time you get knocked down, you stand up and keep walking. After a while, you'll find that the waves appear to be getting smaller."

That's how karma works. If you keep lying there, you'll drown, but you don't even have the privilege of dying. You just live with the sense of drowning all the time. So don't get discouraged and think, "Well, I was feeling depressed and I was hiding under the covers, but then I got out of bed, I took a shower. How come I'm not living in a Disney movie now? I thought I was going to turn into Snow White. How come I'm not living happily ever after?" The waves keep coming and knocking you down, but you stand up again and with some sense of rousing yourself. As Rinpoche said, "After a while, you find that the waves seem to be getting smaller." That's really what happens.

~ From "Wisdom of No Escape", Pema Chodron

Rawness of a Broken Heart

An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all.”

~ Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron - on looking for answers