“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.” ― Pema Chödrön
There’s so much going on in just this one little paragraph, I don’t know where to begin. Firstly, I love Pema Chodron. She speaks to my heart and soul. However, I’m not Buddhist. I’m not really anything anymore, but I was raised United Methodist. (It was the only approved religion in the town I grew up in, but I’ll save that for another post.) Garrison Keilor once said of the United Methodists, “We make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their lack of speed, and also for their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese.” He hit the nail on the head here, largely because he is a Methodist. I still know one when I see it. I call it the religion of potlucks. And I do love me some macaroni and cheese. The real stuff. But I digress, as usual. You’d think I’m a Catholic, for the number of guilt trips I take . (No offense intented to Catholics or Catholicism here.) I spent most of this weekend taking a nice, long guilt trip. It wasn’t very fun.
I’m constantly examining everything in my life, attempting to figure out what it’s trying to teach me. Most of the time, I just don’t know. According to Pema, they’re there to open my heart and teach me how to stop protecting my soft spot. I literally cringe when I think of that. Clearly, I have some work to do.
Excerpted from the chapter “The Love That Will Not Die,” from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron:
In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear. In the middle of feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things…
…the genuine heart of sadness.
Just as a jewel that has been buried in the Earth for a million years is not discolored or harmed, in the same way this noble heart is not affected by all of our kicking and screaming. The jewel can be brought out into the light at any time and it will glow as brilliantly as if nothing had ever happened.
No matter how committed we are to unkindness, selfishness or greed, the genuine heart of bodhicitta [wakeful human nature] cannot be lost. It is here in all that lives, never marred and completely whole.
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, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.
His Holiness The Dalai Lama describes two kind of selfish people—the wise and the unwise. Unwise selfish people only think of themselves—and the result is confusion and pain. Wise selfish people know that the best thing they can do for themselves is to be there for others. As a result, they experience joy.
When we see a woman and her child begging on the street, when we see a man mercilessly beating his terrified dog, when we see a teenager who has been badly beaten, or see fear in the eyes of a child…do we turn away because we can’t bear it? Most of us probably do.
Someone needs to encourage us not to brush aside what we feel. Not to be ashamed of the love and grief that it arouses in us. Not to be afraid of pain.
Someone needs to encourage us: that this soft spot in us could be awakened, and that to do this would change our lives.
The practices of Tonglen, sending and receiving, is designed to awaken bodhicitta. To put us in touch with genuine noble heart. It is a practice of taking in pain, and sending out pleasure, and therefore completely turns around our well-established habit of doing just the opposite.
Tonglen is a practice of creating space. Ventilating the atmosphere of our lives, so that people can breathe freely and relax. Whenever we encounter suffering in any form, the Tonglen instruction is to breathe it in with the wish that everyone could be free of pain. Whenever we encounter happiness in any form, the instruction is to breathe it out, send it out with the wish that everyone could feel joy.
It a practice that allows people to feel less burdened and less cramped, a practice that shows us how to love without conditions.
Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
