Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears (12 page)

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

An indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening compassion in the midst of daily living. Pema Chödrön frames her teachings on compassion around fifty-nine traditional Tibetan Buddhist maxims such as: “Always apply only a joyful state of mind” and “Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.”

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Drawing on traditional Buddhist wisdom, here is radical and compassionate advice for what to do when our lives become painful and difficult. There is only one approach to suffering that is of lasting benefit, Pema teaches, and that approach involves moving toward painful situations with friendliness and curiosity. This book includes instructions on how to use painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage; how to communicate in a way that leads to openness and true intimacy with others; and how to reverse negative habitual patterns.

The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

A book about saying yes to life in all its manifestations, embracing the potent mixture of joy, suffering, brilliance, and confusion that characterizes the human experience. Pema Chödrön shows us the profound value of our situation of “no escape” from the ups and downs of life.

AUDIO

Don’t Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions

In this recorded weekend retreat, Pema draws on Buddhist teachings to show us how to relate constructively to the inevitable shocks, losses, and frustrations of life so that we can find true happiness. The key, Pema explains, is not biting the “hook” of our habitual responses.

Perfect Just as You Are: Buddhist Practices on the Four Limitless Ones—Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity

Here are Pema Chödrön’s definitive teachings on the Buddhist practice called the “Four Immeasurable Ones”—a practice that helps us recognize and grow the seeds of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity already present in our hearts. This in-depth study course leads us step-by-step through the Four Immeasurable Ones practice and offers guided meditations, an overview of bodhichitta and the bodhisattva vow, writing and reflection exercises, and question-and-answer sessions.

Practicing Peace in Times of War: Four Talks

The book
Practicing Peace in Times of War
is based on several of Pema Chödrön’s public talks, and we are proud to present them to you here, in this audio edition. It is a short, pithy, and profound work that includes practical strategies for cultivating the seeds of peace and compassion amid life’s upsets and challenges.

Start Where You Are

With insight and humor, Pema Chödrön offers guidance on how we can accept our flaws and embrace ourselves wholeheartedly as a prerequisite for developing compassion. Through working with fifty-nine Tibetan Buddhist slogans, Pema shows us how to develop the courage to face our inner pain and thereby discover a wealth of freedom, well-being, and confidence.

This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher

Lojong
is a powerful Tibetan Buddhist practice created especially for training the mind to work with the challenges of everyday living. It teaches our hearts to soften, reframes our attitude toward difficulty, and allows us to discover a wellspring of inner strength. In this recorded retreat, Pema Chödrön introduces the
lojong
teachings and explains how we can apply them to any situation in our life—because, as Pema says, “every moment is an opportunity for awakening.”

When Things Fall Apart

This abridged audiobook based on the beloved spiritual classic contains radical and compassionate advice for what to do when our lives become painful and difficult. Read by Pema, it includes instructions on how to use painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage; how to communicate in a way that leads to openness and true intimacy with others; and how to reverse negative habitual patterns.

The Wisdom of No Escape

It’s true, as they say, that we can only love others when we first love ourselves and we can only experience real joy when we stop running from pain. The key to understanding these truisms lies in remaining open to life in all circumstances, and here Pema Chödrön shows us how.

For more information please visit
www.shambhala.com
.

Excerpt from
Smile at Fear
by Chögyam Trungpa

eISBN  978-0-8348-2148-4

Editor’s Preface

T
HIS IS A BOOK
about all the fears we have, from momentary panic and anxiety, up to the biggest terrors we may face about our life and our death. It is also about the fundamental sources of fear and anxiety, which affect all of us. The author presents practical advice, but not quick fi xes. He is trying to help us fundamentally transform our lives and our perceptions so that we can
conquer
fear, not simply suppress it for a time. To become truly fearless, he suggests, we must stop running from our fear and begin to make friends with it. We must learn to smile at fear. This is a critical part of the conquest.

As I write this preface, we are in the midst of a dramatic economic crisis that is creating shock waves of fear and anxiety around the world. It seems a very appropriate time for a book on working with fear. However, given the human condition and the ongoing chaos in the world, it is probably always a good time to look into the issues of fear and fearlessness.

Chögyam Trungpa, one of the greatest Buddhist teachers of the twentieth century, died in 1987. Yet these teachings on spiritual warriorship and bravery seem as though they were written for this very moment in time. He felt that the West, and indeed the world as a whole, would face immense difficulties in the twenty-first century, and he spoke to his students of those potential hardships with a mixture of confidence and realism. Trungpa Rinpoche (Rinpoche is a title for realized teachers that means “Precious One”) was sure that humanity could handle what might be coming, but equally sure that the challenges would be substantial. I participated in sobering conversations with him about the economic and political future of North America and other parts of the world.

Rinpoche himself was a man who embodied fearlessness and compassion. In 1950 his homeland of Tibet was invaded by the Chinese Communists, and he was forced to flee the country in 1959 with the knowledge that there was a price on his head. He set off on foot from a remote area in East Tibet to seek refuge in India, leading a group of three hundred Tibetans on a journey that took ten months. Needless to say, they met with extreme challenges and many opportunities to face their fears.

Most of the group was captured in the last months of the journey as they crossed the Brahmaputra River in southern Tibet. Just over fifty of them made it all the way to India. Throughout this journey, Trungpa Rinpoche relied on meditative insight as the basis for his strength and courage, and he never ceased to recommend this approach to others.

After escaping Tibet, sadly, he never saw his mother or any other members of his family again. Yet years later, he expressed his feelings of great compassion for Mao Tse-tung, the revolutionary leader who ordered the invasion of Tibet. In this book he shares the Buddhist teachings that are the basis of this kind of tenderhearted bravery.

Each of us can awaken the same kind of courage in our lives now. What terrifies us doesn’t change so much from decade to decade or from one person to another. The fundamental fear we have to work with is the fear of losing ourselves. When the stronghold of ego is threatened, fear is one of our strongest defense mechanisms. Beginning to dismantle it is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves or others.

In this volume, Chögyam Trungpa uses the image of the warrior to describe the attitude we can take to invoke fearlessness and bravery in our spiritual practice and in our lives. Rinpoche realized that the secular and the religious would have to be more fully joined in modern spirituality, if spirituality were to truly serve the needs of this time. This is reflected here in his use of the imagery of Shambhala, a mythical country of enlightened citizens ruled by benevolent monarchs. Shambhala is a symbol of the aspiration to build a good society. It also emphasizes the importance of completely engaging with our everyday life. By speaking of the power of the Shambhala world, he is in part pointing to how working with the worldly, ordinary aspects of life can have a transcendent dimension, showing us that the world as it is contains dignity and beauty.

Chögyam Trungpa discusses many levels of working with fear, including how to engage properly with the most extreme situations, such as having to fight an actual enemy, not just an obstacle in your mind. The times we live in seem to call for the kind of gut-level bravery that he exemplified. Having worked with particularly difficult situations in life, he understood reallife challenges. He does not shy away from discussing such situations here. At the same time, he also talks about how each moment can be the opportunity to awaken confidence, through seeing the sacredness of everyday life. This too is a powerful antidote to fear and anxiety. One of the truly remarkable characteristics of his approach is that it steadfastly rejects aggression as a strategy for overcoming obstacles. A deep and powerful well of gentleness is the basis for the bravery of the Shambhala warrior, the practitioner who wants to fully engage life without arrogance or aggression. When we are threatened, it is all too easy to react with anger. When we’re hit, we want to hit back. Rinpoche shows us alternatives that are powerful without being destructive. This is wisdom we need.

At the same time, these teachings are not just hard-hitting but also heartfelt. They emphasize our connection with the heart of the teachings, which we could say is both the heart of the Buddha and the heart of Shambhala. Love is immensely powerful, as we all know. Chögyam Trungpa describes a connection to tenderheartedness and sadness as the energy that powers the development of true human bravery or warriorship, returning to this topic over and over again. Unifying softness and toughness as part of the warrior’s path is also a key element. Over and over again, he recommends the discipline of meditation as the key to unlocking this potential.

In the end, this is a book about being genuine, being fully human. If we are willing to be vulnerable, from that vulnerability we can also discover invincibility. Having nothing to lose, we cannot be defeated. Having nothing to fear, we cannot be conquered.

May you enjoy this journey through fear and fearlessness. May it give rise to genuine bravery. May it bring you the smile of fearlessness. May it help to bring peace and prosperity to this world.

Carolyn Rose Gimian

Halifax, Nova Scotia

1

Facing Yourself

O
UR SUBJECT MATTER
is warriorship. Anyone who is interested in hearing the truth, which in Buddhism we call the dharma; anyone who is interested in finding out about him-or herself; and anyone who is interested in practicing meditation is basically a warrior. Many approaches to spirituality and to life in general are influenced by cowardice. If you are afraid of seeing yourself, you may use spirituality or religion as a way of looking at yourself without seeing anything about yourself at all. When people are embarrassed by themselves, there is no fearlessness involved. However, if someone is willing to look at himself or herself, to explore and practice wakefulness on the spot, he or she is a warrior.

“Warrior” here is a translation of the Tibetan word
pawo
.
Pa
means “brave,” and
wo
makes it “a person who is brave.” The warrior tradition we are discussing is a tradition of bravery. You might have the idea of a warrior as someone who wages war. But in this case, we are not talking about warriors as those who engage in warfare. Warriorship here refers to fundamental bravery and fearlessness.

Warriorship is based on overcoming cowardice and our sense of being wounded. If we feel fundamentally wounded, we may be afraid that somebody is going to put stitches in us to heal our wound. Or maybe we have already had the stitches put in, but we dare not let anyone take them out. The approach of the warrior is to face all those situations of fear or cowardice. The general goal of warriorship is to have no fear. But the ground of warriorship is fear itself. In order to be fearless, first we have to find out what fear is.

Fear is nervousness; fear is anxiety; fear is a sense of inadequacy, a feeling that we may not be able to deal with the challenges of everyday life at all. We feel that life is overwhelming. People may use tranquilizers or yoga to suppress their fear: they just try to float through life. They may take occasional breaks to go to Starbucks or the mall. We have all sorts of gimmicks and gadgets that we use in the hope that we might experience fearlessness simply by taking our minds off of our fear.