Tag Archives: Pema Chödrön

Something Good

1. Why You Need to Stop Bragging About How Busy You Are from Fast Company.

2. The Not List from Rachel Cole. Rachel has a new Intuitive Eating Guided Reading Group starting in mid-May.

3. From Seth Godin: “How do I get rid of the fear?” and The bottomless pit of pleasing strangers and They’re your words, choose them.

4. Show Your Work! – SXSW Interactive 2014, a talk by Austin Kleon.

5. Here Are The 31 Best Incidents Of Irony Ever Photographed. #9 Must Be Some Kind Of Cruel Joke. from Viral Nova.

6. Jeff Oaks is on a break from teaching, so he’s writing all kinds of good stuff. For example, Writing/Dreams and April: some notes.

7. 10 Ways to Own Less from Be More With Less.

8. A Magical Miniature World Of Snails By Vyacheslav Mishchenko on Bored Panda.

9. Kids From All Around The World Show Off Their Favorite Toys In Disarming Photo Series on Huffington Post.

10. Open Letter to Dr. Oz from be nourished.

10. Mabel Magazine, “is a print magazine that is here to tell real stories about making a living and creating a life.” I have a piece in the first issue, the theme of which is “beginnings.” I think Mabel’s going to be a good thing.

11. 27 Hysterical Haircuts. #6 Made Me Cringe. on the San Francisco Globe. We all do such silly things sometimes.

12. 10 Ways to Do What You Don’t Want to Do on Zen Habits.

13. Heartwarming Thai Commercial – Thai Good Stories By Linaloved. Of everything on this list, this just might be the very best.

14. How a Rescue Dog from Taiwan and Baby Boy from LA became Best Friends on Twisted Sifter.

15. The Worst Thing That Can Happen Rarely Does from Chris Guillebeau.

16. Shared on the Chookooloonks This Was a Good Week list: Artist Rachel Sussman Photographs the Oldest Living Things in the World before They Vanish and the teeniest, tiniest.

17. A sweet Easter poem from James Broughton, “Easter Exultet.”

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!

18. being enough from Pia Jane Bijkerk.

19. Opening the Creative Channel with Andrea Scher and Laurie Wagner on Simply Celebrate.

20. Truthbombs from Danielle LaPorte: “Put down your shield and stand in the rain of blessings,” and “You will always be too much of something for someone. Be yourself anyway.”

21. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Many of our escapes are involuntary: addiction and dissociating from painful feelings are two examples. Anyone who has worked with a strong addiction—compulsive eating, compulsive sex, abuse of substances, explosive anger, or any other behavior that’s out of control—knows that when the urge comes on it’s irresistible. The seduction is too strong. So we train again and again in less highly charged situations in which the urge is present but not so overwhelming. By training with everyday irritations, we develop the knack of refraining when the going gets rough. It takes patience and an understanding of how we’re hurting ourselves not to continue taking the same old escape route of speaking or acting out.

22. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel, a practice,

Take a moment to sit comfortably. Plant your feet on the floor. Settle into your breath, slowly and intentionally.

Feel into your body as you run your mind over the content of your day – your schedule, your obligations, your desire for self-care.

Where are you craving for permission?

Let any answer that comes guide you into your day.

Let it be simple, but follow through.

Know that every time you pause, take stock, and move forward with your own spirit, heart, and need in mind, you are working to feel a little more at home in your life.

23. Watching these two old women fly for the first time is pure gold on Sploid.

24. Wisdom from A Conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Parabola, in which he says,

…if you utilize obstacles properly, then it strengthens your courage, and it also gives you more intelligence, more wisdom. Because there is obstacle, you make attempt; so have to think, have to try something. Have to try certain way; so this gives strength and also wisdom and intelligence. If you use them in wrong way, then discourage, failure, depression.

25. The Metric of More from Paul Jarvis.

Day of Rest

michoudlanetreeI am slowly learning to be comfortable with my own imperfection. It’s not easy. I want to do things well, do them right. I put a lot of effort towards quality. I pay attention to every detail. I try so hard.

And it’s not working for me. I don’t mean that I’m falling short of perfection. What I mean is that it’s not workable, not sustainable, not healthy to try so hard all the time. It’s incredibly confusing and overwhelming when every single thing matters so much.

For example, for yoga teacher training next weekend, I have to create three vinyasas, a series of yoga poses that would take about 10-13 minutes to teach. Then next weekend, I’ll need to be ready to teach one of them to a small group. This is on top of our regular homework. I have been trying to get them finished for the past few weeks, but I’m struggling. I have the vinyasas created, but I think they are too long, and I haven’t had a chance to practice teach them or even practice them myself as much as I’d like.

I’ve done less yoga since I started yoga teacher training than I have at any other time in the past six years. I’ve also been struggling to keep up with a regular meditation practice. Yesterday when I was working, I started to feel that familiar panic — the tightness in my chest and throat, the floaty feeling in my head, the tension throughout my body, the tears that are always just on the verge of spilling over.

Then I remembered the Buddhist approach to renunciation. In other traditions, renunciation is about giving everything up, living a life of lack and restriction, but in Buddhism, it’s not that at all. Instead it’s about no longer rejecting or resisting. Renunciation is about saying “yes” to our life, exactly as it is. Pema Chödrön explains it this way,

The journey of awakening—the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine—is one of continually coming up against big challenges and then learning how to soften and open. In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart, letting it touch your heart. You soften and feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition. You soften so that you can actually sit there with those troubling feelings and let them soften you more.

The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you’ve come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening.

I’ve certainly been up against my edge these past few months, (years?). As I contemplate renunciation, I look for the places where I can soften, be more gentle with myself. The first thing that comes to mind is my yoga teacher training homework, and how tightening up around that, pushing myself, being critical and mean, beating myself up in relation to it isn’t at all what yoga is about. It isn’t what practice is about.

I let go. I take a breath and come back. I start again. I soften.