Tag Archives: Pema Chödrön

Three Truths and One Wish

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You might not know this about me, but I contemplate death a lot. From a Buddhist perspective, this is healthy and good. In fact, it’s one of the “Four Reminders.” Pema Chödrön describes them this way:

The traditional four reminders are basic reminders of why one might make a continual effort to return to the present moment. In your daily life, try to:

1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life. Beginning to realize how precious life is becomes one of your most powerful tools. It’s like gratitude … once you have this feeling of gratitude for your own life and the preciousness of human birth, then it takes you into any realm.

2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone. Life is very brief. If you realize that you don’t have that many more years to live and if you live your life as if you actually had only a day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of preciousness and gratitude.

3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what comes around, goes around. The law of karma is that we sow the seeds and we reap the fruit. So when you find yourself in a dark place … you can think, “Maybe it’s time to get a little golden spade and dig myself out of this place.”

4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about the Four Reminders this way:

Joyful to have
Such a human birth,
Difficult to find,
Free and well-favored.

But death is real,
Comes without warning.
This body
Will be a corpse.

Unalterable
Are the laws of karma;
Cause and effect
Cannot be escaped.

Samsara
Is an ocean of suffering,
Unendurable,
Unbearably intense.

Some things I know to be true about death (life?):


1. Truth: Grief is love unbound. When the form that we love is no longer with us, we don’t know what to do with all the love we feel. With no forehead to kiss, no ear to whisper into, no hand to grasp, nothing to hold, we are adrift, lost, maybe even angry and afraid. The lovely Courtney Putnam recently shared this quote on her blog, The Healing Nest, in a really great post, “Continuing to Love“:

We give our love to someone or something or someplace. We are attached to that love. And suddenly (or slowly) that object is gone from our sight. Where do we put the love then? We have this love with no place to put it. Grief becomes our experience of not having our love received, of not having anywhere to put our love. Healing our grief means continuing to love in the face of loss. ~ Deborah Morris Coryell, Good Grief: Healing Through the Shadow of Loss

I had never thought about grief in this way before, but this feels so true.

2. Truth: Form leaves us, love doesn’t. We may find ourselves with nothing physical to direct our love to, but it’s still there. I can no longer have a bodily experience of those I’ve lost in the past few years. I will never again smell the musky stink of Obi’s neck or touch the soft hair of his belly. I will never hear Kelly laugh or be able to hug her. And that is devastating, heartbreaking each and every time I think of it–but the love remains.

3. Truth: Faith is believing in something you can’t prove, and I have faith in Love. I can’t even explain what love is exactly. I would say that reality is anything you can experience through your five senses, and that means that our thoughts and emotions aren’t technically real, but rather a fabrication of our minds. And yet, what does that mean about love? I’m not even sure if I’d say it’s an emotion or a belief, or defined by actions, I just know that it is, and it’s the most powerful force in the universe. Love is everything.

One Wish: That you know love, even that which is unbound from form, even grief. Our life is precious, death will come, karma is real, and we will suffer–but if throughout all of that, we can know love, we can practice love, it will all be worth it.
Obi and Dexter

Learning Things by Heart

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Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

I met with my meditation instructor this past week, and during our discussion about something else, she inadvertently gave me insight into a bigger issue I’d been contemplating, struggling with.

I’ve talked about it before: I have trouble staying on a middle path. I practice and live too tight–work too hard, try to do too much, smash myself to bits–and because of that, I end up collapsing into practicing too loose–exhaustion, numbness, depression, and smashing myself to bits, (notice how I can work that in no matter what end of the pendulum swing I’m in?).

I have been on a mission to “fix” myself, to change, to break out of old habits that no longer serve me, a life-rehab, but my approach has been a lot of the same old, same old. And is it really about changing, becoming someone new, someone else? Do I need another self-improvement strategy, another self-help plan? Another diet, another book, another workshop or class?

And you, when will you begin that long journey into yourself? Rumi

The reminder from my M.I. is that instead of grasping or searching for something else, anything more, I could try sinking deeper into my practice, the wisdom that’s already with me.

For example, instead of reading six books at the same time, rushing through so fast I barely remember it once it’s over because there’s a long list of ones that I have to get to right after, I could try reading one, maybe more than once, really know it, savor it. Or instead of training to be a yoga teacher, I could remain a practitioner, sinking in and truly embodying the practice, learning the full measure of what it has to teach. Or, instead of filling most of my week with regularly scheduled blog features, I could spend more time writing, straight from my heart, exactly where I am. I could remember the importance of naps and staring at my toes. I could connect with reality.

As Susan Piver so brilliantly shared in her Huffington Post article, Meditation, Relaxation, and the Self-Help Demon, “stop, slow down, look within and allow for both your brilliance and your brokenness.”

If we are looking for or saying “yes” to one thing, we are essentially saying “wait” or even “no” to something else, maybe what we’ve already committed to, what we’ve already found, who we already are.

We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds—never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake. ~Pema Chödrön

I was rereading the above quote, and realized I should try and memorize it, make it a true mantra–anytime I feel the pull to try something new, to push myself, anytime I feel like I am not good enough, anytime I am beating myself up for some supposed failure or mistake, every time I wish I were something other than I am, somewhere or sometime other than right where I am, I could repeat it to myself, remind myself.

Or maybe the simple, gentle reminder to relax is enough?

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

~ Mary Oliver