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Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa and resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America. She is the author of numerous best-selling books, including When Things Fall Apart, Living Beautifully, and Welcoming the Unwelcome.

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The Places That Scare You

Shambhala Publications

Chapter One

The Excellence
of Bodhichitta

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.

?ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

                       When I was about six years old I receivedthe essential bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in thesun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved,and mad, kicking anything I could find. Laughing, she said to me,"Little girl, don't you go letting life harden your heart."

    Right there, I received this pith instruction: we can let the circumstancesof our lives harden us so that we become increasinglyresentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make uskinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

    If we were to ask the Buddha, "What is bodhichitta?" he mighttell us that this word is easier to understand than to translate. Hemight encourage us to seek out ways to find its meaning in our ownlives. He might tantalize us by adding that it is only bodhichittathat heals, that bodhichitta is capable of transforming the hardestof hearts and the most prejudiced and fearful of minds.

    Chitta means "mind" and also "heart" or "attitude." Bodhi means"awake," "enlightened," or "completely open." Sometimes thecompletely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the softspot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It isequated, in part, with our ability to love. Even the cruelest peoplehave this soft spot. Even the most vicious animals love their offspring.As Trungpa Rinpoche put it, "Everybody loves something,even if it's only tortillas."

    Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion?our abilityto feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing itwe continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us.We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, andstrategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. Thesewalls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving,indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunatelyfor us, the soft spot?our innate ability to love and to careabout things?is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a naturalopening in the barriers we create when we're afraid. With practicewe can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerablemoment?love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment,inadequacy?to awaken bodhichitta.

    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 hardnessof that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. Thisis our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heartof sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us whenwe're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens uswhen we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. Thiscontinual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fullycan be shared with all.

    The Buddha said that we are never separated from enlightenment.Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are never alienatedfrom the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion. Evenordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mindof enlightenment called bodhichitta. The openness and warmth ofbodhichitta is in fact our true nature and condition. Even when ourneurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we'refeeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta?like the opensky?is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarilycover it.

    Given that we are so familiar with the clouds, of course, we mayfind the Buddha's teaching hard to believe. Yet the truth is that inthe midst of our suffering, in the hardest of times, we can contactthis noble heart of bodhichitta. It is always available, in pain aswell as in joy.

    A young woman wrote to me about finding herself in a smalltown in the Middle East surrounded by people jeering, yelling, andthreatening to throw stones at her and her friends because theywere Americans. Of course, she was terrified, and what happenedto her is interesting. Suddenly she identified with every personthroughout history who had ever been scorned and hated. Sheunderstood what it was like to be despised for any reason: ethnicgroup, racial background, sexual preference, gender. Somethingcracked wide open and she stood in the shoes of millions ofoppressed people and saw with a new perspective. She even understoodher shared humanity with those who hated her. This sense ofdeep connection, of belonging to the same family, is bodhichitta.

    Bodhichitta exists on two levels. First there is unconditionalbodhichitta, an immediate experience that is refreshingly free ofconcept, opinion, and our usual all-caught-upness. It's somethinghugely good that we are not able to pin down even slightly, likeknowing at gut level that there's absolutely nothing to lose. Secondthere is relative bodhichitta, our ability to keep our hearts andminds open to suffering without shutting down.

    Those who train wholeheartedly in awakening unconditionaland relative bodhichitta are called bodhisattvas or warriors?notwarriors who kill and harm but warriors of nonaggression whohear the cries of the world. These are men and women who are willingto train in the middle of the fire. Training in the middle of thefire can mean that warrior-bodhisattvas enter challenging situationsin order to alleviate suffering. It also refers to their willingness tocut through personal reactivity and self-deception, to their dedicationto uncovering the basic undistorted energy of bodhichitta. Wehave many examples of master warriors?people like MotherTeresa and Martin Luther King?who recognized that the greatestharm comes from our own aggressive minds. They devoted theirlives to helping others understand this truth. There are also manyordinary people who spend their lives training in opening theirhearts and minds in order to help others do the same. Like them,we could learn to relate to ourselves and our world as warriors. Wecould train in awakening our courage and love.

    There are both formal and informal methods for helping us tocultivate this bravery and kindness. There are practices for nurturingour capacity to rejoice, to let go, to love, and to shed a tear.There are those that teach us to stay open to uncertainty. There areothers that help us to stay present at the times that we habituallyshut down.

    Wherever we are, we can train as a warrior. The practices ofmeditation, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity areour tools. With the help of these practices, we can uncover the softspot of bodhichitta. We will find that tenderness in sorrow and ingratitude. We will find it behind the hardness of rage and in theshakiness of fear. It is available in loneliness as well as in kindness.

    Many of us prefer practices that will not cause discomfort, yetat the same time we want to be healed. But bodhichitta trainingdoesn't work that way. A warrior accepts that we can never knowwhat will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollableby looking for security and predictability, always hoping tobe comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoiduncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it's alsowhat makes us afraid.

    Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather,this "I" who wants to find security?who wants something to holdon to?can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior'straining is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how werelate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with ouremotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?

    All too frequently we relate like timid birds who don't dare toleave the nest. Here we sit in a nest that's getting pretty smelly andthat hasn't served its function for a very long time. No one is arrivingto feed us. No one is protecting us and keeping us warm. And yet wekeep hoping mother bird will arrive.

    We could do ourselves the ultimate favor and finally get out ofthat nest. That this takes courage is obvious. That we could usesome helpful hints is also clear. We may doubt that we're up tobeing a warrior-in-training. But we can ask ourselves this question:"Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I chooseto live and die in fear?"

    All beings have the capacity to feel tenderness?to experienceheartbreak, pain, and uncertainty. Therefore the enlightened heartof bodhichitta is available to us all. The insight meditation teacherJack Kornfield tells of witnessing this in Cambodia during the timeof the Khmer Rouge. Fifty thousand people had become communistsat gunpoint, threatened with death if they continued theirBuddhist practices. In spite of the danger, a temple was establishedin the refugee camp, and twenty thousand people attended theopening ceremony. There were no lectures or prayers but simplycontinuous chanting of one of the central teachings of the Buddha:

Hatred never ceases by hatred
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

Thousands of people chanted and wept, knowing that the truth inthese words was even greater than their suffering.

    Bodhichitta has this kind of power. It will inspire and support usin good times and bad. It is like discovering a wisdom and couragewe do not even know we have. Just as alchemy changes any metalinto gold, bodhichitta can, if we let it, transform any activity, word,or thought into a vehicle for awakening our compassion.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Places That Scare Youby Pema Chodron Copyright © 2005 by Pema Chodron. Excerpted by permission.
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