Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chödrön Read Free Book Online

Whatever posture you choose, the idea is to keep the torso upright. Chögyam Trungpa’s instruction was “open front, strong back.” Strong back doesn’t mean a rigid back but rather an erect spine and shoulders that aren’t hunched. This leaves the heart area wide open and allows you to feel your heart. If you begin to slump, the heart area becomes constricted, as if you were closing your heart. So you sit upright again and open, ready to welcome whatever arises. Some people keep the torso upright by visualizing the vertebrae stacked one on topof the other. Others imagine an invisible cord attached to the crown of the head, pulling the body upward. The chin should be tucked slightly, not jutting forward.
    The hands are the fourth point of good posture. One classic position is to place your hands on your thighs, palms down. Traditionally, this is called the “resting the mind” position. Arm lengths vary, so you will need to experiment to see where on your thighs you can comfortably rest your hands so that your body stays in alignment.
    Then we come to the eyes, the fifth point of good posture. Some people like to meditate with their eyes closed, but in the tradition I trained in, we keep the eyes open, gazing softly downward about four to six feet in front of us. Keeping the eyes open is a way of cultivating open receptivity—open receptivity to whatever thoughts and emotions arise in the mind during meditation, open receptivity to the immediate environment. This aids us in being fully present and cultivating an attitude of acceptance.
    The final point of posture is the mouth . The mouth stays open very slightly. The purpose of this is to allow the jaw to relax and to let the breath pass easily through both the nose and the mouth.
    When we first sit down to meditate, we begin by running through the six points of good posture, checking each one in turn. This is sometimes called “flashing back to the sense of being.” It allows us to be present in our body as we watch the movie of life unfold.
    We can practice being present throughout the day: we don’t have to be meditating formally. The object or focus of mindfulness can be anything that brings us back to right where we are. If we’re out walking, the object of meditation could be the motion of our legs and feet. If we’re washingdishes, it could be our hands. We can bring mindfulness to anything—opening a door, washing our hair, making the bed.
    The object or focus of formal meditation is the breath. Being mindful of the breath keeps us present. When we become distracted, as we probably will, we don’t make it a big deal. Our attitude toward the practice is always one of warmth and acceptance. As my teacher Sakyong Mipham often says, we should meditate from our heart. When the mind wanders, we simply bring it back to the present, over and over again. We don’t try to breathe in some contrived way but let the breath flow in and out naturally. By its very nature, the breath is not graspable; there is nothing at all to hold on to. Our breath, therefore, provides an immediate connection with impermanence as we experience it continually arising and dissolving back into space. Using the breath as the object of meditation introduces us to the fundamental groundlessness of life and to the experience of letting go. This provides training in the third step of the three-step practice, taking a leap. Because meditation is a training in being open to and relaxed with whatever arises, it also gives us the proper foundation for self-acceptance and warmth toward others. In other words, it gives us practice in feeling our heart.
    Without straining, we rest our attention lightly on the breath as it goes in and out. Some people prefer to focus only on the out breath. Either way, the attention should be so light that only one-quarter of our awareness is on the breath, while three-quarters is on the space around the breath. The breath goes out and dissolves into space, then we