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

breathe in again. This continues without any need to make it happen or to control it. Each time the breath goesout, we simply let it go. Whatever occurs—our thoughts or emotions, sounds or movement in the environment—we train in accepting it without any value judgments.
    Using the breath as the object of meditation supports the mind’s natural capacity to be present. But the first thing most of us notice when we start meditating is how easily our mind wanders, how easily we’re distracted and become lost in planning and remembering. When the mind wanders, the breath serves as a home base we can always return to.
    The habit of exiting, of escaping into thoughts and daydreams, is a common occurrence. In fact, fantasy is where we spend most of our time. The Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck called these flights of fancy “the substitute life.”
    Of course, we don’t have to be meditating for the mind to wander off to this substitute life. We can be listening to someone talking and mentally just depart. The person is right in front of us, but we’re on the beach at Waikiki. The main way we depart is by keeping up a running internal commentary on what’s going on and what we’re feeling: I like this, I don’t like that, I’m hot, I’m cold, and so on. In fact, we can become so caught up in this internal dialogue that the people around us become invisible. An important part of meditation practice, therefore, is to nonaggressively drop that ongoing conversation in our head and joyfully come back to the present, being present in the body, being present in the mind, not envisioning the future or reliving the past but, if only briefly, showing up for this very moment.
    To bring our attention back to the breath, we use a technique called labeling. Whenever we notice that we’re distracted, we make a mental note, “thinking,” then gently return our attention to the breath. It’s important to havea kind attitude as we meditate, to train in making friends with ourselves rather than strengthening rigidity and self-criticism. Therefore, we try to label with a good-hearted, nonjudgmental mind. I like to imagine that thoughts are bubbles and that labeling them is like touching a bubble with a feather. That’s very different from attacking thoughts as if they were clay pigeons we were trying to shoot down.
    One student said that he called the voice in his head “the little sergeant.” The sergeant was always harsh and critical, always barking orders: “Shape up! Do it the right way!” Instead, we cultivate unconditional self-acceptance. We cultivate feeling the heart. When we find that we’re labeling thinking in harsh tones, we can stop and use a kinder voice.
    There’s a traditional form of meditation that involves very closely observing the kinds of thoughts that are arising and labeling them accordingly—harsh thought, entertainment thought, passion thought, angry thought, and so on. But since there is judgment involved in labeling thoughts in this way, Chögyam Trungpa taught instead to drop all labels that characterize thoughts as virtuous or unvirtuous and simply label thoughts “thinking.” That’s just what it is, thinking—no more, no less.
    Shantideva enthusiastically urges us to stay present even with extreme discomfort. “There is nothing that does not grow light, through habit and familiarity,” he says. “Putting up with little cares, I’ll train myself to bear with great adversity.”
    But how, exactly, do we train in being present not just for the “little cares”—the minor annoyances of life—but also for “great adversity”? The Tibetan Buddhist master Dzongsar Khyentse called the irritations of daily life “bourgeois suffering.” It is by opening fully to these everydayinconveniences—our favorite restaurant’s being closed, being stuck in traffic, bad weather, hunger pangs—that we develop the capacity to stay present in the face of greater challenges. The practice of meditation