Re: Pema Chodron

I'm very fond of her. I believe the first book of hers I came across was The Places that Scare You closely followed by When Things Fall Apart. Both books were very pertinent, very meaningful to me and where I was at, at that time. I especially appreciated Pema's direct yet down-to-earth conversational style.

The featured link in my profile leads to an article by Pema Chodron related to tonglen practice -- a very simple meditation practice that I recommend to others as a method of pain relief. I also have a small collection of her links at the bottom of this blog entry: Spirituality & Trauma. The mere fact that those links appear on that entry serve as my personal endorsement that I found the works of Pema Chodron to be very helpful during a very difficult period of my life. Here's a brief excerpt from one of those articles...

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
<font color="purple">Fearlessness in Difficult Times: An enlightened way to cope with fear requires awakening to courage, love, and compassion.

By Pema Chödrön

When I was about six years old I received the essential bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. 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 circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice. If we were to ask the Buddha, "What is bodhichitta?" he might tell us that this word is easier to understand than to translate. He might encourage us to seek out ways to find its meaning in our own lives. He might tantalize us by adding that it is only bodhichitta that heals, that bodhichitta is capable of transforming the hardest of 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 the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love. 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 ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it, we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot--our innate ability to love and to care about things--is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the barriers we create when we're afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment--love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy--to awaken bodhichitta.

Source: Fearlessness in Difficult Times</font>


</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

.