Comfortable With Uncertainty Read Online Free PDF

PENNESS doesn’t come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well. We can’t cultivate fearlessness without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego. So we ask ourselves, “What happens when I feel I can’t handle what’s going on? What are the stories I tell myself? What repels me and what attracts me? Where do I look for strength and in what do I place my trust?”
    The first thing that takes place in meditation is that we start to see what’s happening. Even though we still run away and we still indulge, we see what we’re doing clearly. We acknowledge our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to fortify our cocoon. With mindfulness as our method we start to get curious about what’s going on. For quite a long time, we just see it clearly. To the degree that we’re willing to see our indulging and our repressing clearly, they begin to wear themselves out. Wearing out is not exactly the same as going away. Instead, a wider, more generous, more enlightened perspective arises.
    How we stay in the middle between indulging and repressing is by acknowledging whatever arises without judgment, letting the thoughts simply dissolve, and then going back to the openness of this very moment. That’s what we’re actually doing in meditation. Up come all these thoughts, but rather than squelch them or obsess with them, we acknowledge them and let them go. Then we come back to just being here.
    After a while, that’s how we relate with hope and fear in our daily lives. Out of nowhere, we stop struggling and relax. We see our story line, drop it, and come back to the freshness of the present moment.

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    Slogan: “Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one”
    T HE MAIN THING about bodhichitta training and about all practice is that you’re the only one who knows what is opening and what is closing down. You’re the only one who knows. One kind of witness is everybody else giving you his or her feedback and opinions. This is worth listening to; there’s some truth in what people say. The principal witness, however, is you. You’re the only one who knows when you’re opening and when you’re closing. You’re the only one who knows when you’re using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you’re opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is—working with it rather than struggling against it. You’re the only one who knows.
    Another slogan says, “Don’t make gods into demons.” What it means is you can take something good—mind-training practice, for example—and turn it into a demon. You can use anything to close your windows and doors. You can use practice to bolster your sense of confidence, bolster your sense of being in the right place at the right time, of having chosen the right religion, and feeling “I’m on the side of the good and all’s right with the world.” That doesn’t help much. Using tonglen or any practice to feel like a hero, you’ll eventually come to feel like you’re in a battle with reality and reality is always winning. But you’re the one who knows.

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    Encountering the Edge
    I N THE TEACHINGS of Buddhism, we hear about egolessness. It sounds difficult to grasp: what are they talking about, anyway? When the teachings are about neurosis we feel right at home. That’s something we really understand. But egolessness? When we reach our limit, if we aspire to know that place fully—which is to say that we aspire to neither indulge nor repress—a hardness in us will dissolve. We will be softened by the sheer force of whatever energy arises—the energy of anger, the energy of disappointment, the energy of fear. When it’s not solidified in one direction or another, that very energy pierces us to the heart, and it opens us. This is the discovery of egolessness. It’s when all our usual schemes fall apart. Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity