Holding Your Seat teaching

Image is of a saddle

"Living with ourselves is like riding a fickle horse" - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

But we can hold our seat.  We don't need to be thrown off the horse; the horse doesn't need to run away with us.

Staying present in present time

The message of holding your seat is "don't exaggerate".

Don't escalate.  Just stay on the dot with what's happening right now.

Synchronize body and mind.  Just keep coming back gently to the present.  Feel your heart.

- Pema Chodron
from the "Smile at Fear" audio cds

Reservoir of Trust teaching

You can trust that whatever you say or do, you'll get a response from the world.

Joy comes from realizing nothing is ever a dead end.

No feeling is final.  - Rilke

There will always be communication coming back to you.  The world will always be giving you the information you need to open.

You begin to feel that it's a very rich world; one that never runs out of messages.

A bank of richness.

A reservoir that never dries up.

There will always be communication from your world and you can always be learning how to go forward.

Trust in the richness of the world.

- Pema Chodron
from the cd collection "Smile at Fear"

Open Like the Sun teaching

Notice that you're closing, then open.
Notice that you're tightening, then lighten up.
Notice that your mind is judging, then let go.

Try to experience a place beyond solid mind.

The practice is like the sun because there are no exceptions; there is no time when you don't apply it.

Opening instead of closing.

How to do that?  That's your question.

- Pema Chodron
from the cd collection "Smile at Fear"

Mother's Day post
See 12/28/2011
Mary Oliver, Six Recognitions of the Lord, part 3

The Master doesn't try to be powerful;
Thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
Thus he never has enough.

The master does nothing,
Yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
Yet many more are left to be done.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
With the depths and not the surface,
With the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
And let's all illusions go.

- from the Tao te Ching, excerpt from stanza 38
Stephen Mitchell translation

It's as if we were poor, homeless, hungry, and cold, and although we didn't know it, right under the ground where we always slept was a pot of gold. That gold is bodhichitta. Our confusion and misery come from not knowing that the gold is right here and from always looking for it somewhere else. When we talk about joy, enlightenment, waking up, or awakening bodhichitta, all that means is that we know the gold is right here, and we realize that it's been here all along. - Pema Chodron from Start Where You Are, p.7

We can begin anything we do- start our day, eat a meal, or walk into a meeting- with the intention to be open, flexible, and kind. Then we can proceed with an inquisitive attitude. As my teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, "Live your life as an experiment."

At the end of the activity, whether we feel we have succeeded or failed in our intention, we seal the act by thinking of others, of those who are succeeding and failing all over the world. We wish that anything we learned in our experiment could also benefit them.

- Pema Chodrom

from The Places That Scare You, p. 1-2