THE PEMA CHÖDRÖN FOUNDATION

November 20, 2013

IT’S NOT AN ENDURANCE TRIAL

We might also ask, Given my present situation, how long should I stay with uncomfortable feelings? This is a good question, yet there is no right answer. We simply get accustomed to coming back to the present just as it is for a second, for a minute, for an hour—whatever is currently natural—without its becoming an endurance trial. Just pausing for two to three breaths is a perfect way to stay present. This is a good use of our life. Indeed, it is an excellent, joyful use of our life.

EXCERPTED FROM

Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chödrön, page 50

Teachings by Pema Chödrön, from works published by Shambhala Publications. Photo by ©Andrea Roth.

via .

Published on Oct 31, 2013

Keep on knowing nothing and examine the environment of your own Self.

via ▶ I Thought I Knew Something – YouTube.

▶ Exploring Uncomfortable Feelings – YouTube.

October 30, 2013

THE THIRD NOBLE TRUTH

The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves. By “cessation” we mean the cessation of hell as opposed to just weather, the cessation of this resistance, this resentment, this feeeling of being completely trapped and caught, trying to maintain huge ME at any cost. The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the path quality of that, the magic instruction that we have all received, the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather—the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.

Of course facts are real! But you live with fancies, not with facts. Facts never clash, while your life and world are full of contradictions. Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself. For instance, you complain that people are abjectly poor. Yet you do not really share your riches with them. You mind the war and sorrow next door, but you hardly give it a thought when it is in some far off country. The shifting fortunes of your ego determine your values; ‘I think’, ‘I want’, ‘I must’ are made into absolutes.

You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found. Concern yourself with your mind, remove its distortions and impurities.

Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent. Words serve their limited purpose of inter-personal communication. Words do not convey facts, they signal them. Once you are beyond the person, you need no words.” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj — I AM THAT

via Aleya Dao Interview In San Fransisco – YouTube.