Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron

Author:Pema Chodron
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Religion, Buddhism, General
ISBN: 9781590304013
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2006-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Compassionate Abiding

WHEN SOMETHING we find unpleasant occurs, our conditioning automatically clicks in and we have a strong reaction. There is a practice we can do right then to help us stay present and awake. It is called compassionate abiding. Compassionate abiding provides a way to no longer invest our reactions with so much absolute truth. We can see our interpretations and our opinions as just that—our interpretations and opinions. We no longer have to be under their control, or have them color everything we think and do. Strong reactions will continue to arise, just the way the weather changes. But each of us can develop our ability to not escalate the emotions so that they become a nightmare and increase our suffering.

For the purpose of doing this practice, try to connect with a feeling of aversion to something. Whether this is a smell, a sound, or a memory of a person, an event, dark places, snakes—whatever it is, use your discursive mind to help you contact the feeling of aversion. And then, as much as possible, apply the technique of letting the thoughts go so that you can abide in the experience of aversion as a felt quality. For some people it’s just felt in the body. Sometimes it’s more atmospheric. Imagine someone asking you, “What does aversion feel like?” You want to find out. Even if you can’t put it into words, you want to have a nonverbal experience of dislike.

Once you’ve contacted that, if you can contact it, then breathe in; instead of pushing the feeling of aversion away, invite it in, but without believing in the judgments and opinions about it, just contacting the feeling free of your interpretation. You can do this for yourself as a way of approaching what you find repulsive, and you can also do it with the wish that all people, who just like you are hooked by the power of aversion, could not act it out, could not become its slave. In this way your own discomfort can connect you with the aversion and pain of other people and awaken your compassion.

So this exercise of compassionate abiding, and in this case specifically, abiding with the experience of aversion, consists of breathing in the negative feeling and then relaxing outward. Then you breathe the feeling in and relax outward again and again. You could do this for five minutes or for hours or anytime, on the spot, when aggressive feelings arise. We do this for ourselves and all other people who feel prejudice and disgust and have no way of working with it so it escalates into self-denigration, into jealousy, and violence, and creates endless suffering all over the world.

We contact the aversion, experiencing it as fully as possible as we breathe in, and then we relax as we breathe out. We let the feeling be a basis for compassion, and also—gradually, over time—we realize that it’s like a phantom; when we stay with it in this way, the aversion dissolves; it’s

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