Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics) by Chodron Pema

Author:Chodron, Pema [Chodron, Pema]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2010-09-14T03:00:00+00:00

14

Loving-Kindness and Compassion

ALL DHARMA AGREES at one point. All the teachings and all the practices are about just one thing: if the way that we protect ourselves is strong, then suffering is really strong too. If the ego or the cocoon starts getting lighter, then suffering is lighter as well. Ego is like a really fat person trying to get through a very narrow door. If there’s lots of ego, then we’re always getting squeezed and poked and irritated by everything that comes along. When something comes along that doesn’t squeeze and poke and irritate us, we grasp it for dear life and want it to last forever. Then we suffer more as a result of holding on to ourselves.

One might think that we’re talking about ego as enemy, about ego as original sin. But this is a very different approach, a much softer approach. Rather than original sin, there’s original soft spot. The messy stuff that we see in ourselves and that we perceive in the world as violence and cruelty and fear is not the result of some basic badness but of the fact that we have such a tender, vulnerable, warm heart of bodhichitta, which we instinctively protect so that nothing will touch it.

This is a life-affirming view; it starts from the point of basic goodness or basic good heart. The problem is that we continually grab the wrong end of the stick. All practice agrees that there’s some fundamental pattern that we have in which we’re always trying to avoid the unpleasantness and grasp the pleasantness. There seems to be a need to change the fundamental pattern of always protecting against anything touching our soft spot. Tonglen practice is about changing the basic pattern.

Earlier, I referred to ego as being a room where you just tried to get everything on your own terms. To get out of that room, you don’t drive up in a big machine and smash the whole thing to pieces. Rather, at your own speed, starting where you are, you begin to open the door and the windows. It’s a very gentle approach, one that acknowledges that you can gradually begin to open that door. You can also shut it as often as you need to—not with the desire to stay comfortable but with the intention ultimately to gather more courage, more sense of humor, more basic curiosity about how to open that door, until you just leave it open and invite all sentient beings as your guests, until you feel at home with no agenda and with groundlessness.

The main thing about this practice and about all practice—all dharmas agree at one point—is that you’re the only one who knows what is opening and what is closing down; you’re the only one who knows. The next slogan, “Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one,” is saying that one witness is everybody else giving you their feedback and opinions (which is worth listening to; there’s some truth in what people say), but the principal witness is yourself.

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