bodhichitta

I talked with my friend dL today. He’s at a rough point in his life, and chatting with him reminded me of the wisdom in one of my favorite books, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. In this book, Pema Chödrön offers endless encouragement toward being compassionate, honest, and loving with ourselves.

I think we all need practice with this at different points in our lives. In theory it sounds great to be compassionate with ourselves, but in reality we are all hard on ourselves in different ways. In some instances it occurs when we get stuck in our heads and berate ourselves for something we did or didn’t do; when we repeat a situation over and over in our minds, clinging to a storyline that only furthers our feelings of inadequacy, fear, or righteousness. Then again, being hard on ourselves is sometimes more physical; it may be something like indulging habits that are comforting and relieving in the short term and seem not so harmful on the surface (such as eating a pint of ice cream or drinking a few beers), but which can become increasingly restricting or destructive in the long run, further entrapping us in a sense of hopelessness.

Instead of being hard on ourselves, Chödrön encourages us to “take a warrior’s attitude toward discomfort” (32). She begins with the idea of bodhichitta. Here’s the basic concept: “Chitta means ‘mind’ and also ‘heart’ or ‘attitude.’ Bodhi means ‘awake,’ ‘enlightened,’ or ‘completely open.’ Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound” (4).

(We’ve all felt this soft spot that can sometimes ache like an open wound, right? The feeling that if we open ourselves up—to a neighbor, to a colleague, to a lover—if we share parts of ourselves with others, then that openness could be used against us at some point; we could be rejected or humiliated; loss, anger, sadness could overwhelm us. But if we don’t keep that soft spot open, what kinds of relationships become absent? How are our hearts hardened, as well as our actions and inactions, toward all the possibilities that present themselves each day?)

Chödrön continues with her explanation of bodhichitta by saying that the soft spot “is also equated, in part, with compassion—our ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It’s a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment—love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy—to awaken bodhichitta” (4).

The cool thing about this concept of bodhichitta is that even when we feel completely trapped in a corner or a hole that we feel we’ve created for ourselves, even when we feel our most confused, scared, hopeless, or at risk for more hurt, that soft spot is always in us. That capacity for moving beyond personal habits that reinforce the hurt and the stuckness, the ability to relate to ourselves with courage and love, without self-deception or denial or walls that protect us, that choice to practice bodhichitta always exists in us.

In one of the earlier chapters Chödrön describes something called the lojong slogans, which are mantras that “show us how to transform difficult circumstances” (31). One of the slogans she first introduces is “Train in the three difficulties.” They are “(1) acknowledging our neurosis as neurosis, (2) doing something different, and (3) aspiring to continue practicing this way” (33).

After getting off the phone, I was thinking about Chödrön’s declaration that admitting to our feelings and thoughts, especially recognizing the thorny ones that we might prefer to deny because they are painful, “is the first and most difficult step” (33). I wondered, why is it the most difficult step? Does it have something to do with a momentum that is created in taking that first step, thus making the next step a bit easier? Once we have admitted to whatever it is that is haunting us, then maybe it feels empowering to accept the urgency of the next step, to respond differently than we would if we were denying or trying to hide those feelings.

Doing something different, then, is an action or thought that interrupts our typical responses to the disruptive feelings churning inside us, which keep us stuck, feeling alienated, incapable, and unworthy. Anything different could include very simple acts such as replacing ice cream eating with singing out loud in one's apartment, or replacing beer drinking with taking a walk in the morning or writing a letter to a friend; that is, anything “that’s nonhabitual . . . that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits" (33).

And then, she reminds us that the third part to the mantra is to continue doing this throughout our lives. We must persist in “awakening our heart,” (33) responding to emotional threats without the crutch of habits that keep us stuck, walled up, disconnected. She writes, “By acknowledging the emotion, dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves about it, and feeling the energy of the moment, we cultivate compassion for ourselves.” Taking this practice further, “[w]e could recognize that there are millions who are feeling the way we are and breathe in the emotion for all of us with the wish that we could all be free of confusion and limiting habitual reactions. When we can recognize our own confusion with compassion, we can extend that compassion to others who are equally confused. This step of widening the circle of compassion is where the magic of bodhichitta training lies.”