When Things Fall Apart

Listed below are excerpts Tim found to be especially interesting.

Chapter 3 – This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher

Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors – people who have a certain hunger to know what is true – feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.
p. 12

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape – all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. … We become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain. In fact, the rampant materialism that we see in the world stems from this moment. There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it so we don’t have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine.
p. 13

Chapter 7 – Hopelessness And Death

… As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.

… Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other.
p. 40

Chapter 8 – Eight Worldly Dharmas

… The basic message is that when we are caught up in the eight worldly dharmas, we suffer.

First we like pleasure; we are attached to it. Conversely, we don’t like pain. Second, we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. We dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don’t like losing what we have.

According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites – pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame – is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara.
p. 46

Chapter 10 – Curious About Existence

…But when we recognize impermanence as impermanence, we can also notice what our reaction to impermanence is. This is called mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, inquisitiveness, paying attention.
p. 63

Chapter 12 – Growing Up

The only reason that we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
p. 76

From WHEN THINGS FALL APART by Pema Chödrön, ©1997. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com.