Re-Reading Pema Chodron

In December, 2014, I posted a blog entry entitled: "When Lost, Return to Pema," and these past two weeks, I have still been following my own good advice.

For those of you who are not familiar with Pema Chodron, she is an American Buddhist Nun who has taught and written extensively about the relevance of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for Westerners, and often when I feel myself getting out-of-sorts, I go back to her books in an effort to settle myself down again.

I'm actually not a Buddhist, but just as I find reading and re-reading some specific Christian writers like Anne Lamott helpful too even though I'm not a Christian either, I have always found the writing of Pema Chodron to be both useful and relatable for my own path.

I've shared in this blog before, my first encounter with Pema Chodron came in 2003 when my first social work supervisor suggested I read Pema Chodron's 1997 book: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficulty Times.

At the time, as someone who had just turned 26 years-old, and had expressed zero interest in  any sort of spiritual or religious path, I had absolutely no idea why my internship supervisor would have recommended that I read a book by a Buddhist Nun.  Little did I know...

Now, 16 years later and at the ripe age of 41, I  think the writing (and speaking) of Pema Chodron has  something to offer anyone who is motivated to stop getting in his or her own way.

Of course some things have changed a bit over the years in terms of how I understand her writing, and I am no longer confused and put-off by sentences like this one on page 72:

Looking at the arrows and swords, and how we react to them, we can always return to basic wisdom mind.

But in  truth, Pema Chodron's writing is more like coming home- especially when I re-read sentences like these on the first page of the first chapter called "Intimacy with Fear:"

Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what's waiting out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it...Fear is a universal experience.

Or when she humbly and humorously describes her own struggle with everything "falling apart" when she moved into Gampo Abbey, the monastery she continues to reside in in Nova Scotia, and then concludes once again that:

To stay with that shakiness--to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge--that is the path of true awakening.  

Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic--this is the spiritual path.

[And] getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior.

I have thoroughly enjoyed and benefited from re-reading these sentences strung together by, what I believe to be, Pema Chodron's own hard-won wisdom- which happens to be the only kind that really interests me.

Perhaps you also may want to revisit the books or writing of Pema Chodron, or read her for the first time.  That way, you can check it out for yourself, and see what you see...

Who knows, you too may feel like you are "coming home" just as I did.