When something or someone upsets me, I’m quick to blame. I’m slower to remember to simply sit still, with upset, anger, fear, or sorrow.
When I’m upset, sometimes I think I’m the only one who feels like I do, or who’s having the problems I’m having. But that’s never the case: everyone gets upset, frustrated, bummed out, and scared, at some point or other.
When I can remember that, and learn from it – meaning, learn from the difficult moments – things feel lighter. I take things less personally. I remember we’re all in this together, and that everything changes. I can begin to notice when sadness gives way to gratitude, and anger to compassion.
If there’s a difference between easy and easeful, then I’d say, learning, remembering, and noticing are not easy. But when I do them, I land in a more easeful place. The effort feels worthwhile.
(To the grads and to those speaking out on all sides: may all beings be safe, filled with compassion, and live with ease.)
Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 442. As usual, Pema Chodron has a powerful teaching for us, this time in Chapter 20 of The Places That Scare You – advice which she says comes from Tibetan masters of the 11th Century.
What these masters said, and what Pema shares in modern terms, is that the most straightforward advice on awakening, is to practice not causing harm to anyone including ourselves, and every day, do what we can to be helpful.
The thing is, when the going gets rough, and especially when the stakes are high – whether that’s at work in the law, or at home – what I notice is that even though I don’t want to cause harm to anyone including myself, I feel provoked (whether I’m aware of that or not), and my old friends, defensiveness and aggression, show up and cause harm. Someone offends me or does something I consider less than brilliant, I get anything from slightly irritated to outright snarky to letting fly a true poisoned arrow, before I even know it.
Pema says we should do just the opposite: when the going gets rough, she says (and that’s the name she gives the chapter), she says “we could use some fundamental instruction on how to lighten up and turn around our well-established habits of striking out and blaming.” As to the how – because it’s not always easy to do this, at least in my experience - Pema offers four methods for what she calls “holding our seat.”
The first method is, don’t set up the target for the arrow. (I love how poetic the teachings are.)
So, something provokes me. If I diagram what happens, first, the moment feels bad to me. And I don’t like that feeling – I want my life, or at least my day, or at the very least, that moment, to be pleasant, not unpleasant – meaning, reflexively, I want the provocation to stop. The traffic slows, it feels unpleasant, I get frustrated, I want it to speed up. My partner says something, it lands with a thud, I want him to take it back or apologize. Someone takes issue with something I’ve done at work, it feels alarming, I have the urge to defend myself (and probably do). I say or do something cringy (because let’s face it, it’s me I’m the most critical of), it feels terrible, and I’m disappointed in myself. Sometimes I almost can’t bear it.
And so, I get upset (frustrated or angry or aggressive or passive aggressive, or snarky: you name it) and immediately want it to change. Which is human nature and also not just human nature, but the nature of being a lawyer. We’re trained to do something, when something doesn’t feel right or sit right for us or our clients.
At which point there are two paths. One is the path of blame: I make the person or thing that feels like the cause of the upset, into the target. And I shoot. I get mad at the traffic, the partner, the person who takes issue with me, myself. Which fits right into, or maybe reinforces, the way we live our lives in the law, surrounded by conflict: we go straight into battle with the target. Things are unpleasant, we don’t want that, so we whip out our arrow, nock it, draw back, and get ready to let fly.
That’s one path. The other path is Pema’s method one: sit still. Sit in the sometimes very uncomfortable unpleasantness of the moment, the unpleasantness of frustration or fear or anger and wanting to set up a target (and shoot at it). Experience the body as it’s sending steam out of its ears.
And not just sit, but get interested in the anger, the fear, the steam. Get to know it.
And don’t argue with it. Honor that this, too, is a moment. And other than that, don’t say or do anything at all. Hold our fire. Pema says: “Remember that we set up the target and only we can take it down. Understand that if we hold our seat when we want to retaliate – even if it’s only briefly – we are starting to dissolve a pattern of aggression that will continue to hurt us and others forever if we let it.”
Second method: connect with the heart. Meaning, according to Pema, “remember that the [person] who harms us does not need to be provoked further and neither do we. …[T]hat, just like us, millions are burning with the fire of aggression. We can sit with the intensity of the anger and let its energy humble us and make us more compassionate.”
For me this starts with remembering that no lawyer has never been angry, and no human has never been angry. Even the Dalai Lama, when someone asked him if he was still angry with the Chinese for taking over Tibet, said, “almost not.” It changes things, when I’m buzzing with anger, or fear, or sorrow, to remember that learning to be more compassionate by definition excludes trying to teach someone else a lesson who’s caused me pain, and excludes trying to get back at anyone. It’s about remembering that everyone has anger and fear and sorrow and we’re all just bumping up against one another on our small blue planet, doing the best we can. The bigger the circle I can draw of humans who’ve experienced exactly what I’m experiencing, and see our common humanity, the easier it is for me to see that I’m not alone, and that there’s enough room for all of us to just be doing the best we can. Room not only for all 10,000 joys but also for all 10,000 sorrows.
Third method: see these difficult moments as our teachers. Right this minute, this anger, this person who just said this thing – the anger, the person, and the moment itself – all of them can be teachers. The invitation is to learn how to be with them and listen to the lessons they offer: lessons in how to sit still with what Pema calls, “edginess and discomfort,” remembering to be self-compassionate and gentle with myself, because it’s not easy, and also compassionate with everyone else, because these emotions, living on the planet with other people, these moments of edginess, aren’t easy for anyone else, either.
And fourth method: consider that we, others, the anger, fear, and sadness, even the moment, are all pretty much of an illusion. Sure, I’m really feeling however I’m feeling and so are you. But this “me” who is upset right now is a changeling: happy one minute, terrified the next. These emotions that feel so solid are just coming and going. So the fourth method is to consider that these moments of intense flashes of anger or pain or sorrow, whether they last sixty seconds or sixty hours or sixty days or sixty years, are still insubstantial: here and eventually gone, here and then gone.
The last thing Pema says is that those 11th century Tibetan masters who handed down this teaching? They also said, don’t procrastinate. Use the four methods immediately, today, right now. Don’t say, “I’ll try this later when I have more time….”
