When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Chödrön purports that life is an adventure in exploration, but people enter it without knowing whether they’re safe. To move forward, they must face their fears to clarify their minds. To do so, people must be willing to give up safe belief systems and encounter the world without mental defenses. Buddhist practices, such as Meditation, tether one to the present moment, with all its uncertainties.

Most advice tells people how to make fear go away, but sometimes one can’t escape it, and there’s no choice but to face the fear. At that moment, fear can demonstrate in an instant “all the teaching we’ve ever heard or read” (10). By facing fear, one discovers that everything they’ve yearned for or resisted is different from what they imagined.

Chödrön describes her experience becoming director of the Buddhist retreat Gampo Abbey in Canada. She’d longed to be there, but once installed, she felt like she was getting “boiled alive.” Her long-held illusion that she was a “golden girl” collapsed, her ability to deceive herself fell apart, and she suffered constant criticism. She felt groundless.

Chödrön points out that this can happen to anyone who suffers a loss—an illness, the death of a loved one, loss of youth. Healing comes not from conquering the problem, but from accepting it and allowing “room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy” (14). Ironically, hoping constantly for heaven and paradise keeps us unhappy.

The author had her first spiritual experience when her first husband announced that he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. Chödrön remembers looking up at the endless sky, hearing the river’s sound, and sensing the steam drifting up from her tea. It was a moment of “limitless stillness.” Then she hurled a rock at her husband.

To accept uncertainty and chaos is the “spiritual path,” the “path of true awakening,” and “the path of the warrior” (18). Aggression is everywhere on the planet; the question Chödrön poses to each person is whether they will respond peacefully or go to war.

Discomforts are teachers: They show people where they’re resisting life. If one wants to know their emotional limits, they need only wait to find themselves upset by something they can’t fix. When a person is unable to accept these moments, they try to escape through means like addiction or materialism.

Every person has a different place where they reach an emotional limit. Chödrön touts mediation as a way to look at such moments without running away. Even if one can’t stand to experience their discomfort, meditation can at least help one notice that they’re retreating.

Trungpa Rinpoche learned early to explore things that scared him. Once, when he and others approached a monastery gate, a guard dog snarled and snapped. Inside, the dog broke his chain and charged at them. The others froze, but Rinpoche sprinted straight toward the dog, who promptly ran away.

Chödrön purports that the way to accept unpleasantness is to let the emotion “pierce us to the heart” (23), thus leaving one open to experience and free from ego. Meditation is a way of practicing this in relative safety; it prepares one to cope better when problems strike us in everyday life. Meditation entails noticing one’s thoughts, letting them pass, and returning to oneself. Through witnessing repressions and indulgences, they begin to decay. In their place arises “a wider, more generous, more enlightened perspective” (24).

Coming to terms with feelings is an ongoing, lifelong process. There’s always more to learn, and one can never become complacent. The purpose isn’t to achieve an ideal personality, but to become comfortable with oneself. Each moment is a teacher, and to observe it is to learn. Some lessons are profound, and some are ordinary, but all of them bring about “awakeness.”

Trungpa Rinpoche taught a simple form of meditation: to accept all thoughts and feelings, let them pass, and return to a relaxed state. He advised meditators to put some, but not all, of their attention on their out-breaths, which has a calming effect, and to notice their surroundings but not focus on them.

Trungpa Rinpoche and his instructors taught meditators to notice when thoughts arise, to name them “thinking,” and to gently return focus to the out-breath. This generates Maitri, or loving kindness, toward one’s own consciousness by noticing the distracting thoughts and accepting them without judgment.

Some meditators try to use the “thinking” label to stop thoughts, especially unpleasant ones, from arising. They then cling to any blissful feelings, as if those are the purpose of meditation. The real purpose, though, is simply to observe the mind as if one is simply gazing at clouds in the sky or waves at sea. All situations, positive or negative, cause thoughts; the meditator simply recognizes these as “thinking” and lets them go.

Chödrön acknowledges that sitting in meditation can be uncomfortable. She offers recommendations to minimize discomfort: Seats or cushions should be flat, not tilted; legs are crossed on the floor, or, when sitting, feet are flat on the ground; the torso is upright, not slouched nor tilted; palms rest on the thighs; eyes gaze several feet in front; and the mouth is slightly open and relaxed. If any of these come to attention, they’re adjusted as appropriate, and the mind then returns to the breath. “Again and again just come back to being right where you are” (34). 

Chödrön notes that people often berate their own behavior: “The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves” (36). This is when maitri is beneficial: It enables one to be friends with oneself unconditionally.

Maitri isn’t a way to pump oneself up with platitudes or pats on the back. It slips past self-deception, points directly at one’s faults, announces that they’re normal, and makes no judgments. No matter the crisis, and no matter how much self-reproach one feels, there’s always time for self-acceptance.

Dwelling on disapproval and harshness leads one to practice them. Instead, one can practice gentleness and curiosity and discover that every situation contains a “clarity” that will help them through it. The discursive “small mind,” or sem in Tibetan, constantly upholds one’s self-opinions. Letting go of that process enables a natural intelligence, or rikpa, to take over and manage things with spontaneous wisdom (38).

Like dogs that bark all night but stop now and then, sem works continually, criticizing and judging. The occasional silences are moments of rikpa. With practice and self-compassion, the barking abates, and the silences grow longer. Self-acceptance brings a feeling of “spaciousness” that expands to encompass more and more of one’s thoughts and feelings.

A childhood friend of the author had frightening nightmares about being chased by monsters. When asked what they looked like, the child realized that she didn’t know. The next time the nightmare began, she turned around bravely and looked. They appeared as drawings of strange animals that jumped up and down, but they no longer seemed so scary.

Waking up takes three forms: from a sleeping dream, at the end of life, and when awakening during enlightenment. If life is a dream, Chödrön purports, it’s ok to turn and examine the scary parts. People often respond to painful feelings by acting out or deadening them, but rarely do they just look at them: “We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds” (40).

With acceptance comes appreciation. Rather than resenting a hot or cold or rainy or windy day—things that will always happen whether one likes them or not—one can feel the heat or the biting chill or the wetness and enjoy the sensation.

Pollution, wars, and homelessness are signals of a “dark age,” according to Chödrön. Obsession with self-image, meanwhile, blinds people to the beauty all around them. Given all this, Chödrön suggests, loving kindness is worth cultivating.