when everything falls apart pema chodron

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape. If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. It is part of being alive, something we all share.

It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Writing in that Buddhist way of wrapping in simple language the difficult and beautiful truths of existence, Chödrön examines the most elemental human response to the uncharted territory that comes with loss or any other species of unforeseen change:įear is a universal experience. Half a century after Albert Camus asserted that “there is no love of life without despair of life,” Chödrön reframes those moments of acute despair as opportunities for befriending life by befriending ourselves in the deepest sense. In When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times ( public library), she draws on her own confrontation with personal crisis and on the ancient teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to offer gentle and incisive guidance to the enormity we stand to gain during those times when all seems to be lost. “In art,” Kafka assured his teenage walking companion, “one must throw one’s life away in order to gain it.” As in art, so in life - so suggests the American Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön.

In every life, there comes a time when we are razed to the bone of our resilience by losses beyond our control - lacerations of the heart that feel barely bearable, that leave us bereft of solid ground.

When everything falls apart pema chodron