Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

IN THE BUDDHA’S first teaching—called the four noble truths—he talked about suffering. The first noble truth says that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort. Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. All around us the wind, the fire, the earth, the water, are always taking on different qualities; they’re like magicians. We also change l

Through paramita training we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Going to the other shore has a groundless quality, a sense of being caught in the middle, being caught in the in-between state.

Saying “thinking” is an interesting point in the meditation practice. It’s the point at which we can consciously train in gentleness and in developing a nonjudgmental attitude. Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness. So each time you say to yourself “thinking,” you are cultivating unconditional friendliness toward whatever arises in your min

What it means is you can take something good—mind-training practice, for example—and turn it into a demon.

The futility of samsara. Samsara is preferring death to life. It comes from always trying to create safety zones. We get stuck here because we cling to a funny little identity that gives us some kind of security, painful though it may be. The fourth reminder is to remember the futility of this strategy.

In postmeditation, when the poisons of passion, aggression, or ignorance arise, the instruction is to drop the story line. Instead of acting out or repressing, we use the poison as an opportunity to feel our heart, to feel the wound, and to connect with others who suffer in the same way. We can use the poison as an opportunity to contact bodhichitt

We use our practice to reinforce the implication that if we just did the right things, we’d begin to connect with a bigger world, a vaster world, a world different from the one we’re in now.

how difficult it is simply to cultivate friendliness toward yourself when you’re feeling miserable or panicked or all caught up? There’s a discrepancy between our inspiration and the situation as it presents itself. It’s the rub between those two things—the squeeze between reality and vision—that causes us to grow up, to wake up to be 100 percent d

The essence of the fourth noble truth is that we can use everything we do to help us to realize that we’re part of the energy that creates everything. If we learn to sit still like a mountain in a hurricane, unprotected from the truth and vividness and the immediacy of simply being part of life, then we are not this separate being who has to have t