Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World

When we get hooked—when we get really angry, resentful, fearful, or selfish—we start to go a little unconscious. We lose our payu—our awareness of what we’re doing with our body, speech, and mind. In this state, it’s all too easy to let ourselves spiral downward. The first step in pulling yourself up is to notice and acknowledge when you’re going u

Then his friends said, “How can you take that from him? How can you be so calm? Is it your Buddhism that does that?” And he said, “No, it’s not my Buddhism. I’ve gotten letters from the kids of guards, who tell me that when their parent has a hard day they come home and take it out on their family. I didn’t want this man to go home and beat his kid

He also had some very stuck relationships, particularly with his mother. They couldn’t stop doing the same dance. But after his cancer diagnosis, he was on the phone with her and when she said something that would normally trigger him, he said, “Mom, I’m probably going to die soon, and I don’t have time to do this to you anymore.” It all changed ov

Widening our perspective and becoming more conscious individually also has a positive effect on our society. If enough of us can really feel what we feel, if enough of us can stay upright with our vulnerability instead of spiraling down, then that will naturally lead to more people being there for each other.

As someone once pointed out to me, when you become conscious, the first thing you discover is why you stayed unconscious all those years. Being conscious means you really have to feel what you feel, which is frequently very vulnerable and raw.

Trungpa Rinpoche said that if enough people have confidence in basic goodness and our ability to pull ourselves up and be there for others, then when the challenges become great, instead of going down, society will grow stronger.

When I become aware that I’m closing down, I actually get a little excited. Here is a chance to reverse the old pattern and pull myself up! It’s taken me about eighty years to get to this point, but I know that if I can do it, everyone can. We all start at different levels of unconsciousness, but wherever we are, we can always improve with practice

all the ways in which we close down into “us” and “them.” Since polarization is the most potentially disheartening thing for me, I’ll use how I’ve been working with it as an example.

But whatever the circumstances, once we get worked up in a major way, we lose our effectiveness. We lose our skill to communicate in such a way that change is really possible. We lose our ability to do the one thing that is most often within our reach—to uplift ourselves and the people we encounter.