When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics)

When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? T

language. So we would tell students to “touch the out-breath and let it go” or to “have a light and gentle attention on the out-breath” or “to be one with the breath as it relaxes outward.”

making friends with our own demons and their accompanying insecurity leads to a very simple, understated relaxation and joy.

picture—renunciation of the hope that our experience could be different, renunciation of the hope that we could be better.

“small mind.” It can also be described as sem. In Tibetan there are several words for mind, but two that are particularly helpful to know are sem and rikpa. Sem is what we experience as discursive thoughts, a stream of chatter that’s always reinforcing an image of ourselves. Rikpa literally means “intelligence” or “brightness.” Behind all the plann

Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.

Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.

If we make the journey to get security, we’re completely missing the point. We can do our meditation practice with the hope of getting security; we can study the teachings with the hope of getting security; we can follow all the guidelines and instructions with the hope of getting security; but it will only lead to disappointment and pain.

shamatha-vipashyana meditation.