Who is Pema Chodron

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I don't know about you, but I think that is pretty cool.

Recently I was talking with a man I've known for a long time. I've always considered him to be a shy, good-hearted person who spends more time than most helping other people. On this day he was completely despondent and feeling like a hopeless case. Intending to be facetious, I asked him, "Well, don't you think that somewhere on this planet there might be someone worse than you?" He answered with heartbreaking honesty, "No. If you want to know what I really feel, it's that there's no one as bad as me."

It made me think of a Gary Larson cartoon I once saw. Two women are standing behind their locked door peeking out the window at a monster standing on their doorstep. One of the ladies is saying, "Calm down, Edna. Yes, it is a giant hideous insect, but it may be a giant hideous insect in need of help."

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves. Yet it's never too late or too early to practice loving-kindness. It's as if we had a terminal disease but might live for quite a while. Not knowing how much time we have left, we might begin to think it was important to make friends with ourselves and others in the remaining hours, months, or years.

—When Things Fall Apart

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean—you name it—to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more . . . more >>

Here's a recent blog post Sonia made on how the kind of everyday wisdom I've learned (ok, tried to learn) from Pema can be highly relevant in daily life. It includes my very favorite Pema quote.

You are perfectly normal. Those other people are way messed up.

Someone criticizes you. They criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever.

The Tibetan word for this is shenpa. It is usually translated "attachment," but a more descriptive translation might be "hooked." When shenpa hooks us, we're likely to get stuck. We could call shenpa "that sticky feeling." It's an everyday experience. Even a spot on your new sweater can take you there. At the subtlest level, we feel a tightening, a tensing, a sense of closing down. Then we feel a sense of withdrawing, not wanting to be where we are. That's the hooked quality. That tight feeling has the power to hook us into self-denigration, blame, anger, jealousy and other emotions which lead to words and actions that end up poisoning us. Remember the fairy tale in which toads hop out of the princess's mouth whenever she starts to say mean words? That's how being hooked can feel. Yet we don't stop—we can't stop—because . . . more >>

I'm a parent, a meditator, a marketer by trade and a writer by nature, a smartass and a complete goofball, an addict to systems and master of none, a being struggling with suffering and with resistance to suffering, a person who is trying to put one foot in front of the other and make as many good ripples in the pond as I can.

I invite you to come see me over on remarkable communication, where I blog about making connections and ethical business and that kind of thing.