Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
“When we feel inadequate and unworthy, we hoard things. We are so afraid—afraid of losing, afraid of feeling even more poverty-stricken than we do already. This stinginess is extremely sad.
“We could look into it and shed a tear that we grasp and cling so fearfully. This holding on causes us to suffer
Note: This post was first published on Quaker Universalist Conversations, the blog of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship. It has also been republished on QuakerQuaker, and there is a substantial comments discussion appended to the post there.
During a one-month practice period (dathun) at the Buddhist Gampo Abbey in the spring of 1989, Pema Chödrön gave morning talks to encourage participants “to use the abundant material of daily life as
……As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we’re always running away from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker.
Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I
