Pema Chodron - Getting Unstuck

“What I’ve also noticed about the few people I’ve met in my life that I consider to be completely awake … they learn to stay. And that’s what you feel- you feel this sense of eternal present. They don’t go off anywhere like we do … they just stay and that seems to be what enlightenment is. It’s the simplest thing and the most profound thing at the same time.”

Ordained in 1974 as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron is director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada and is a Nocharia or master teacher in the lineage of Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche who founded the Shambala International Organization

In “Getting Unstuck: Breaking your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality” Pema Chodron talks about breaking our habitual patterns and learning to stay in the present moment. She explores the analogy of our habitual patterns as being akin to having case of chicken pox and we, being like children are old enough to scratch, but not old enough to know that when you scratch, it spreads and gets worse. We feel this discomfort in our lives and so we scratch at it and it gives us temporary relief but it spreads and pretty soon we are scratching our whole body and it’s bleeding and we are really suffering.

She goes on to explain what happens by introducing the Tibetan word, Shenpa. She describes Shenpa as the hook, the urge. It is not a thought… it is more like an emotion or pre-emotion and then comes a chain reaction of thoughts from this feeling and we attempt to move away from the Shenpa with the habitual pattern. It is like a feeling you have when someone criticizes you. It is the initial feeling and then your thoughts come in and then you don’t want to feel the feelings so you run away from the feelings with a habitual distraction.

We do this by:

• Numbing out
• Using aggression towards self and other
• Craving: seeking comfort or pleasure

How can we break these habitual patterns? The key is to feel the Shenpa but to not react to it. Stay with the feeling while having compassion for ourselves. Meditation is key to this practice of staying with the feeling. She explains the 4 steps to breaking these habitual patterns:

1) Recognizing them
2) Refraining from strengthening the urge
3) Relaxing into the underlying feeling of the Shenpa
4) Resolve to do this again and again

The most important thing in this practice is to not judge, to not label things good or bad. By embracing our fears and insecurities instead of constantly running from them, we are able to live in the present moment and embrace our lives in a more full way. There is a freedom in this practice, a great joy.

In the clip below, Chodron explores this feeling of restlessnes and insecurity that is our natural state and shares a story on how she was able to find peace by embracing rather than fleeing it.