Nothing to Hold On To

Instructions on mindfulness all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame anyone else, and also don'r blame ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question with no conceptual answer. We also encounter ourselves.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find that something is not as we thought. That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion---not what we thought. Love, buddha nature, courage---these are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

The path of the warrior-bodhisattva is not about going to heaven or a place that's really comfortable. Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always lokking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsara. As long as we believe there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. "Nothing to hold on to" is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies.

-Pema Chödrön

Note: "Samsara" is a Sanskrit word meaning "journeying." It is "the vicious cycle of suffering that results from the mistaken belief in the solidity and permanence of self and other."