Pema

Usually I travel with the Dalai Lama. He is the perfect travel companion and without anything else to read I will dive into his words. This time I brought Pema Chodron instead and not a book, but a book on CD. I love the way she takes Buddhist teachings that are inaccessible to my western mind and make them not only approachable but doable. She kept me company those last couple hours that felt kinda squirmy when I just wanted to be there already.

So I am listening to her "Awakening Loving-Kindness". In it she is describing attachment and how we cling to objects and people in our lives. This part felt like a smack upside the head. I recognize myself in there. So to counter it, her Buddhist teachings speak to a practice of offering in which we take the thing we cannot imagine living without and then imagine giving it away....again and again....and again. Hundreds or thousands of times to break that need to own something. And so tonight in this strange town where I feel more me than I have in a long time I begin the practice of offering.

I also loved the Bodhicitta she teaches. May you enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. Starting with myself and repeating it in an ever widening circle. Going thru that cycle just once made me feel more compassionate than I have in a while. I did not even recognize how closed I had become. Especially in the first round - that of happiness for myself.