Read Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change for Free Online

thoughts and every futile striving,” he says. “Apply the remedies to keep a steady mind.”
    When you’re refraining—when you’re feeling the pull of habitual thoughts and emotions but you’re not escaping by acting or speaking out—you can try this inner renunciation exercise:

     
    Notice how you feel: What does it feel like in the body to have these cravings or aggressive urges?
    Notice your thinking: What sort of thoughts do these feelings give birth to?
    Notice your actions: How do you treat yourself and other people when you feel this way?

     
    This is what living by commitment means. Once when Chögyam Trungpa was asked, “Commitment to what?” he replied, “Commitment to sanity.” We could also saycommitment to courage, commitment to developing unconditional friendship with yourself.
    To further get at what inner renunciation means, you could try the following practice of renouncing one thing:

     
    For one day (or one day a week), refrain from something you habitually do to run away, to escape. Pick something concrete, such as overeating or excessive sleeping or overworking or spending too much time texting or checking e-mails. Make a commitment to yourself to gently and compassionately work with refraining from this habit for this one day. Really commit to it. Do this with the intention that it will put you in touch with the underlying anxiety or uncertainty that you’ve been avoiding. Do it and see what you discover.

     
    When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years, I’ve come to call resting with the discomfort “the detox period,” because when you don’t act on your habitual reactions, it’s like giving up an addiction. You’re left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that.
    The underlying anxiety can be very strong. You may experience it as hopelessness or even terror. But the basic view is that if you can remain with the feeling, if you can go through the fear, the hopelessness, the resistance in its various forms, you will find basic goodness. Everything opens up. A poem by the late Rick Fields speaks to this process:
     
This world—absolutely pure
As is. Behind the fear,
Vulnerability. Behind that,
Sadness, then compassion
And behind that the vast sky.
     
    With this practice, this exploration of inner renunciation, we can gradually see beyond our fear-based fixed identity. When we make a compassionate, fearless relationship with the reality of the human condition—with our habits, our emotions, with groundlessness—then gradually something shifts fundamentally, and we experience the sky-like, unbiased nature of our mind. Chögyam Trungpa said that this state of mind is completely fresh, completely new, completely unbiased, and we call it enlightenment. In other words, enlightenment is already here; we just need to touch it and know it and trust it. But first we make a journey through our resistance, knowing its every nuance, its strategies and exits. In this way we uncover that awareness.
    But what happens if we break this commitment? What happens, for instance, when we act or speak in a harmful way? What do we do then? If falling into habitual patterns, habitual escapes, is inevitable from time to time, how do we return to the path?
    There’s a practice in Buddhism called Sojong that gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in terms of refraining and, when we feel that we’ve really made a mess of things, to put that behind us and start anew. Traditionally, Sojong takes place twice a month, on the full and new moon days. The day before, each person reviews the preceding two weeks and reflects: What have I done with my body? What have I done with my speech? What about my mind: is it steady or all over the place and never present? As much as possible, we explore these questions without self-criticism