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situations that may come our way in the near or distant future.
    Of course, neither you nor I know what adversity might or might not be coming—either in our personal or collective experience. Things could get better or they could get worse. We could inherit a fortune, or we or those we love could get an incurable illness. We could move into the house we’ve always wanted, or the house we live in could burn down. We could experience perfect health, or overnight we could become disabled. And at the global level, things could improve or deteriorate. The condition of the natural environment and the economy could stabilize, or disasters might occur. We never know for certain where present conditions will lead or what will happen next. There is, however, no need to be a prophet of doom or for us to go around living in constant dread. Our situation is definitely workable. By learning not to bite the hook now, with the little annoyances of an ordinary day, we’ll be preparing ourselves to work with whatever lies ahead with compassion and wisdom.

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    W E H AVE W HAT W E N EED
    I n the Buddhist teachings we’re encouraged to work with the wildness of our minds and emotions as the absolute best way to dissolve our confusion and pain. Rather than getting so caught in the drama of who did what to whom, we could simply recognize that we’re all worked up and stop fueling our emotions with our stories. It’s not so easy to do, but it’s the key to our well-being. In meditation we train in letting our thoughts go again and again, over and over, and go right to the root of our discontent. We allow the space to see the very mechanics of how we keep ourselves stuck.
    The teachings on multiple lifetimes are interesting in this regard. In this lifetime, perhaps a particular person harmed us, and it can be helpful to know that. But on the other hand, possibly ours is a far more ancient wound; perhaps we’ve been carrying these same tendencies, these same ways of reacting, from lifetime to lifetime, and they keep giving birth to the same dramas, the same predicaments.
    Whether we allow for the possibility of rebirth or not, still this kind of thinking can be helpful if it inspires us to put the emphasis on seeing through our shenpa tendencies as they are manifesting right now rather than dwelling on our painful histories. No matter what happened to us in the past, right now we can take responsibility for working compassionately with our habits, our thoughts and emotions. We can take the emphasis off who hurt us and put it on disentangling ourselves. If someone shoots an arrow into my chest, I can let the arrow fester while I scream at my attacker, or I can remove the arrow as quickly as possible. In this very lifetime, I have what it takes to change the movie of my life so that the same things don’t keep happening to me. It does seem that the same things keep coming back to trigger the same feelings in us until we’ve made friends with them. Our attitude can be that we keep getting another chance, rather than that we’re just getting another bad deal.
    For just a moment or two, pause and contact whatever you are feeling right now. If you can precede this by recollecting something that’s bothering you, that will be even more helpful. If you can contact feelings such as worry, hopelessness, impatience, resentment, righteous indignation, or craving, that will be especially rewarding.
    For a moment or more, touch the quality, the mood, the bodily felt sensation free of the storyline. This uncomfortable experience, this familiar sensation that can sit like a lump in your stomach, that can cause your body and face to tense, that can physically hurt—this experience itself is not a problem. If we can get curious about this emotional reaction, if we can relax and feel it, if we can experience it fully and let it be, then it’s no problem. We might even experience it as simply frozen energy whose true nature is fluid, dynamic, and