When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

The truth sometimes hurts, so people don’t want to see it or believe it. They resist the signs and portents of the problems they don’t want to face, but the problems arrive anyway, and they must confront them whether they want to or not. People often perceive fear as a sign that it’s time to run away, but if one recognizes fear as a sign that something important needs to be acknowledged, they can focus on accepting the truth and, by not resisting it, move forward.

“When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell.”

Chödrön acknowledges a tendency, during a crisis, to think up a theory about the problem that will make it go away. Such theories hide the truth that exists in the moment and waits there to teach a lesson. The point isn’t to escape to some sort of paradise, but to arrive at the center point of one’s own life, which is always the present moment with all its positive and negative attributes. As the author emphasizes throughout the text, the present is where things really begin, over and over.

“When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don’t know what’s really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We try to do what we think is going to help. But we don’t know. We never know if we’re going to fall flat or sit up tall. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure.”

Regardless of one’s best plans, things happen, good and bad. If is one willing to accept whatever happens, only then do they stop resisting life and truly begin living it. Even “bad” things are not absolute, and if one focuses only on the negative aspects of a situation, they miss the parts that might help things get better. In a state of mindfulness, one becomes involved in all of it, participating fully, aware of all their reactions. The event stops being a tragedy and mutates into an involving and evolving story.

“Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity and the unconditional goodness of humanity, rather than meeting an obstacle or a punishment.”

The thing one can’t escape is the thing that breaks down one’s defenses, theories, and ego defenses. Thus bared, one’s real self shines through. People cease to see themselves as a description, an explanation, or a justification, and become instead who were are all along underneath, an ultimately undefinable human, alive and awake to the world. Disasters thus force people to face the world as if it, and we, were brand-new.

“So as meditators we might as well stop struggling against our thoughts and realize that honesty and humor are far more inspiring and helpful than any kind of solemn religious striving for or against anything.”

The purpose of Meditation isn’t to make bad thoughts and feelings go away but to accept all of one’s experiences. Making a big deal of the process is a way to try to sidestep the painful parts. Instead of taking the practice and the related observances too seriously, one should notice the endless stream of thoughts, chuckle at the silly ones, and continue on to the next experience. In this way, one becomes present to the endless surprise that is awareness.

“We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.”

Meditation brings people face to face with the very things they’re trying to get rid of. Ironically, this acceptance of problems, and the admission that attempts to erase pain simply don’t work, reduces the heaviness of one’s problems. When a person can accept everything, good and bad, those things take their proper places in one’s life. Troubles teach, good times reward, and people move forward with the energy to deal with whatever comes. Things fall apart, but only to reveal the next chapter in one’s adventure. Fighting to put those things back together simply delays the journey.

“But in the midst of the bitterness and resentment, we have a glimpse of the possibility of maitri. We hear a child crying or smell that someone is baking bread. We feel the coolness of the air or see the first crocus of spring. Despite ourselves we are drawn out by the beauty in our own backyard.”

Despite people’s efforts to control their world, defeat their opponents, and cover up bad feelings, their spacious minds keep interrupting, calling them back to peace. Somehow the peacefulness of loving kindness dissolves anger and fear, bringing one to the place of wholeness that people spend their lives seeking. It’s there all the time, but people rush past it.

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

By blocking awareness of painful realities, people shut off their ability to respond to the situations that crop up in life. Self-ignorance, combined with aggressive grasping for the things one wants, causes rude behavior and aggression. When one sees this in their nature, they realize that they are pushing away the opportunities for closeness that they seek. This insight offers an opportunity to refrain from such behaviors and find a more satisfying joy by expressing the loving kindness that everyone possesses in their deepest nature.

“When we’ve seen ourselves completely, there’s a stillness of body that is like a mountain. We no longer get jumpy and have to scratch our noses, pull our ears, punch somebody, go running from the room, or drink ourselves into oblivion. A thoroughly good relationship with ourselves results in being still […] We don’t overwork, overeat, oversmoke, overseduce. In short, we begin to stop causing harm.”

Sitting with oneself allows a person to experience discomfort and discover that it’s just that—discomfort, not the end of the world. People can absorb a great deal of uneasiness without panicking. Back in the everyday world, this understanding helps people to pause instead of overreacting. Many problems dissolve then and there, and the rest don’t lead to anguish and stress. Even when people do overreact, they can notice that, too, and the drama calms down.

“If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”

In meditation, people tell the truth about themselves. When one absorbs the bad news about their life, they can stop running from the facts and begin to cope with reality. Nothing is certain, and things are always changing. A person’s job is not to resist, but instead to be responsive. The mind can adapt appropriately to the various situations that arise, but people back away in alarm and miss the opportunities to embrace changes in the world.

“In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.”

The author puts her finger on the essential cause of suffering—that it grows when people try to run away from their experience. The irony of anguish is that resisting it makes it worse, while accepting it eases the pain. When people stop reacting to and resisting discomfort, it becomes less uncomfortable.

“Usually we’re just swept along by the pleasant or painful feelings. We’re swept away by them in both directions; we spin off in our habitual style, and we don’t even notice what’s happening. Before we know it, we’ve composed a novel on why someone is so wrong, or why we are so right, or why we must get such-and-such. When we begin to understand the whole process, it begins to lighten up considerably.”

Though people could spend their time just being involved in work and friendships, they waste much of it judging things and people, worrying over what they don’t want and yearning after what they don’t have. Simply to notice this process is to see the futility of it; this gives people the chance to rediscover life as it is instead of as they think it should be. Things become more interesting in themselves and less sources of gain and loss.

“It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.”

The great irony of life is that the very struggle people engage in to find happiness is the one thing that prevents happiness. The harder one tries to be happy, the worse they feel. Letting go of that endless yearning opens one’s mind to a more spacious perspective. They see life as it is, not as they want it to be; without all their judgments, they become more comfortable in the world, more accepting of themselves as well as others. The world is still full of troubles, but it’s somehow less unfriendly, and one may feel a fondness for it as they grow less opinionated about it.

“We are fundamentally alone, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem.”

A recurring motif in the book is the notion that there’s no ground beneath one’s feet, nothing solid to stand on. People will do anything to avoid uncertainty, yet Chödrön argues that that’s where the real power of life is. Feeling sure of oneself dulls a person, but not having the answers permits one’s mind to be alert and open. Life is too complex to grasp in a theory; uncertainty brings with it fear but also curiosity and wonder. Certainty begets boredom; doubt generates an openness to the ongoing adventure of life.

“[W]akefulness naturally radiates out when we’re not so concerned with ourselves.”

Self-absorption is like clouds blocking the sunlight of a person’s essential nature. When one isn’t busy resisting the world, they become open to experience, and their natural good nature emerges. Judgments and fears drop away; they encounter others with the innocent cheerfulness of a child. Bad things still happen, and there may be tears and anger, but they quickly return to an open-hearted state. The clouds part, and the sunlight of one’s original self shines forth.

“[N]othing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

Pain is part of the mind’s system of teaching a person about life. Without pain, one would never learn the rudiments of physical survival. If a person resists the pain, it keeps knocking on the doorway of consciousness until finally they answer, receive the message, and learn something important about the world. Once acknowledged, psychic agonies, and many physical ones as well, tend to disappear, as they’re no longer needed.

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

The search for the good life becomes a quest for a static, consistent world, but that’s not how reality works. Instead, it’s a continuous encounter with change, and the ultimate change is death. Try though one might to push death away, it waits patiently for its moment, and meanwhile, one has effectively killed off the freshness and aliveness of experience by trying to make it totally predictable. Since the past self effectively dies off, moment to moment, through change, one might as well embrace the process and the rebirth that follows. People can get good at adapting dynamically instead of becoming perfectly static and effectively dead.

“We’re not just talking about our individual liberation, but how to help the community we live in, how to help our families, our country, and the whole continent, not to mention the world and the galaxy and as far as we want to go.”

When a person feels kindness toward their imperfect self, they quickly see that others are just like them, wrapped up in their own suffering, and they naturally want to reach out to them. This is how compassion arises in meditation. It’s not an obligation or a grim duty, but a heartfelt wish to help not only oneself but everyone. The book discusses several means of enlarging compassion, including bodhichitta, tonglen and becoming a Bodhisattva, but the essential outward-facing impulse begins with oneself as one accepts their own struggles with warmth.

“Everything is ambiguous; everything is always shifting and changing, and there are as many different takes on any given situation as there are people involved. Trying to find absolute rights and wrongs is a trick we play on ourselves to feel secure and comfortable.”

The anger one feels when someone disagrees with them is one way in which people try to control and eliminate the uncertainties of life. People also become indignant when things don’t go the way they think they should. Until they can accept the profoundly ambiguous nature of reality, they feel defensive, and they cannot be in real communication with other people.

“We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears and to caring only for the people nearest to us.”

Running away from pain causes people to become selfish. In their preoccupation with their own agonies, people can’t see that other people also are hurting. In meeting with one’s discomfort, one reunites not merely with oneself but with other people as well. Acceptance of one’s own pain thus leads to greater connection with others.

“Bodhichitta is available in moments of caring for things, when we clean our glasses or brush our hair. It’s available in moments of appreciation, when we notice the blue sky or pause and listen to the rain. It is available in moments of gratitude, when we recall a kindness or recognize another person’s courage. Whenever we let go of holding on to ourselves and look at the world around us, whenever we connect with sorrow, whenever we connect with joy, whenever we drop our resentment and complaint, in those moments bodhichitta is here.”

Bodhichitta is the open-hearted kindness and generosity that arises spontaneously when the mind isn’t defending itself, ruminating, resenting, fearing, or otherwise getting lost in anxious suffering. It’s a light that’s always on, but people cover it with ambition to prevent discomfort. Wxed and not pressuring themself, that’s when bodhichitta shows itself.

“The causes of aggression and fear begin to dissolve by themselves when we move past the poverty of holding back. So the basic idea of generosity is to train in thinking bigger, to do ourselves the world’s biggest favor and stop cultivating our own scheme.”

People’s fear of losing things makes them aggressive; giving to others enriches both the self and others and brings peacefulness. When one feels cornered by acquisitive others, they make plans and decisions to protect themselves from danger, but in the process they cut off the chance to be loving and generous, the essence of a happy life. By letting go—and even more so by giving away—people become wealthy in what matters.

“Approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go to places that scare you.”

The author quotes Machig Labdrön, a Tibetan yoga master who learned from her teacher the art of fearlessness. The things people fear block their paths until they face them, not with anger or defiance but with a lively openness to experience and a willingness to find the goodness in everything. It’s a counter-intuitive approach that removes the greatest danger of all, a fearful mind.