Comfortable With Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön Page B

himself. We might feel fear and aversion for another person without even knowing why. Noticing where we open up and where we shut down—without praise or blame—is the basis of our practice. Practicing this way for even one block of a city street can be an eye-opener.
    We can take the practice even further by using what comes up as the basis for empathy and understanding. Our own closed feelings like fear or revulsion thus become an opportunity to remember that others also get caught this way. Our open states like friendliness and delight can connect us very personally with the people that we pass on the streets. Either way, we are stretching our hearts.

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    The Truth Is Inconvenient
    T HE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN theism and nontheism is not whether one does or doesn’t believe in God. It’s an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves.
    Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. We sometimes think that Buddhist teachings are something outside of ourselves—something to believe in, something to measure up to. However, dharma isn’t a belief; it isn’t dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. We have to experience them without hope. Many brave and compassionate people have experienced them and taught them. The message is fearless; dharma was never meant to be a belief that we blindly follow. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all.
    Nontheism is finally realizing that there’s no babysitter that you can count on. Just when you get a good one then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it isn’t just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.

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    Abiding in the Fearless State
    A T A SPOT CALLED Vulture Peak Mountain, the Buddha presented some revolutionary teachings on the wide-open, groundless dimension of our being, traditionally known as emptiness, absolute bodhichitta, or prajnaparamita.
    Many of the students there already had a profound realization of impermanence and egolessness, the truth that nothing—including ourselves—is solid or predictable. They understood the suffering that results from grasping and fixation. They had learned this from Buddha himself; they had experienced its profundity in meditation. But the Buddha knew that our tendency to seek solid ground is deeply rooted. Ego can use anything to maintain the illusion of security, including the belief in insubstantiality and change.
    So the Buddha did something shocking. With the teachings on emptiness he pulled the rug out completely, taking his students further into groundlessness. He told them that whatever they believed had to be let go, that dwelling upon any description of reality was a trap. The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusions we might draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the teachings, the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in unconditional openness, patiently cutting through all our tendencies to hang on.
    This instruction—known as the Heart Sutra— is a teaching on fearlessness. To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear. Total fearlessness is full enlightenment—wholehearted, open-minded interaction with our world. Meanwhile we train in patiently moving in that direction. By learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no