Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chödrön Page B

you’re on your own, completely alone, but it’s helpful to know that there are forty other people who are also going through this all by themselves. That’s very supportive and encouraging. Fundamentally, even though other people can give you support, you do it yourself, and that’s how you grow up in this process, rather than becoming more dependent.
    4. RESOLUTION. The fourth aspect of laying down your evil action is the resolve not to repeat it. Again, this can be tricky if misunderstood: the point is not to be harsh with yourself. Don’t let an authoritarian inner voice tell you that if you do it again you’re going to get a lump of coal in the bottom of your stocking.
    All four parts of this process come from confidence in your basic goodness. All four come out of some gentleness toward yourself because there’s already a sense of appreciation. You can regret your neurosis and open. You can refrain from doing it again because you don’t want to harm yourself anymore. You can practice because you have basic respect for yourself, and you wish to do what nurtures your sense of confidence and warriorship rather than what makes you feel more poverty-stricken and isolated. So, finally, resolving not to do it again becomes a complete surrender, the last stage in a fourfold process of opening further.
    Feeding the ghosts. So far we’ve described two of the practices in “Four practices are the best of methods”: accumulating merit and confessing our neurotic crimes, or purifying our neurosis through this fourfold process. The third practice is to feed the ghosts. This involves relating to your unreasonableness. The way you relate to it is by making a relationship with it. Traditionally, you make a little torma —a little cake—and you offer it. Maybe you offer it during a ceremony, maybe you put it out each morning, but in any case you physically offer something to the ghosts, the negative aspects of yourself.
    When Trungpa Rinpoche talked about feeding the ghosts, he talked about unreasonableness that just pops up out of nowhere. Out of nowhere we are unbearably sad. Out of nowhere we’re furious and we want to destroy the place. He said, “Your fists are at your wife’s eyes.” What an image! Without a warning, unreasonableness just comes up out of nowhere—Bang!—there it is. Frequently it comes first thing in the morning, and then the whole day has that angry, pissed-off feeling. It’s the same with sadness, the same with passion.
    This sudden unreasonableness that comes out of nowhere is called a dön. It wakes you up, and you should regard that as best, rather than try to get rid of the problem. So, on the outer level, you give the dön a cake. On the inner level, you see that a dön has risen, that it has all this force, but you refrain from blackening anybody’s eyes, from acting it out, and you also refrain from repressing it. You take the middle way yet again and let yourself be there with the full force of the dön. Being there has the power to purify you. That’s a description of 100 percent mindfulness.
    Just as you accumulate merit by going beyond hope and fear and saying, “Let it be,” the same with the dön; there’s some sense of “let it be.” There is even an incantation that says, “Not only do I not want you to go away, you can come back any time you like. And here, have some cake.”
    Personally, when I read that, I got sort of scared. The commentary said that you invite them back because they show you when you have lost your mindfulness. You invite them back because they remind you that you’ve spaced out. The döns wake you up. As long as you are mindful, no dön can arise. But they’re like cold germs, viruses; wherever there’s a gap—Boom!—in they come. The dön will refuse your invitation to come back as long as you’re awake and open, but the moment you start closing off, it will accept your invitation with pleasure and eat your cake anytime. That’s called