“Love that only which happens to you and is spun with the thread of your destiny. For what is more suitable?” wrote Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in his timeless collection of wisdom called Meditations. I often go back to this quote to draw upon the strength it gives us to live our lives unapologetically while facing every obstacle with complete acceptance unburdened by self-pity and egoic resistance. It reminds me that we are ultimately a part of the bigger whole, an interdependent tesselation of the cosmos, an entire chronicle of perceived reality brought to fruition in this single instance, the unfathomable vastness of the present moment.

This simple, yet profound instruction written thousands of years ago is more relevant now than ever before. At the time when our world is plunged into global chaos and disarray, it’s becoming vital that we learn how to function and hold on during a time of crisis. This is exactly what American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron explores with soulful wisdom in her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. In this book, she outlines three techniques for dealing with chaos, difficulties, and unwanted events in our daily lives.

The first of these methods is called no more struggle; the second, using poison as medicine; and the third, seeing whatever arises as enlightened wisdom. The first of these techniques is directly related to our daily meditation practice. Echoing mindfulness teacher Jon-Kabat Zinn’s advice that in meditation “we try not to impose our ideas about what we should be feeling or thinking or seeing,” Pema Chodron writes:

When we sit down to meditate, whatever arises in our minds we look at directly, call it “thinking,” and go back to the simplicity and immediacy of the breath. Again and again, we return to pristine awareness free from concepts. Meditation practice is how we stop fighting with ourselves, how we stop struggling with circumstances, emotions, or moods. This basic instruction is a tool that we can use to train in our practice and in our lives. Whatever arises, we can look at it with a nonjudgmental attitude. …

It’s like inviting what scares us to introduce itself and hang around for a while. As Milarepa sang to the monsters he found in his cave, “It is wonderful you demons came today. You must come again tomorrow. From time to time, we should converse.” We start by working with the monsters in our mind. Then we develop the wisdom and compassion to communicate sanely with the threats and fears of our daily life.

The second method, using poison as medicine, is intended to train our minds to see everything that happens to us as a tool for growth, something that can change from an obstacle to the path itself. We start to use everything that occurs — thoughts, emotions, outer circumstances — to show us the areas where we live unconsciously and how to wake up and start seeing clearly again. Pema Chodron writes:

When anything difficult arises — any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful — instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close out). We would usually think of these poisons as something bad, something to be avoided. But that isn’t the attitude here; instead, they become seeds of compassion and openness. …

This poison is not just our personal misfortune, our fault, our blemish, our shame — it’s part of the human condition. It’s our kinship with all living things, the material we need in order to understand what it’s like to stand in another person’s shoes. Instead of pushing it away or running from it, we breathe in and connect with it fully. We do this with the wish that all of us could be free of suffering. Then we breathe out, sending out a sense of big space, a sense of ventilation or freshness. We do this with the wish that all of us could relax and experience the innermost essence of our mind.

The third method for working with chaos is seeing whatever arises as a manifestation of enlightened wisdom. Overcoming our habitual thought patterns of denial and looking directly at the essence of things all around us, we acknowledge that suffering exists, that darkness exists. The chaos is the basic energy, facetiousness of unfathomable wisdom. Pema Chodron writes:

Traditionally the image used for regarding whatever arises as the very energy of wisdom is the charnel ground. In Tibet the charnel grounds were what we call graveyards, but they weren’t quite as pretty as our graveyards. The bodies were not under a nice smooth lawn with little white stones carved with angels and pretty words. In Tibet the ground was frozen, so the bodies were chopped up after people died and taken to the charnel grounds, where the vultures would eat them. … Perhaps the closest thing to a charnel ground in our world is not a graveyard but a hospital emergency room. That could be the image for our working basis, which is grounded in some honesty about how the human realm functions. It smells, it bleeds, it is full of unpredictability, but at the same time, it is self-radiant wisdom, good food, that which nourishes us, that which is beneficial and pure. …

The world we find ourselves in, the person we think we are — these are our working bases. This charnel ground called life is the manifestation of wisdom. This wisdom is the basis of freedom and also the basis of confusion. In every moment of time, we make a choice. Which way do we go? How do we relate to the raw material of our existence?

Complement When Things Fall Apart, a healing read during times of uncertainty and chaos, with spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle’s advice on three powerful ways to overcome challenges in life.

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature,” wrote Rachel Carson while reminding us how to rediscover the mystery of the natural world that sustains our planet. “The assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

Whenever we go out in nature, it has a strange capacity of making us, at least for a few moments, become completely still, not thinking, and just delighting in the state of being and oneness with the universe. For our tired bodies, minds, and souls, there is something soothing and inexplicably captivating in the changing cycles of day and night, winter and summer, life and death. Life and death… Do we really know what these two words mean, or are they just mental labels obscuring nature’s wisdom?

This is what Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher of immense wisdom and insight, takes up in his nature meditation included in his sublime collection Stillness Speaks. In this meditation, he teaches us how to truly see the infinite abundance of life and witness the essence of life and death that drives forth the perpetual cycles of renewal behind all creation.

NATURE MEDITATION
by Eckhart Tolle

When you walk through a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life all around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step. Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life.

Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that the decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves. Microorganisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn’t to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. What can you learn from this?

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.

“We call spirituality a journey and speak in metaphors of travel, yet many of us never leave the neighborhood. The journal becomes the metaphor made real, a travelogue of the mind,” wrote Christina Baldwin in the opening chapter of her book Life’s Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice. “On days when I’m not sure what the journey is or why I’m on it, I can still be sure what the journal is and why I write. I can hold onto my journal, write in it, lament and question and celebrate.”

Keeping a spiritual journal is a revelatory experience. It allows us to see everything we’ve done, thought, or been in retrospect, showing us what we managed not to see. We marvel at what we were and that we now see we’re not. We look at our pages as we look at our past life, a field lit up by the sun when it breaks through the clouds, and we note with metaphysical astonishment all our deliberate acts, our clearest thoughts, and our most logical intentions. As our awareness grows, we start to see that some of the things we wrote about we didn’t even act out. We were the role that was acted. At most, we were the actor’s motions. Christina Baldwin writes:

Imagine walking down a path, participating in everything around you. You notice actions near and far, you interact with people and deal with obstacles and opportunities along the way. This is the walker: the active self. Imagine a mirror path running parallel to the path you’re walking. The mirror path reflects feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs about what is happening. This is the watcher: the reflective self. Together these two selves create consciousness: the awareness of ourselves within our own existence. … We hear the mind think. We observe our own behavior.

When we take up a spiritual journey, we gain the ability to experience our consciousness as an ongoing, intimate dialogue within the self. We become intrigued by the processes of our own minds. As conscious people, we can see the guidance available through this invisible channel of wisdom, directions that come from within. But how to keep track and make sense of it all? Baldwin counsels:

So, now imagine a quiet place from which you contemplate the paths of action and reflection. From this quiet place you can observe both the walker and the watcher. You hear what the mind says. You record what the walker does and how the watcher responds. This is the writer: the self who acts and reflects on paper. … Writing bridges the inner and outer worlds and connects the paths of action and reflection.

As we sit down to write, the blankness of a piece of paper becomes the canvas on which we paint the inner workings of our minds. It becomes our way to visualize the elusive stream of consciousness, harness our thoughts, and shape the essence of who we are. Christina Baldwin concludes:

My journal is my life’s companion. The format changes, the pens change, the contents vary, the cast of characters comes and goes. Yet this tangible object reminds me that my life is being lived on many levels; it reminds me that I need to act, watch, reflect, write, and then act more clearly.

Life’s Companion, full of practical exercises, writing prompts, and inspiring examples of spiritual journaling, will change the way you put your thoughts on paper. Writing will become your window into the interior conversation with the wisdom of your consciousness, your newfound friend on your life-long spiritual journey.

“Ultimately, the source of our problems lies at the level of the individual,” wrote the Dalai Lama in the opening chapter of his book Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. “If people lack moral values and integrity, no system of laws and regulations will be adequate. So long as people give priority to material values, then injustice, corruption, inequity, intolerance, and greed — all the outward manifestations of neglect of inner values — will persist.”

If we look at the advances in all spheres of human activity, we have many reasons to rejoice. But at the same time, beneath the layers of popular narratives painting too bright of a future, there remains a vast field of suffering, difficulties, and problems. There is no denying that our activity as a collective human body is eating away at our planet beyond a point of no return, a threat that creates unease and preoccupation for the fate of future generations. And on the individual level, all the pressures of modern life cause stress, anxiety, depression, and, increasingly, loneliness. It is obvious we are missing something in the way we’re doing things. But what is it that we’re missing? The Dalai Lama gives an answer:

The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values I mean the qualities … bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warmheartedness — or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner values emerge.

Ethics, the Dalai Lama writes, is not simply a matter of knowing but, first and foremost, doing. For this reason, even the most in-depth and refined ethical understanding, if not applied in daily life, is of no use:

Now, regarding the question of how to put ethics into practice in everyday life, it may be helpful to consider the process as having three aspects or levels…. As outlined in some classical Buddhist texts, these are as follows: an ethic of restraint — deliberately refraining from doing actual or potential harm to others; an ethic of virtue — actively cultivating and enhancing our positive behavior and inner values; and an ethic of altruism — dedicating our lives, genuinely and selflessly, to the welfare of others.

If we want these three stages to be effective, we must consider them in relation to all our behavior: our actions, speech, and ultimately our thoughts and intentions. Starting with the ethic of restraint, the Dalai Lama writes:

Here, as in other areas, we need to observe the “golden rule” found in all of the world’s ethical systems: “Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself” or “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” When it comes to avoiding harmful actions of body and speech, in addition to this fundamental rule, I personally find a list of six principles from a text by the second-century Indian thinker Nagarjuna to be helpful: 1) avoid excessive use of intoxicants; 2) uphold the principle of right livelihood; 3) ensure that one’s body, speech, and mind are nonviolent; 4) treat others with respect; 5) honor those worthy of esteem, such as parents, teachers, and those who are kind; 6) be kind to others.

If we’re able to follow the ethic of restraint by not harming others in our everyday actions and words, we can start to practice the ethic of virtue by giving more serious attention to actively doing good. The Dalai Lama writes:

We can benefit others through our actions by being warm and generous toward them, by being charitable, and by helping those in need. … Benefitting others through our speech includes praising others, listening to their problems, and offering them advice and encouragement. … It is [also] useful to cultivate an attitude of sympathetic joy in others’ achievements and good fortune. This attitude is a powerful antidote against envy, which is not only a source of unnecessary suffering on the individual level but also an obstacle to our ability to reach out and engage with others.

And finally, the ethic of altruism is a genuinely selfless dedication of one’s actions and words to the benefit of others, which is recognized as the highest form of ethical practice by all the world’s religious traditions. But we shouldn’t feel discouraged if it seems like an unattainable standard of personal excellence, the Dalai Lama reassures us:

This does not mean that altruism cannot be undertaken by anyone. In fact many people in caring professions such as social work and health care, and also those in teaching, are involved in the pursuit of this third level of ethics. … Yet there are countless other ways in which ordinary people can and do lead lives which benefit others. What is required is simply that we make serving others a priority.

Complement Beyond Religion, an enlightening read from one of the most revered spiritual leaders of our time, with Aristotle on virtues as habits, and then revisit Socrates on moderation as a harmony that permeates all aspects of the human soul.