"Start Where You Are"
By Pema Chodron


"Start where you are" shows us how to learn to live and be at peace with everything, no matter if there is a good or bad situation, and no matter the point of life at which we are.

Pema Chodron teaches that you can start now; you can start where you are. We can work with what comes along, rather than struggling against it.

The subtitle of this book is "How to accept yourself and others", and in this sense, only when we confront our own fears and we open ourselves are we really able to be there and open for others.

This book is based on Buddhist teachings, and therefore it has a gentle approach to our dealing with life.

Lighten up

The core message of this book is that we can lighten up; "there's no big deal":

"With our minds we make a big deal out of ourselves, out of our pain, and out of our problems."

We can then look at ourselves and others compassionately, as there's no use in being harsh with ourselves.

Meditation techniques

"Start where you are" also includes types of meditation techniques, like the lojong practice and the shamatha-vipashyana meditation.

One of the techniques explained is tonglen, which is also explained in The Dalai Lama's book "The art of happiness". This practice means to breath in a painful situation, yours or someone else's, and breath it out with peace.

Slogans

This book gets its message across with slogans. These are short sentences, in the format of almost a command, to meditate on, take in and apply. These are some of the slogans that we can find in "Start where you are":

  • Victory to others

  • "Drive all blames into one", or "Take the blame yourself"

  • Be grateful to everyone

  • All activities should be done with one intention

  • Always maintain only a joyful mind

Dealing with negative situations

Rather than being a light book on positive thinking, "Start where you are" shows a logical approach to deal with negative situations. Pema Chodron suggests that we react in a different way than what we would usually do, and so the slogan "Don't be so predictable".

In this way, this book promotes patience and nonaggression.

The tool to be free

Pema Chodron suggests that we can see our thoughts as empty and powerless to be free:

"Each time you're willing to see your thoughts as empty, let them go, and come back to your breath, you're sowing seeds of wakefulness, seeds of being able to see the nature of mind, and seeds of being able to rest in unconditional space."

Going beyond, one chapter of this book deals with how we feel when we know what techniques for peace to use, and how and when to use them, yet we don't use them. The author tackles the issue of our feeling of us as hopeless or without discipline.

All in all, "Start where you are" is an interesting book that offers a different approach to seeing life: rather than going for pure positive thinking, we're better off confronting the negative situations directly, with the knowledge that whatever is happening it's not a big deal.

"When you notice you're making a really big deal, just notice that with a lot of gentleness, a lot of heart. No big deal."

Pema Chodron


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