- Published: September 17, 2022
- Updated: September 17, 2022
- University / College: Northwestern University
- Level: Secondary School
- Language: English
- Downloads: 30
Introduction Pema Chodrun is a Buddhist nun from America who came up with various teachings. One of the teachings that Pema Chodrun has come up with is having the right thinking about us. It can be through sitting meditation where the feeling of love and compassion for us is cultivated. It will make us move even closer to our emotions and thoughts through the right thinking. Good thinking helps create a feeling of self-love and act as a drive for us to be a loving person (Von Rosenberg 12).
Summary
Every person thinks that there is a guarantee to have a happy life. However, according to Pema Chodrun, teaching every person faces difficulty in his or her lifetime and it is inevitable. Difficulties of life like aging, illness, getting what they do not want and many more are facts. The Buddha also faces these challenges. The teaching goes on stating that what causes unhappiness is when someone wants to avoid the facts of life and try to find happiness (Von Rosenberg 15). Turning upside down enables individuals to think upside down. Pema Chodrun states that suffering has a great role to play in our lives. Suffering will motivate people to look for answers to the problems us facing. Through suffering people, learn to have the feeling of empathy for other people facing the same problem.
Through right thinking, we create the feeling of compassion for ourselves. We are compassionate on every part of ourselves that are unwanted. Compassion will create a room of relief and joy in us. It is a fundamental thing for everyone to feel happiness and in any case, when we start feeling unhappy, depressed we think that we lost something or we made a mistake (Von Rosenberg 19). When we incorporate the right thinking, we will appreciate suffering and view pain as a transformation to have the right thinking.
When someone faces pain, we always look for happiness and satisfaction rather than having the right thinking and honor the quality of precisely what is happening in your life. It makes people run away from discomfort facing them. The situation makes them disappointed and unhappy Thus, Pema Chodrun urges one to have the right thinking and view situations like this as trying to develop our inner strengths (Von Rosenberg 21). What is more important is considering the inner strength as something that is only available when we are facing discomfort. When certain situation threatens us, we need to view first how we found ourselves at the discomfort. Inner strength will help find why we are in the situation.
Pema Chodrun urges that we should accept difficult situations to transform us and learn not to run away from them. One should try staying present in the hard case and getting support from creating simplicity and warmth in us as that of bodhichitta (Von Rosenberg 23). It will help individuals to get out of delusion and ignorance so that we can view the difficult situation in a particular angle. Bodhichitta helps individual to have a friendship with every part of ourselves even in stressful situations. When facing discomfort and difficult situation it helps us create a compassionate heart relationship with every part of ourselves.
Conclusion
This teaching is important to us because it urges us to be kind about ourselves. We should have kindness towards every quality of ourselves. These conditions include having the sense of love to painful part of ourselves that we mostly feel ashamed about them. It is important because it keeps encouraging us to stick to ourselves even when we feel like failures. We feel insecure when we run from parts of ourselves that we feel ashamed of having. Therefore though right thinking we shall have peace with ourselves. Having an open mind will also help you have a connection with people who have similar situation like you (Von Rosenberg 25). This teaching is important to us because it urges us to be kind about ourselves. We should have kindness towards every quality of ourselves. These qualities include having the sense of love to painful part of ourselves that we mostly feel ashamed about them. It is important because it keeps encouraging us to stick to ourselves even when we feel like failures. We feel insecure when we run from parts of ourselves that we feel ashamed of having. Therefore though right thinking we shall have peace with ourselves. Having an open mind will also help you have connection with people who have similar situation like you (Von Rosenberg 25).
Works Cited
Von Rosenberg, Byron. Thinking Upside Down. High Ridge, Mo.: Red Mountain Creations, 2005. Print.