Author: Pema Chödrön
Year published: 2003
Category: Adult nonfiction
Pages: 222 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA
Summary: This book offers short, stand-alone readings designed to help us cultivate compassion and awareness amid the challenges of daily living. More than a collection of thoughts for the day, Comfortable with Uncertainty offers a progressive program of spiritual study, leading the reader through essential concepts, themes, and practices on the Buddhist path.
Comfortable with Uncertainty does not assume prior knowledge of Buddhist thought or practice, making it a perfect introduction to Chödrön's teaching. It features the most essential and stirring passages from Chödrön's previous books, exploring topics such as lovingkindness, meditation, mindfulness, "nowness," letting go, and working with fear and other painful emotions. Through the course of this book, readers will learn practical methods for heightening awareness and overcoming habitual patterns that block compassion.
Review: This is not my usual sort of reading. When my virtual book group got together last month in Phoenix, we did a blind book exchange (wrap the book and describe it in three words), and I came away with this book. I was looking forward to reading it.
This is the sort of book that you can read over a long time since each chapter is only one page long and is self-contained. Think of the chapters as nuggets of wisdom, something to consider and mull over as you go through your day. Some of them held no meaning for me (especially the ones that were deeper into Buddhism), and others hit me just right.
Two that made me pause were #3: Comfortable with uncertainty and #59: Nowness. In some ways, I realize they are related. If we focus on the now, not looking back or forward, but how we feel and think in this moment, we may need to confront our uncertainty. These were good for me to read since I feel like I am always looking forward to what is coming and seeing if I can control it, make it comfortable for me and others.
Paying attention to the moment that I am in seems like a good thing for me to do more often.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Author)--C
- Alphabet (Title)--C
- Nonfiction--How to...
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