67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some of Pema's best work!, September 21, 2007
This review is from: Don't Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions (Audio CD)
I have read numerous titles of Pema Chodron and this is some of her most succint and insightful work yet. Her interpretations of Shantideva's poem are accessible and applicable to anyone's life regardless of your religion or lack thereof. She has the ability to tap into all the the "hooks" that catch us and make us want to fuel the fire of our own anger, irritation etc. She illuminates the road to walk away from those reactions and explains how to not engage with those thoughts even though it is tempting to engage because of past habits. I appreciate her honesty as someone who has "been there" and her way of making an 8th century text something that applies right now. I have found myself listening to it repeatedly so that the teachings permeate my thinking. Loved it.
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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something wonderful is happening in the West!, March 25, 2009
This review is from: Don't Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions (Audio CD)
-This book represents something wonderful happening with Eastern spirituality during its exile. Gradually, teachers are finding ways to communicate deep spiritual concepts, in a way that Westerners can really understand and find the "juice". This CD deals with a fundamental Buddhist concept, "attachment". I've been aware of this term for many years, but it didn't really mean much to me at all.
-Buddhists are supposed to eliminate their "attachments", but what does this mean? Should you abandon your loved ones? Leave the healthy things in your life that you love the most? It doesn't mean that!
-Working with her guru, Ani Pema has found language to explain the concept of attachment to Americans. Our attachments are not the objects of our love, but the way that happenings in our life "hook" us. A driver cuts you off, and calls you a "meathead!", say. Within less than a second, you are in a rage. You may even "see red"--yes, seeing red is a possible human physical experience of anger. Assuming you restrain yourself from retaliating, for the next few hours your mind is a turmoil of anger, revenge fantasies, thoughts of what you should have done, self- recrimination perhaps, and a deeply buried sick feeling you may not even be aware of.
-You've been "hooked"! Deep emotional and behavioral patterns have been triggered, so fast that you couldn't dodge them. Ani Pema shows how to do the hard work of coming to terms with these reactions, so you can walk through the world doing a bit less damage, leaving a more beautiful footprint. This can be a labor of years, no mistake. But through this CD you can see clear to the end of where you're going, and start on a path you can understand somewhat, and which becomes much clearer the further you go.
-There is a Buddhist joke about a Samurai who comes to a Zen monk and asks what "hell" and "heaven" are. The Buddhist starts insulting the Samurai and the Samurai pulls out his sword to kill him. The monk says "That's hell." The Samurai experiences a moment of awakening. The monk says "That's heaven."
-Your habitual and naive reactions are a good way of understanding one aspect of the concept of "Karma", your inherited and unconsciously built up destructive behavior. Karma is not a mystical concept of "fate". In fact, Buddhists emphasize that your destiny isn't unchangeable.
-One reviewer here comments that this shows you how not to engage with these thoughts. In fact, you DO engage with them--you just don't give them complete power over you. You come to terms with your deeper self including your faults. You may feel disgust at being so subject to manipulation by events, but you can then apply "loving kindness" to yourself, not excusing your mistakes, but coming to terms with your true self as a loving parent might help you to do. Anger itself isn't bad. In fact, many times it is fully "justified", Lord knows. But losing your mind because of it is something to avoid.
-You might like to know that anger will still hurt, after you have taken most of its power over you. Buddhists are not invulnerable. In fact they must expose their tender, awakened hearts to suffering, in order to learn the lessons of their lives.
-Anger is one example of an attachment. There are many others, including the sick idea that you must never lose your loved ones, because you will then fall apart. Everything in life passes, but there is always room for love without self-deception.
- There is nothing in these CDs to offend other religions. Nothing urges you to convert to the Buddhist religion (if it is a religion at all.) Christians can practice these down-to-earth spiritual exercises, and become better Christians through doing so. I'm a Christian myself. Catholics may like to know that some of the Dalai Lama's books on spiritual exercises have received the Imprimatur.
-Intellectual understanding isn't enough; you have to practice these ideas to understand them fully. If you want to move from dry concepts to fresh, vital, "juicy" experience and deep understanding, this CD is a wonderful start.
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102 of 127 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoy some time with wonderful Pema 4+, July 22, 2007
This review is from: Don't Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions (Audio CD)
This is a seemingly extemporaneous western commentary (in front of an audience) on the 1st 51 verses of Shantideva's 8th c.
The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyavatara (Shambhala Dragon Editions). It complements Pema's recent book
No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva & (probably, since I haven't heard it yet) her
Bodhisattva Mind: Teachings to Cultivate Courage and Awareness in the Midst of Suffering 7 CD set which covers 106 verses of the text. So this is a shorter version. The 1st CD is 54:11 in 13 tracks with an avg. of 4:10 & max. of 8:24; the 2nd CD is 77:31 in 20 tracks with an avg. of 3:53 & max. of 11:04; the 3rd CD is 51:15 in 16 tracks with an avg. of 3:12 & max. of 15:52. Overall avg. is 3:53 per track. Total exceeds 3 hours, 9 minutes. The very last track is Q&A of 3 questions--practice vs. repression, medications, & crying. Robert Walker reads each verse before Pema comments on it. She believes Shantideva wrote it in response to his own anger. As usual, she compassionately teaches compassion, using humor, graphic examples (e.g. the Gregory Peck classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" & personal experiences (e.g. visiting prisons). Interestingly, she succeeds in relating lojong mind training to Bodhisattva compassion training. While much of the teaching is not new (see her other fine works) it bears repeating. It's easy to learn the theory but not to actually practice it--repetition & reinforcement can help, but mindfulness & alertness are essential.
More specifically, Pema extensively addresses "the austerity of patience" as armor against Karma, noting that humor aids patience. This helps to defuse the us/them binary mentality at the root of suffering = seeing people as "other." Rather, one can use life's difficulties to awaken your kinship with others--developing empathy. This ties in with Pema's tonglen practice--sending & receiving practice, esp. tonglen-on-the-spot (mentioned briefly here). Indeed, our anger can be our teacher (a la Vajrayana's propensity to turn poison into elixir). We can practice using small annoyances (Bourgeois suffering)--being patient rather than aggravating them by complaining--thus avoiding self-inflicted pain & negative habit-building. Rather than following addictive urges, "we are always working with our potential to be bothered" by reframing our attitude to discomfort & "finding out what intolerable feels like w/o reacting to it." As she points out, by practicing mind training, we have tools that others don't, so have patience, compassion, & tolerance for them as well as for yourself. Thus, we can develop Herbert Guenther's water logic vs. rock logic--flowing/open vs. rigid/fixed--fluidity vs. structure, resting in ambiguity. Thus, we ease our attachment (shenpa), the Hook in the title, the charge behind our likes & dislikes--even our commitment to the environment can be an obstacle (turning elixir into poison). We tend to identify with our own thoughts [my bumper sticker says: "You don't have to believe everything you think"]. Rather, per Mahamudra/Dzogchen teachings, "taming the mind is returning to the natural state of openness" & joyously appreciating the "magical apparition" (display). This is a lovely, user-friendly CD set.
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