Regardless of your religious orientation, the mental practice of cultivating fearlessness and compassion is to your benefit. Both traits are in short supply in the world but much in demand for individual peace of mind. Take a few baby steps and watch yourself acquire a sense of inner peace. You need not become a Buddhist but have a clear mind is a must in a harried world. Pema Chodron was introduced to me by a practising Buddhist who was also a television broadcaster when I was in the grips of taking something way too personally. Chodron once called pain one of the greatest spiritual teachers and she was right on. My experience demanded compassion towards a situation that had my ego in over-drive. She also said that "If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher".

Both these statements were true to the core and it took me a good year for both lessons to be earned and learned and gotten underneath my skin. Then I learned that the love who broke my heart elevated and matured me beyond just a year's worth of life and gave me an insight into the full spectrum of human emotion when it came to love. I had taken too personally my dear friend's pain, feelings of betrayal, incompleteness, rage, despair, and desire for retribution - which were all valid. In taking it too personal, allowing my ego to punish him for it unfairly, I was unable to be an emotionally healthy stand for his healing through a compassion and forgiveness in a detached way. Chodron's teaching as well as the Christian notion of the seven virtues in action and practice pulled me through. No one could do this for me .... I had to take and tackle the practices myself ... through starts and stops ... and heal my own wounds that were triggered. When I emerged from a year of healing there was nothing but love for the person which was a small miracle considering how much I was in fear of ever dealing with them again and no space for compassion for their own hurts. Looking back, if I could do it all over again, I would still have strong boundaries but would have approached our friendship from the standpoint of being a friend who offered an antidote to the poison of his experience ... rather than one who ran away and thus added salt to the wound. Without Chodron's practices that eventually changed my perspective I would have lost the love that I did feel from my memory.

Like Buddhism, the Catholic church offers its own remedies for the vices that erode our soul's capacity for compassion, known as the seven contrary virtues:

Vice verses Virtue
Lust (undesired love)
Chastity (purity)

Gluttony (overindulgence)
Moderation (self-restraint)

Greed (avarice)
Generosity (vigilance)

Sloth (laziness)
Zeal (integrity)

Wrath (anger)
Meekness (composure)

Envy (jealousy)
Charity (giving)

Pride (vanity)
Humility (humbleness)

I think this is a great book with many good strategies to use to help you live your life in a more mature and fulfilling way.The emphasis is on living fully in the moment and not letting yourself be caught up in the kind of thinking that distracts and causes anxiety. It recommends ways to stop using so many of the avoidance techniques that so many of us employ to keep from dealing with painful thoughts and situations. This book contains step-by-step instructions on how to meditate for insight and its calming and slowing effects.

A beautiful book for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Pema Chodron's teachings are clear and concise. This book is a compilation of her teachings taken in short sections, so it can be read cover to cover or the teachings taken individually as one wishes, one day at a time, or randomly.