From: When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron {Chapter 6}
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn't want to do that . It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, "May I have permission to go into battle with you?" Fear said, "Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission." Then the young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?" Fear replied, "My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don't do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don't do what I say, I have no power." In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
...There has to be some kind of respect for the jitters, for some understanding of how our emotions have the power to run us around in circles. That understanding helps us discover how we increase our pain, how we increase our confusion, how we cause harm to ourselves. Because we have basic goodness, basic wisdom, basic intelligence, we can stop harming ourselves and others. Because of mindfulness, we see things when they arise. Because of understanding, we don't buy into the chain reactions thatmakes things grow from minute to expansive. We leave things minute. They stay tiny. They don't keep expanding into World War III. It all comes through learning to pause for a moment, learning not to kjust impuslively do the same thing again and again. It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.
The result is that we cease to cause harm. We being to know ourselves thoroughly and to respect ourselves. Anything can come up, anything can walk into our house; we can find anything sitting in our living-room couch and we don't freak out.
When we've seen ourselves completely, there's a stillness. A thoroughly good relationship with ourselves results in being still, which doesn't mean we don't run and jump and dance about. It means there's no compulsiveness. We don't overwork, overeat, oversmoke, overseduce. In short, we begin to stop causing harm.
Well-being of speech is like a lute without strings. Even without strings, the musical instrument proclaims itself. This is an image of our speech being settled. It doesn't mean that we're controlling, uptight, trying hard not to say the wrong thing. It means that our speech is straightforward and disciplined. We don't start blurting our words just because no one else is talking and we're nervous. We don't chatter away like magpies and crows. We've heard it all; we've been insulted and we've been praised. We know what it is to be in situations when everyone is angry, where everyone is peaceful. We're at home in the world beacuse we're at home with ourselves, so we don't feel that out of nervousness, out of our habitual pattern, we have to run at the mouth. Our speech is tamed, and when we speak, it communicates. We don't waste the gift of speech in expressing our neurosis.
Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and uncersatnd how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down and notice.