Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all others behind. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.

Karma is a difficult subject. Basically it means that what happens in your life is somehow a result of things that you have done before. That’s why you are encouraged to work with what happens to you rather than blame it on others. This kind of teaching on karma can easily be misunderstood. People get into a heavy-duty sin-and-guilt trip. They feel that if things are going wrong, it means they did something bad and they’re being punished. But that’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings you need in order to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, now you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life. Your life gives you everything you need to learn how to open further.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we rest in the middle of it, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a cooling loneliness that turns our usual fearful patterns upside down. There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness:

1. Less desire is the willingness to be lonely without resolution when everything in us yearns for something to change our mood.
2. Contentment means that we no longer believe that escaping our loneliness is going to bring happiness or courage or strength.
3. Avoiding unnecessary activities means that we stop looking for something to entertain us or to save us.
4. Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back to the present moment with compassionate attention.
5. Not wandering in the world of desire is about relating directly with how things are, without trying to make them okay.
6. Not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts means no longer seeking the companionship of constant conversation with ourselves.

Instructions on mindfulness all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don’t act out, don’t repress, don’t blame anyone else, and also don’t blame ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question with no conceptual answer. We also encounter ourselves. The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find that something is not as we thought. That’s what we’re going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion—not what we thought. Love, buddha nature, courage—these are code words for things we don’t know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

The path of the warrior-bodhisattva is not about going to heaven or a place that’s really comfortable. Wanting to find a place where everything’s okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always looking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsara. As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. “Nothing to hold on to” is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies.