Which Way is Up? Meeting Fear with Lovingkindness in the Bardos of Everyday Life

The word “bardo” is a Buddhist term often used for the after-death experience. But it also describes the gap triggered by any unexpected crisis. The shock of illness, death, or any kind of loss can be the most brutal of interruptions. Your life’s timeline no longer makes sense. You feel vulnerable and alone. But we’re not truly alone. We’ve just dropped out of everyday life into a new dimension, a bardo-world that appears as if out of nowhere.
— Susan Chapman

Schedule

Sunday, November 17, 2024
11:00a–12:00p Open Talk with Susan Chapman (free/by donation)
2:00–5:00p Workshop with Susan Chapman (please register below)

In this workshop we will explore how the Buddhist teachings on the bardo can be a guide to keeping our hearts open when life seems to fall apart.

Susan will draw from her new book, Which Way is Up?, as a guide for meeting the bardos of everyday life by understanding three different kinds of fear:

• • Awake Fear: The first kind of fear is disillusionment– waking us up from our illusions like a loving protector. It’s time to face reality and the truth of impermanence. When we meet this fear with lovingkindness, it resolves into mindfulness and the joy of being alive.
  • Frozen Fear: The second kind of fear happens when the fog returns. It’s a dangerous but familiar habitual pattern that lures us back into our illusions. This is a time when we need to trust a loving friend who can help us unmask our toxic certainties and let go into groundlessness.
  • Core Fear: The third kind of fear is a background anxiety, the doubt about our basic goodness. We’ve been spinning a defensive cocoon to avoid this fear, without turning around and examining it. The bardo journey gives us a chance to let go of this false identity and come home to our true nature.

Susan will further explore with participants that to work with these three kinds of fear, we can look at three kinds of love:

• • Loving Presence: Being willing to be present with whatever experience we’re going through is the way to support Awake Fear.
  • Compassionate Insight: The way to work with denial, or frozen fear, is with compassion, feeling the pain of shutting down, and insight, being curious about where our ideas and opinions come from.
  • Mother-Child Reunion: Our core fears go back to the misunderstandings of early childhood when we formed ideas about who we are to stay in relationship with the caring adults in our life. Somewhere along the line we concluded that there was something wrong with who we are, “I’m unworthy, unloveable, unforgivable, unwelcome”. When we discover our basic goodness, it’s as though the loving mother of wisdom brings the lost child home, showing us our true nature.

Susan’s warmth, gentleness, and loving kindness pervade these powerful teachings. Her approach to presenting the bardo teachings is informed by her personal experiences with death which have turned her towards understanding that there is beauty and sacredness in every moment of life. The themes of love and fear, along with the Buddhist teachings on death and dying, have been her central focus over the past few years after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in 2020 and she has shared that, “the experience of chemotherapy in particular gave me a taste of witnessing my familiar body and mind dissolve into someone new. The thread I was able to hold onto was trust in the heart-instructions, to bring loving presence to fear, to let go into a bigger space of tender vulnerability, and most importantly to have a deeper understanding of what suffering means to countless others.”

Join Susan for a tender, personal, and compassionate approach to ancient bardo teachings that will feel relevant for everyone who struggles with the groundless and transitory nature of life!

A bardo is an emotional free-fall. We’ve moved into a strange new neighborhood, or we just lost our job. It’s the morning after a painful fight with our lover. It feels like a sinkhole has opened with our past on one side and our future on the other. We are refugees from the life we thought we had. Like refugees, we need to know where to find support, shelter, and nourishment. The path of awakening through fear is with love. Love is stronger than fear.
— Susan Chapman

Teacher Bio

Susan Chapman has been studying and practicing the Buddhist dharma for over 50 years. During that time she’s worked in prisons, battered women’s shelters and in private practice as a family therapist. She spent nine years in retreat at Gampo Abbey followed by 8 years serving as a Shambhala acharya. She is currently a student of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. In 2020 she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and her experience in that living bardo is the basis for her new book.

Other publications: The Five Keys To Mindful Communication  (also available in eBook format)

Please note:  When you register, you will receive an email containing the Zoom link to the workshop.