“As a baby learns to walk, it keeps falling down. Is this failure?” Chan Master Sheng Yen asks in a teaching featured in the book Faith in Mind: A Guide to Ch’an Practice. Failure is a necessary part of life and practice, he says. We should not fear failure, but somewhere along the way, getting back up after falling might not come so easy. We might dread falling so much that we never take a step. Or, if we do stumble, the self-reproach might outweigh the actual event. As complex and deeply-rooted as a fear of failure may be, Buddhist wisdom offers many ways to loosen its hold. Among them is acceptance, or the commitment to stop resisting and start welcoming every action, result, and circumstance as it is. And it is a commitment, because acceptance challenges the overwhelming cultural expectation that we improve at every turn. But if we can let go of the self-improvement imperative, and see failure as a doorway instead of a wall, we might learn to celebrate it. This week’s Three Teachings shows us how “failure” is an opening—to learn, to go deeper, to change direction, or simply to find freedom in acceptance. How to Fail American Buddhist nun and best-selling author Pema Chödrön, known for her many books, including When Things Fall Apart, encourages us to see failure as a portal. Get curious about your so-called failure, she says, because it’s where bravery, kindness, and compassion emerge. “It’s from that space that our best part of ourselves comes out. It’s in that space—when we aren’t masking ourselves or trying to make circumstances go away—that our best qualities begin to shine.” Being Natural In a compilation of teachings, Master Sheng Yen encourages practitioners to follow their original nature instead of resisting and questioning. Failure is natural, he says. On Failure, Despair, Our Times, and the 1,000 Arms of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion “Failure may come, but challenges can lead to greater commitment and greater skill,” Zen teacher Rafe Martin points out. “This, after all, is how the Great Bodhisattva got all those hands and eyes and mouths, too, to speak up for what’s good, and speak out about what’s wrong. It’s how we beginner bodhisattvas will do it too.” |
Monday, July 6, 2026
Via Tricycle: The Buddhist Review \\\ Why Are We So Afraid to Fail?
Via Daily Dharma: Live Without Regret
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Via [GBF] "The Path to Freedom in an Ever-Changing World" with Walt Opie
A new dharma talk has been added to the GBF website, podcast, and YouTube channel:
In this talk, Walt Opie explores impermanence, the “bedrock” of Buddhist teaching, showing us how our suffering often comes from fighting a reality we cannot change. He explains that our brains are hardwired to look for “signs”—characteristic marks that help us recognize things—which trick us into believing life is more permanent than it really is. Through poetry and the wisdom of teachers like Ajahn Chah, Walt illustrates that when we accept “the glass is already broken,” we create a “safety valve” for our hearts that prevents them from bursting when life shifts.
Walt offers several concepts to help us wake up from the “dream state” of daily life:
- Equanimity: Being in harmony with the way things are instead of fighting reality.
- Signlessness: Intentionally ignoring the “signs” or labels we usually construct from our senses, which helps us stay focused during meditation.
- Bare Awareness: Training ourselves so that in the seen there is “just the seen” and in the heard “just the heard,” stripping away the mental layers that cause us stress.
- The Present Moment as a Gate: Using the image of a simple sandwich to remind us that liberation is found by fully showing up for whatever is happening right now.
By following his lead, we can learn to be “neither here nor there,” allowing the world to catch our hearts off guard and blow them wide open.
Enjoy 900+ free recorded dharma talks at https://gaybuddhist.org/
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