When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrönby Parker on TwosIt's the quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on. It's the practice of not immediately filling up space just because there's a gapUnderneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there's a fundamental groundlessnessIf we immediately entertain ourselves by talking, by acting, by thinking—if there's never any pause—we will never be able to relax. We will always be speeding through our livesBecause we have basic goodness, basic wisdom, basic intelligence, we can stop harming ourselves and harming others. Because of mindfulness, we see things when they ariseIt all comes through learning to pause for a moment, learning not to just impulsively do the same thing again and again. It's a tranformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space. By waiting, we being to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. The result is that we cease to cause harm. We begin to know ourselves throughly and to respect ourselves. Anything can come up, anything can walk into our house; we can find anything sitting on our living-room couch, and we don't free out. We have been thoroughly processed by coming to know ourselves, throughly processed by this honest, gentle mindfulness