There are certain authors to whom I turn whenever I need a warm hug or need to step outside of an immediate situation and reassess. Pema Chödrön is one of those authors. (Thich Nhat Hanh is another.) There is something comforting about finding an author upon whom you can rely when you need to take a step back.

In Living Beautifully: With Uncertainty and Change, Chödrön presents the reader with Three Commitments that will improve one’s overall sense of wellbeing. The idea that life itself is uncertain, given that as I was reading this book and am writing this review we are living under quarantine, is evident. Especially given that change, itself, makes things less certain than not. And life is constantly changing because we are ever changing (hopefully evolving).

The Three Commitments are:
Committing to Not Cause Harm
Committing to Take Care of One Another
Committing to Embrace the World Just as It Is
These fairly straightforward ideals build upon one another. After all, can you take care of one another when you are causing harm—intentional or not? And can you accept things as they are when you are resisting reality, a form of self-harm?

Of course, these are rhetorical questions. The commitments themselves are not overly complicated and yet the practice of them is profound. And it is assumed that these are practices, not something one masters perfectly overnight but commits to on a daily (even hourly?) basis. The practice of lovingkindness has a subtle quality that is easily lost in the noise of daily living. To not cause harm does not mean self-sacrificing because the self falls under the umbrella of not being harmed. Yet, self-harm is committed constantly in the hard words and judgments we often apply to ourselves.

As we learn to be kind to ourselves, this will naturally rippled out to take care of ourselves and others. Here Chödrön writes about the Bodhisattva Vow, something she goes into more deeply in No Time to Lose. She also refers to it as the Warrior Vow, a perspective I had not considered before. Sometimes kindness, when expressed to another, can seem sharp edged, like when we have to create healthy boundaries for ourselves. We can still sit with the suffering of others but we do not have to lose ourselves in the suffering.

And last but not least, acceptance as implied in “just as it is.” For this principle or commitment, I would highly recommend another of my favorite author’s works: Byron Katie. In particular, Loving What Is. Her teaching of the Four Questions and doing The Work is a practical way of applying the more philosophical ideal that Chödrön presents.

Living Beautifully is a good book, perhaps not one of her best, in which Chödrön presents the Three Commitments in such a succinct manner some of the nuances and profundity are lost. She delves more deeply into these ideas in other books. This is not to say that this book has no merit. Consider it Chödrön Philosophy 101.