The World Has Changed (33 page)

 

A.W.: Yes.

 

P.C.: And the Lojong teachings say you can take that very moment and flip it. And the very same thing that causes us to harden, and our habitual patterns of suffering to intensify and escalate, can soften us and make us more decent, kinder people. So it’s a teaching for people who are willing to cultivate their courage. It takes a lot of courage. But what’s wonderful about it is, you have plenty of material. [laughter] You know, like, if it was just, like, wait for the moments of the high points, you know, then you might give up very soon. But suffering, you know, is like an endless succession.

And that was one of the main teachings of the Buddha, also, is that he called it
dukkha
, which is often translated as “suffering.” But maybe a better translation, I think, is “dissatisfaction”—and sometimes, of course, it’s intense physical pain, or emotional pain—that this dissatisfaction is inherent in being human beings. So, it’s, like, not some mistake that you or I have made as individuals. And therefore, it doesn’t really need to keep escalating. If we can learn to catch that moment, relax with it, it becomes the seed of compassion, the seed of loving-kindness.

 

A.W.: I was surprised, actually, that there is such a physical connection, that the heart literally responds to this practice. You can feel it responding. As you breathe in, what is so difficult to bear . . . there is the initial resistance, you know, which is the fear, the constriction.

 

P.C.: Yeah.

 

A.W.: I guess that’s the period when you really have to be brave. If you just keep going and doing the practice, the heart actually relaxes. And that was quite amazing to feel.

 

P.C.: One of the things that I also like about this body of teachings is that, often, when we start out on a spiritual path, we have ideals for ourselves, particularly, that we think we’re supposed to live up to. We’re supposed to be better than we are in some way. And with this practice, you just completely take yourself completely as you are. And in fact, what happens, by taking pain and beginning to breathe it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are, ironically, or surprisingly, it heightens your awareness of exactly where you’re stuck. And so, rather than, suddenly you feel like a magic makeover, that suddenly you’re this great person, there’s much more of an honesty, emotional honesty, about where you’re stuck.

 

A.W.: Exactly. You see that the work is right ahead of you all the time.

 

P.C.: And then there’s this word,
maitri
, which means then the loving-kindness and the compassion is for this self that is stuck. And then you have a sense of all the other sentient beings stuck, just like you; and so it also awakens compassion. And then, in the process, there is a kind of unstuckness that starts to happen.

 

A.W.: Exactly. Well, you know, I remember one day when I really got it that we’re not, as human beings, joined together and connected because of our perfection; it’s because of our flaws.

 

P.C.: Yeah.

 

A.W.: That was such a relief. [laughter]

 

P.C.: Alice has a dog named Rumi, right?

 

A.W.: Rumi.

 

P.C.: Yes. Jalaluddin Rumi wrote about all the shared darkness of human beings from the beginning of time, being a shared thing, and actually becoming something that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. And so, rather than it depressing you, you feel like part of the whole.

 

A.W.: Yes. Well, I like what you say about the darkness—beginning to understand that the darkness represents your wealth. Because that’s true. I mean, in our culture, and in the world, there’s been so much fixation on the light, as if the darkness can be dispensed with. And of course, it cannot. I mean, after all, there is night. You know? There is earth. So this is a wonderful acknowledgment of the richness.

So when I was listening to
Awakening Compassion
over and over—

 

P.C.: For one year, really?

 

A.W.: For a year.

 

P.C.: And then, when you wrote me the letter, I think you said, “Dear Pema,” and you explained how you were lying on your sofa, and you were listening. By that time, I don’t think the year was up yet, so I didn’t get the whole picture. But then you said something like, “I write poems,” or something.

 

A.W.: Yes.

 

P.C.: And then you signed it, “Alice,” I think, or something. But at the top of it, it said, “Alice Walker.” And I get a lot of letters, which you probably do, too.

 

A.W.: Yeah.

 

P.C.: You know, like fifty a day or something. So, I’m just writing back this answer. And then I said, “Alice Walker!” [laughter] And I think when I wrote back, I said, “P.S. Are you
the
Alice Walker?” [laughter]

 

A.W.: Yeah.

 

P.C.: “In which case, I am also a fan of yours.”

 

A.W.: But actually, you know, when it gets to a certain degree of misery, you know, I think the Jamaicans are right to just call each other “fellow sufferer,” you know, or “the sufferer.”

 

P.C.: Right.

 

A.W.: Because that’s really how it feels. And when you are in that place, it is just an incredible gift to be given a teaching. I mean, I never knew a thing about Tibetan Buddhism. And I always liked Zen poetry, and I read a lot of Japanese poetry. And I had never really felt that I had an affinity for specific teachings. I mean, I didn’t know them well enough. And what I particularly treasured was that you were so real. And, I think it was in this set of tapes, where you talk about when you discovered that your husband was seeing someone else. You threw a rock at him. [laughter] This was very helpful. [laughter] Because, you know, we aren’t angels; we aren’t saints. And we’re all down here, doing the best we can and trying to be good people. But we do get really mad. And so, this was really good, to have a very human, humorous, earthy, real person as a teacher. This was great.

 

P.C.: You know, it was when that marriage broke up—and that was one of those traumatizing experiences. For some reason—I don’t know why it devastated me so much, but it was really a kind of annihilation. And it was the beginning of my spiritual path, definitely, because I was looking for answers.

And so, I had the same experience. I was in the lowest point of my life, and I read this article by Trungpa Rinpoche, which was the same kind of thing. Because this was called “Working with Negativity.” That was what I was looking for—answers. I was looking for answers to my anger, which scared me a lot. I kept having all these fantasies of destroying my ex-husband and his new girlfriend. And they were, like, hard to shake.

 

A.W.: Yes. [laughter]

 

P.C.: So there was rage, and then there was also an enormous sense of groundlessness, and the fear that accompanied not being able to entertain myself out of this pain. Like, the usual exits, the ways of kind of distracting yourself—nothing was working.

 

A.W.: Nothing worked.

 

P.C.: So, when I read Rinpoche, what he basically said, he said there’s nothing wrong with negativity. He said there’s a lot that you can learn from it. But it’s a very strong creative energy. And then he said the
problem is
negative
negativity—which is, like, you don’t just stay with negativity; you spin off into all the endless cycle of things that you say to yourself about it. You know?

 

A.W.: Yeah. I’m happy you said that. Because that was a new idea—that what gets us is the spinoff. You know, that if you can just sit with the basic feeling, and breathe that through, then you can free yourself. But it’s almost impossible if you’re just caught up in one drama after another, mentally.

 

P.C.: That’s right. That’s right.

 

A.W.: Which is what happens.

 

P.C.: See, that’s essential with Tibetan Buddhism, the tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism. For instance, because in Vajrayana Buddhism, they talk about how each of the powerful, negative—we call negative—energies, such as anger, say, and lust, and envy, and jealousy, these different energies, how they actually are all wisdoms in disguise. But you have to not spin off. You have to be able to relax with the energy.

So, for me, tonglen, that practice of breathing in, it was my entering into being able, for the first time, to sit with that kind of energy. Because it’s so impossible. It seems so impossible to do so, to not spin off. For me, a lot of it was including all the other people, recognizing that so many people were in the same boat as I was.

 

A.W.: Well, pretty soon, you do recognize that, you know, everybody is in that boat sooner or later, in some form or other. And that’s good to feel—that you’re not alone.

 

P.C.: I wanted to ask you something about this. And this is a question about joy. So, it’s all very well to talk about a poison as medicine, and breathing in the suffering, and sending out relief, and so forth. But did you find any joy coming out of this?

 

A.W.: Well, yes. Just not to be so miserable. And I think part of the joyousness is just to know that we have help. It was incredibly great to know that this wisdom is so old. It’s very old. Which means that people
have had all this pain for a long time, and they’ve been dealing with it. And they were foresighted enough to try to leave it for us to use. And this was very good to know.

I am often supported by spirits and ancestors and, you know, the people of my tribe, whoever they’ve been and however long ago it’s been. So it was like having another tribe of people, of ancestors, come to the rescue, with this wisdom that came through you, and through your way of teaching.

 

P.C.: And these teachings, actually, they came to Tibet through someone who came from India, Atisha. And he actually, I think, he went to Indonesia—which must have been quite a journey—because he was attracted to them, but nobody was teaching them in India. So he journeyed and then came back to India, and then was invited to Tibet. And that’s how they got there. And then, even in Tibet, they kind of went underground for quite a long time.

There’s a story I’ll tell about the teacher. He was called Chekhawa, Geshe Chekhawa. He was teaching this practice very, sort of, secretly. But he started teaching it to lepers. And the way it was working was, they had leprosy. And instead of the usual approach, which is to hate your illness, be ashamed of your illness, to want more than anything in the world for it to go away, they were being instructed to breathe in the leprosy of all the other lepers, so that the others could be free of it, and send out relief to all the other lepers.

And in Tibetan stories, usually they have happy endings. The lepers were all getting cured. So he was becoming quite famous. On the other hand, he was still keeping it very secret. But he had a really mean-tempered brother. And this brother hated Buddhism and was cynical, and was just, like, sour grapes about everything. But he began to wonder what was happening in there, with all these cured lepers. So he started listening at the door to what his brother, Geshe Chekhawa, was teaching in there.

And then Geshe Chekhawa began to notice that his brother was getting much nicer, and much kinder. And it began to occur to him that he was listening to the teachings. And, sure enough, he was. Then he thought, “I’m going to start teaching these to everyone. Because if they can help my brother, they can help anyone.”

So, actually, they are emerging now, only recently. Trungpa Rinpoche
first taught them to us in ’79. And I remember then that, as students, most of them weren’t ready for them, or ready for tonglen and this teaching. There were comments like, “I do the practice, but secretly, I hope it doesn’t work.” Or, like, “Who needs it?” basically. But gradually . . . I think the times are ripe for this kind of teaching.

 

A.W.: Oh, I think it’s just the right medicine for today. You know, the other really joyous thing about it is that I feel more open. I feel more openness with people in my world—you know, what you say about feeling more at home in your world. And this is, I think, a result of going the distance in your own heart. You know, just really being disciplined about opening your heart as much as you can.

Now, the thing is that I find, Pema, is that it will close up again. You know?

 

P.C.: Oh, no. [laughter] One year of listening to me and your heart still closes up?!

 

A.W.: Well, but again, you know, it’s like what you say, that it doesn’t close quite....

 

P.C.: Couldn’t you have said that privately or something? [laughter]

 

A.W.: No, no, no, no. No, no. But it’s like that room, you know, where you were saying how the ego is like a closed room. And that our whole life’s work is to open the door. And that you may open it and then discover that you are not up to keeping it wide open for long. And it will close again. But then the work is to keep opening it.

 

P.C.: That’s right.

 

A.W.: So I think it really is just like life. I mean, you do; you reach a plateau. You have an epiphany. You understand something. You feel slightly enlightened about something. But then you lose it.

 

P.C.: Yeah, right.

 

A.W.: And that’s the reality.

 

P.C.: That’s the reality.

 

A.W.: So it’s not a bad thing.

 

P.C.: No.

 

A.W.: And I think, though, that what I’m learning, myself, is that that is when the practice has to be something that you continue. But that brings me to something else that I’ve discovered in myself and in my practice. Because I have been doing meditation for many, many years. Not tonglen, but TM and metta. And that is that there are times when I will go; I will meditate, really, very on the dot, for a year or so. And then I’ll stop.