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GOOD MEDICINE
Pema Chödrön in conversation with Alice Walker
San Francisco | September 1999
Alice Walker: About four years ago I was having a very difficult time. I had lost someone I loved deeply and nothing seemed
to help. Then a friend sent me a tape set by Pema Chödrön called Awakening Compassion. I stayed in the country and I
listened to you, Pema, every night for the next year. I studied lojong mind training and I practiced tonglen.
It was tonglen,the practice of taking in people's pain and sending out whatever you have that is positive, that helped me through this
difficult passage. I want to thank you so much, and to ask you a question. In my experience suffering is perennial; there is
always suffering. But does suffering really have a use? I used to think there was no use to it, but now I think that there
is.
Pema Chödrön: Is there any use in suffering? I think the reason I am so taken by these teachings is that they are based
on using suffering as good medicine, like the Buddhist metaphor of using poison as medicine. It's as if there's a moment of
suffering that occurs over and over and over again in every human life.
What usually happens in that moment is that it
hardens us; it hardens the heart because we don't want any more pain. But the lojong teachings say we can take that very
moment and flip it. The very thing that causes us to harden and our suffering to intensify can soften us and make us more
decent and kinder people. That takes a lot of courage.
This is a teaching for people who are willing to cultivate their
courage. What's wonderful about it is that you have plenty of material to work with. If you're waiting for only the high
points to work with, you might give up, but there's an endless succession of suffering. One of the main teachings of the
Buddha was the truth of dukha, which is usually translated as "suffering." But a better translation might be
"dissatisfaction." Dissatisfaction is inherent in being human; it's not some mistake that you or I have made as individuals.
Therefore, if we can learn to catch that moment, to relax with it, dissatisfaction doesn't need to keep escalating. In fact
it becomes the seed of compassion, the seed of loving kindness.
Alice Walker: I was surprised how the heart literally
responds to this practice. You can feel it responding physically. As you breathe in what is difficult to bear, there is
initial resistance, which is the fear, the constriction. That's the time when you really have to be brave. But if you keep
going and doing the practice, the heart actually relaxes. That is quite amazing to feel.
Pema Chödrön: When we start out on a
spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in
some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain-breathing it in for
yourself and all others in the same boat as you are-heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck. Instead of
feeling you need some magic makeover so you can suddenly become some great person, there's much more emotional honesty about
where you're stuck.
Alice Walker: Exactly. You see that the work is right ahead of you all the time. Pema Chodron: There is a
kind of unstuckness that starts to happen. You develop loving-kindness and compassion for this self that is stuck, which is
called maitri. And since you have a sense of all the other sentient beings stuck just like you, it also awakens compassion.
Alice Walker: I remember the day I really got it that we're not connected as human beings because of our perfection, but
because of our flaws. That was such a relief.
Photo by Christine Alicino.
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