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GOOD MEDICINE
Pema Chodron in conversation with Alice Walker
San Francisco
Pema Chödrön: That's how life keeps us honest. The inspiration that comes from feeling the openness seems so
important, but on the other hand, I'm sure it would eventually turn into some kind of spiritual pride or arrogance. So life
has this miraculous ability to smack you in the face with a real humdinger just when you're going over the edge in terms of
thinking you've accomplished something. That humbles you; it's some kind of natural balancing that keeps you human. At the
same time the sense of joy does get stronger and stronger.
Alice Walker: Because otherwise you feel you're just going to be
smacked endlessly, and what's the point? (laughter)
Pema Chödrön: It's about relaxing with the moment, whether it's painful
or pleasurable. I teach about that a lot because that's personally how I experience it. The openness brings the smile on my
face, the sense of gladness just to be here. And when it gets painful, it's not like there's been some big mistake or
something. It just comes and goes.
Alice Walker: That brings me to something else I've discovered in my practice, because
I've been doing meditation for many years-not tonglen, but TM and metta practice. There are times when I meditate, really
meditate, very on the dot, for a year or so, and then I'll stop. So what happens? Does that ever happen to you?
Pema Chödrön:
Yes. (laughter)
Alice Walker: Good!
Pema Chödrön: And I just don't worry about it.
Alice Walker: Good! (laughter)
Pema Chödrön: One of the things I've discovered as the years go on is that there can't be any "shoulds." Even meditation practice
can become something you feel you should do, and then it becomes another thing you worry about. So I just let it ebb and
flow, because I feel it's always with you in some way, whether you're formally practicing or not.
My hunger for meditation
ebbs but the hunger always comes back, and not necessarily because things are going badly. It's like a natural opening and
closing, or a natural relaxation and then getting involved in something else, going back and forth.
Alice Walker: I was
surprised to discover how easy it was for me to begin meditating many years ago. What I liked was how familiar that state
was.
The place that I most love is when I disappear. You know, there's a point where you just disappear. That is so
wonderful, because I'm sure that's how it will be after we die, that you're just not here, but it's fine.
Pema Chödrön: What
do you mean exactly, you disappear?
Alice Walker: Well, you reach that point where it's just like space, and you don't feel
yourself. You're not thinking about what you're going to cook, and you're not thinking about what you're going to wear, and
you're not really aware of your body. I like that because as a writer I spend a lot of time in spaces that I've created
myself and it's a relief to have another place that is basically empty.
Pema Chödrön: I don't think I have the same
experience. It's more like being here —fully and completely here. It's true that meditation practice is liberating and
timeless and that, definitely, there is no caught-up-ness. But it is also profoundly simple and immediate. In contrast,
everything else feels like fantasy, like it is completely made up by mind.
Alice Walker: Well, I feel like I live a lot of my
life in a different realm anyway, especially when I'm out in nature. So meditation takes me to that place when I'm not in
nature. It is a place of really feeling the oneness, that you're not kept from it by the fact that you're wearing a suit.
You're just in it; that's one of the really good things about meditation for me.
Judy Lief: I assume, Alice, that as an
activist your job is to take on situations of extreme suffering and try to alleviate them to some degree. How has this
practice affected your approach to activism?
Alice Walker: Well, my activism really is for myself, because I see places in
the world where I really feel I should be. If there is something really bad, really evil, happening somewhere, then that is
where I should be. I need, for myself, to feel that I have stood there. It feels a lot better than just watching it on
television.
Judy Lief: This is where you bring together your private practice and your public action.
Alice Walker: Yes.
Before I was sort of feeling my way. I went to places like Mississippi and stood with the people and realized the suffering
they were experiencing. I shared the danger they put themselves in by demanding their rights. I felt this incredible opening,
a feeling of finally being at home in my world, which was what I needed. I needed to feel I could be at home there, and the
only way was to actually go and connect with the people.
Pema Chödrön: And the other extreme is when our primary motivation
is avoidance of pain. Then the world becomes scarier and scarier.
Alice Walker: Exactly.
Pema Chödrön: That's the really sad
thing-the world becomes more and more frightening, and you don't want to go out your door. Sure there's a lot of danger out
there, but the tonglen approach makes you more open to the fear it evokes in you, and your world gets bigger.
Judy Lief: When
you are practicing tonglen, taking on pain of others, what causes that to flip into something positive, as opposed to being
stuck in a negative space or seeing yourself as a martyr?
Alice Walker: I think it's knowing that you're not the only one
suffering. That's just what happens on earth. There may be other places in the galaxy where people don't suffer, where beings
are just fine, where they never get parking tickets even. But what seems to be happening here is just really heavy duty
suffering. I remember years ago, when I was asking myself what was the use of all this suffering.
I was reading the Gnostic
Gospels, in which Jesus says something that really struck me. He says basically, learn how to suffer and you will not suffer.
That dovetails with this teaching, which is a kind of an acceptance that suffering is the human condition.
Pema Chödrön: It
is true people fear tonglen practice. Particularly if people have a lot of depression, they fear it is going to be tough to
relate with the suffering so directly. I have found that it's less overwhelming if you start with your own experience of
suffering and then generalize to all the other people who are feeling what you do. That gives you a way to work with your
pain: instead of feeling like you're increasing your suffering, you're making it meaningful.
If you're taught that you should
do tonglen only for other people, that's too big a leap for most people. But if you start with yourself as the reference
point and extend out from that, you find that your compassion becomes much more spontaneous and real. You have less fear of
the suffering you perceive in the world-yours and other people's.
It's a lot about overcoming the fear of suffering. My
experience of working with this practice is that it has brought me a moment by moment sense of wellbeing. That's encouraging
to people who are afraid to start the practice-to know that relating directly with your suffering is a doorway to wellbeing
for yourself and others, rather than some kind of masochism.
Alice Walker: I would say that is also true for me in going to
stand where I feel I need to stand. I feel I get to that same place. I also appreciate the teaching on driving all blame into
yourself. We need a teaching on how fruitless it is to always blame the other person.
In my life I can see places where I
have not wanted to take my part of the blame. That's a losing proposition. There's no gain in it because you never learn very
much about yourself. You don't own all your parts. There are places in each of us that are quite scary, but you have to make
friends with them. You have to really get to know them, to say, hello, there you are again. It's very helpful to do that.
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