Tibetan Buddhist Nun and Teacher Pema Chödrön on Reform in Difficult Times – The Marginalian

In every life, there comes a time when we are crushed to the bone by a loss beyond our control – heartbreaks that feel like they are unbearable, leaving us to lose our solid ground. What then?

“Art,” Kafka assured his young companion, “a man must give up his life to gain it.” As in art, so in life – suggests an American Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön. In When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times (public library), draws on his own personal struggles and the ancient teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to provide gentle and clear guidance on the greatness to be gained in those moments when all seems lost. Half a century after Albert Camus asserted that “there is no love of life without the despair of life,” Chödrön reframes those moments of great despair as opportunities to make friends and to live by making friends in a deeper sense.

Writing about the Buddhist way of wrapping in simple language the difficult and beautiful truths of existence, Chödrön explores the basic human response to the uncharted territory that comes with loss or other kinds of unexpected change:

Fear is a universal phenomenon. Even the smallest insect can hear it. We enter the sea water and put our finger next to the soft, open bodies of the sea anemones and they close. Everything does that automatically. It is not a bad thing that we feel afraid when we are faced with the unknown. It is part of life, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, death, having nothing to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to approaching reality.

If we commit to staying where we are, then our experience becomes more clear. Things become more obvious when there is nowhere to run.

This clarity, Chödrön says, is a matter of approaching fear and rather than taking it as a problem to be solved, we use it as a tool to dissolve all our familiar structures, “the complete elimination of the old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking.” Noting that courage is not the absence of fear but the intimacy of fear, he writes:

If we really start doing this, we will always be humble. There won't be much room for the arrogance that clinging to ideals can bring. Arrogance that inevitably arises will always be shot down by our courage to go a little further. The types of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have a lot to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die often.

In fact, this is the hard work of creating friendships, our only way to make lifelong friendships in their entirety. From that, Chödrön argues, arises our deepest potential:

Only to the extent that we repeatedly expose ourselves to destruction can that which is indestructible be found in us.

[…]

Degradables are a form of exploration and a form of healing. We think the point is to pass a test or overcome a problem, but the truth is that things are never really solved. They met and separated. They meet again and separate again. It is what it is. Healing comes from allowing space for all of this to happen: space for grief, for relief, for grief, for joy.

Decades after Rollo May laid out his case for creating despair, Chödrön considers the key decision we have in dealing with our own insecurities – whether through aggressive aversion or openness to possibility:

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always changing, if only we could see it. Nothing ever sums up the way we like to dream. The middle ground, the middle ground is the ideal state, a state where we are not stuck and can open our hearts and minds beyond the limits. A very gentle, non-violent, non-violent story mode.

To sit with that trembling – to sit with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with a sense of hopelessness and a desire for revenge – that is the path to true awakening. Clinging to that uncertainty, finding the ability to relax in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path. Finding the ability to control oneself, to control oneself with gentleness and compassion, is the way of the warrior. And we catch ourselves a million times, whether we like it or not, we strengthen anger, anger, righteous anger – strong in any way, to feel a sense of relief, a sense of encouragement.

Half a century after Alan Watts first introduced Eastern teachings to the West with his clarion call to existence as an antidote to anxiety, Chödrön points to this present moment – ​​however uncertain, however difficult – as the only awakening point in all life:

This very moment you are the perfect teacher, and you are always with us.

[…]

We can have what is happening and not separate. Awakening is found in our joys and our pains, our confusions and our wisdom, found in every moment of our strange, mysterious, ordinary everyday life.

Staying present and intimate in the moment, he argues, requires creativity matri – the Buddhist practice of loving kindness to man, that most difficult art of self-pity. You compare matri through traditional Western medicine and self-help approaches to coping with problems:

What does matri such a different approach is that we don't try to solve the problem. We are not trying to end the pain or become better people. In fact, we give up control completely and allow ideas and opinions to flow. This starts with realizing that whatever happens is not the beginning and the end. It's just the same kind of common human experience that has been happening to everyday people since the beginning of time. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories come and go, and the underlying existence remains.

[…]

Amidst all the heavy dialogue with us, there is always an open space.

Another Buddhist concept that does not agree with our Western approaches is the Tibetan discourse yes. Chödrön explains its meaning, evoking Camus's insistence on the essential power of despair:

I you part means “completely, completely,” and the rest of it means “failure.” Overall, yes tang che said you are completely exhausted. We may say that we are “absolutely exhausted.” It describes the experience of complete hopelessness, of complete hopelessness. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope – that there is a better place to be, that there is something better – we will not be comfortable with where we are or who we are.

[…]

Suffering begins to end when we question the belief or hope that there is somewhere to hide.

Decades after Simone de Beauvoir's declaration of atheism and the final frontier of hope, Chödrön points out that at the heart of the Buddhist path is not escapism but secular philosophical authenticity. And yet these dirty boundaries fail to capture the subtlety of these teachings. You specify:

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one believes or does not believe in God… Theism is the deep conviction that there is a hand to hold: if we do the right things, someone will appreciate and take care of us. It means thinking that there will always be a babysitter available when we need her. We all tend to abdicate our responsibilities and entrust our authority to something outside of us. Nontheism is comfortable with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present without reaching for anything to defend ourselves.

[…]

Despair is basic. Otherwise, we will make a journey with the hope of finding security… Start the journey without the hope of getting under your feet. Start with pessimism.

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When the motivation is hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the pain itself… In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the midst of feeling misunderstood and rejected by the heartbeat of all things.

It is through such self-compassion that works in our darkness, Chödrön suggests, that we can begin to give real light to anyone else, to become a force of light in the world. You write:

We are not out to save the world; we began to wonder how other people are doing and think about how our actions affect other people's hearts.

Fill the main base and lift When Things Fall Apart with Camus on the strength of character in times of crisis, Erich Fromm on what it means to truly love yourself, and Nietzsche on why a fulfilling life requires embracing rather than running away from adversity, then revisit Chödrön on the call to let go.