About Alice Walker

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön and novelist Alice Walker on how tonglen meditation practice opens our heart, expands our vision, and plants the seeds of love in our lives. From an evening of discussion at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Theater. 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 Chödrön: There is a kind of unstuckness that starts to happen. You develop lovingkindness 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. Pema Chödrön: Rumi wrote a poem called "Night Travelers," It's about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole. Alice Walker: I like what you say about understanding that the darkness represents our wealth, because that’s true, There’s so much fixation on the light, as if the darkness can be dispensed with, but of course it cannot. After all, there is night, there is earth; so this is a wonderful acknowledgment of richness. I think the Jamaicans are right when they call each other “fellow sufferer,” because that’s how it feels. We aren’t angels, we aren’t saints, we’re all down here doing the best we can. We’re trying to be good people, but we do get really mad. You talk in your tapes about when you discovered that your former husband was seeing someone else, and you threw a rock at him. This was very helpful (laughter). It was really good to have a humorous, earthy, real person as a teacher. This was great. Pema Chödrön: When that marriage broke up, I don’t know why it devastated me so much but it was really a kind of annihilation. It was the beginning of my spiritual path, definitely, because I was looking for answers. I was in the lowest point in my life and I read this article by Trungpa Rinpoche called “Working With Negativity.” I was scared by my anger and looking for answers to it. I kept having all these fantasies of destroying my ex-husband and they were hard to shake. There was an enormous feeling of groundlessness and fear that came from not being able to entertain myself out of the pain. The usual exits, the usual ways of distracting myself—nothing was working. Alice Walker: Nothing worked. Pema Chödrön: And Trungpa Rinpoche basically said that there’s nothing wrong with negativity per se. He said there’s a lot you can learn from it, that it’s a very strong creative energy. He said the real problem is what he called negative negativity, which is when you don’t just stay with negativity but spin off into all the endless cycle of things you can say to yourself about it. Alice Walker: What gets us is the spinoff. If you could just sit with the basic feeling then you could free yourself, but it’s almost impossible if you’re caught up in one mental drama after another. That’s what happens. Pema Chödrön: This is an essential understanding of vajrayana, or tantric, Buddhism. In vajrayana Buddhism they talk about how what we call negative energies—such as anger, lust, envy, jealousy, these powerful energies—are all actually wisdoms in disguise. But to experience that you have to not spin off; you have to be able to relax with the energy. So tonglen, which is considered more of a mahayana practice, was my entry into being able to sit with that kind of energy. And it gave me a way to include all the other people, to recognize that so many people were in the same boat as I was. Alice Walker: You do recognize that everybody is in that boat sooner or later, in one form or other. It’s good to feel that you’re not alone. Pema Chödrön: I want to ask you about joy. It’s all very well to talk about 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? Alice Walker: Oh Yes!. Even just not being so miserable. Part of the joyousness was knowing we have help. It was great to know that this wisdom is so old. That means people have had this pain for a long time, they’ve been dealing with it, and they had the foresight to leave these practices for us to use. I’m always supported by spirits and ancestors and people in my tribe, whoever they’ve been and however long ago they lived. So it was like having another tribe of people, of ancestors, come to the rescue with this wisdom that came through you and your way of teaching. Pema Chödrön: I think the times are ripe for this kind of teaching. Alice Walker: Oh, I think it’s just the right medicine for today. You know, the other really joyous thing is that I feel more open, I feel more openness toward people in my world. It’s what you have said about feeling more at home in your world. I think this is the result of going the distance in your own heart—really being disciplined about opening your heart as much as you can. The thing I find, Pema, is that it closes up again. You know? Pema Chödrön: Oh no! (laughter) One year of listening to me and your heart still closes up? Alice Walker: Yeah. It’s like what you have said about how the ego is like a closed room and our whole life’s work is to open the door. You may open the door and then discover that you’re not up to keeping it open for long. The work is to keep opening it. You have an epiphany, you understand something, you feel slightly enlightened about something, but then you lose it. That’s the reality. So it’s not a bad thing. Pema Chödrön: No Alice Walker: But it’s frustrating at times, because you think to yourself, I’ve worked on this, why is it still snagging in the same spot? 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:...

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