Interview with Pema Chodron
ByThis interview had so many inspiring ideas in it. My favorite quote?
“The way I understand it is that we rob ourselves of being in the present by always thinking that the payoff will happen in the future.”
Pema Chödrön & bell hooks talk over life and all its problems
—from the Shambhala Sun magazine
Initially when I enter the classroom, I share with my students that we are there to think critically—to engage the world we live in—the world of ideas, fully, deeply, with our whole heart. Pema Chödrön’s work gives me this gift. Consistently she challenges me to think beyond someplace where I have erected boundaries—where I’ve allowed myself to become stuck—attached—full of defences.
When I first read her, the writing irked me. I was disturbed by what I began to call its “strategic open-endedness.” I wanted to be offered solutions, ways out. Instead, she kept extending an invitation to me and everyone to move into that enchanted space beyond right or wrong—to journey to the heart of compassion. And when you have stepped out on faith, straight into the heart of the matter, loving kindness appears less like a utopian dream. It becomes concrete—a place to practice wherever you are.
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