Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason; 107; Pema Chödrön

ANNOUNCER: In this edition of Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason -- Pema Chödrön: the Buddha taught that every body had the potential. Without exception, every living being has the potential to awaken. ANNOUNCER: Pema Chödrön talks about life as a spiritual journey and her passion to end suffering. That's in this edition of Faith and Reason. Major funding is provided by the Herb Alpert Foundation and by our sole corporate funder Mutual of America, designing customized, individual, and group retirement products. That's why we're your retirement company.

BILL MOYERS: Welcome, I'm Bill Moyers. We've seen in this series how faith has a place in keeping an open heart and reason the means of keeping an open mind. In this hour, Pema Chödrön takes us beyond faith and reason. Her answer to the frenzy of modern life is a calm mind and a warm heart. The journey and discipline of 30 years as a Buddhist nun. Buddhism is not so much a religion as it is a way of life. It marks no divide between the sacred and the secular. And when you get serious about it, Buddhism touches every day experience. That's what Pema Chödrön teaches and writes. In helping many others to find their own footing on the path of enlightenment, she's also helping to change the face of Buddhism in America. Once upon a time, this was how most of us in the West thought of Buddhism. Monks seeking mental and moral purification through ancient rituals.

Images of great temples, exotic art, and a mysterious, serene deity. But it was this man who came to personify Buddhism for us, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. He fled Tibet when Chinese Communists overran his country and has since become one of the world's most popular spiritual figures. I'm just one of the scores of journalists to whom he has patiently explained Buddhist concepts. DALAI LAMA: Religion is not outside. Religion is here. I think essential. Essentially, or the essence of any religion is good heart. Sometimes I call, you see, love and compassion is a universal religion. That's my religion. MOYERS: In recent years, Buddhism has found a welcome in America, thanks to books by some of its leading teachers who point the way to a practice based on direct experience rather than belief.

Pema Chödrön is one of those teachers. Here she is at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, where people come to learn about Buddhism. Chödrön: The thing is, what we find, if we're not used to sitting quietly with ourselves, not used to meditation, not used to having any inner solitude in our lives, we find that we're very threatened by nothing happening. When she's not on the road teaching, Pema Chödrön lives, writes, and meditates at this monastic center in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where solitude replenishes her. For years, she trained as a pupil of the late renowned Buddhist master, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche of the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. She wasn't always Pema Chödrön. Born Deirdre Blomfield Brown, she grew up in New Jersey. Here she is as a teenager, at her wedding in the mid-50s, and with her children. Her grandchildren trick or treat with a Buddhist batwoman, and even Buddhist nuns have to pump their own gas these days.

Her books sell widely, with titles such as When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, and No Time to Lose. Her readers not only discover modern insights into ancient practices, they also come to see how this housewife and mother became what the Buddhist call a Bodhisattva warrior. So what is a Bodhisattva warrior? Pema Chödrön: Well, it's someone who takes a vow, actually, which I have done, and many Buddhists do, that my main passion in life is to awaken myself. And I believe that everybody could do that, and I will devote my life to the degree that I can awaken. To that degree, I will devote my life to trying to inspire other people to believe that they could. And obviously behind all this is the de-escalation of violence and aggression and the escalation of loving kindness and compassion and those kinds of feelings. So the path is about how the individual works with their own mind and how that affects the family, the society, the nation, the world.

But there isn't like daydreaming that then there's not going to be any more mean people in the world, there's not going to be any more prejudice in the world. And it's not just experience based on reading the books and listening to the teachers, there's also a practice, which is the meditation practice. And then you just say, everyone needs some solitude in their life. And this solitude could be that you take time to sit with yourself in meditation 15 minutes a day, you know? Or longer, or you find time out in the business of the whole thing. I've had many times when it meditate and it seems like my mind is just going 100 miles an hour. And yet when I stand up and walk into life, there's more room in my mind. I guess that's how I would describe it. MOYERS: More room in your mind.

Pema Chödrön: Someone once said to me, the best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, I wonder what's going to happen today. And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life. MOYERS:That's what intrigues me about you Buddhists is you go for a long period of time, deep into realms, the rest of us are hardly aware of. What was the longest period you experienced silence? Pema Chödrön: I guess a year. MOYERS: A year. What happens during that period? Pema Chödrön: The first thing that happens is you climb the walls. This isn't personal with me. I doesn't happen anymore, but because the detox is so intense. I remember thinking like someone coming to the door to just drop off a note or something and I felt like I was in Kansas and Oz was outside the door. It's like sensory deprivation. But gradually what begins to happen is that you sink so deeply into what life has been distracting you from. Because it's a definition of no distractions.

That's the purpose of the retreat, no distractions. You quickly learn that distractions are not just phone calls and emails and outer phenomena. Our own mind and our longings and our cravings and our fantasies and everything are also major distractions. And as time goes on and you're feeding it less because no talking, you begin to sink deeper into the undistracted state. And then you begin to realize that life is always pulling you away from being fully present. MOYERS: Fully present? What is that? Pema Chödrön: It is basically a wide awake state where your sense perceptions are wide open in the tradition I follow. If you could imagine seeing and hearing, tasting and smelling and so forth without any filter between you and your experience.

It's as if suddenly all of your sense perceptions had been like narrow little slits and now they're wide open like they have no outer dimension. But let me say this. If the result of that life was that I had to stay in that seclusion, I wouldn't think I had had measured up to a hill of beans. So for me, I always go out and in and out of this kind of situation because I want to go deeper. But the only reason I want to go deeper is to be there for other people in increasingly difficult situations. It's kind of based on deeply longing to be free of suffering and then it extends to wanting the other people to be free of suffering and the suffering that you see escalated in the world. And one of the principal teachings of the Buddha was that he said, I teach only two things, suffering and the end of suffering. So this conviction that sentient beings could be free of suffering, they could end their suffering.

That doesn't mean physical pain, it doesn't mean outer circumstances being unpleasant, it means what you do with the things that happen. MOYERS: The Buddha talked about the truth of suffering. What do you think he meant by suffering? And what do you Buddhist mean by suffering? Pema Chödrön: Suffering. Yes. Well, that's a complex question. But it doesn't mean that we could be free of that if fire burns you, it won't hurt, if you get cut, it won't hurt. It also doesn't mean that if someone you love very deeply dies, you won't feel sadness. And it doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to you anymore. It doesn't mean that you won't have your personal tragedies and catastrophes and crises. And it also certainly doesn't mean that you could avoid planes flying into the towers.

Do you know what I'm saying? MOYERS: I do know that because. Pema Chödrön: So it's all about that the end of suffering has to do with how you relate with pain. Let's distinguish just for semantics the difference between let's call pain the unavoidable and let's call suffering what could what could lessen and dissolve in our lives. So if there was a sort of a basic phrase you could say that it isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that cause us to suffer. One of the things that this eight-century Indian Buddhist master, Shanti Deva, one of the things he says about this whole thing is work with little grievances such as the middle seat instead of the aisle seat or your favorite restaurant being closed or not being able to get into the movie or whatever it is. He says there's nothing that does not grow easier through familiarity. Putting up with little cares, I'll train myself to work with great adversity.

So in other words the premise there is that if you work with feeling hot and feeling cold, you work with mosquito bites and aisle and middle seats and at that level notice that you're hooked and work with not escalating it. MOYERS: You're hooked. Pema Chödrön Then I'm hooked. Hooked is an interesting quality to me. MOYERS: What do you mean by? Pema Chödrön: I mean not only has something evoked a response in me but it's going to be difficult for me to let go. Anger is like that for sure, prejudices like that, critical mindedness is like that. You don't want to let go. There's something delicious about finding fault with something and that can be including finding fault with oneself.

So that's what I mean by hooked. Because of the image of the fish and the hook and it has this juicy worm on it and you know the consequences aren't going to be good but you cannot resist. It's addiction. And one of the main things we're addicted to is escalating aggression. MOYERS: So you escalate the anger? Pema Chödrön: So I escalate the anger. You know my teacher at the Ziger Country Rimsha he calls it pouring kerosene on the fire. You know in an attempt to put it out you pour kerosene on the fire. MOYERS: I like that. I like the idea of being hooked. It's a new metaphor for me. Pema Chödrön: The word in Tibetan is shempa. And I've been teaching a lot about it lately. Because when I heard this teaching from one of my main teachers at Ziger Country Rimsha I thought this is fabulous because he says it isn't the words themselves that you're saying to yourself. It isn't the emotions. It's this charge behind them. That's the shempa. It's this hooked quality. This difficult to let go.

In my case I read a book by Chogam Trumper Mishay and it really resonated you know. MOYERS: What resonated? Pema Chödrön: Well I'd have to go back a little bit further. I was at a point in my life where I was I think was a low point of my life. It evolved around a marriage breaking up. MOYERS: Your husband came home one day and said he was having another affair. Pema Chödrön: That's right. MOYERS: He wanted a divorce. Pema Chödrön:That's right. That's exactly what did you do? The first thing that happened I had a sort of an epiphany or I say in the book I think like a genuine spiritual experience which was happens to people at the time of shock like car accidents and things which was time so it's still. There was a completely timeless moment where all I saw with the light and heard the sounds and it was it could have been. It was the like the eternal moment you know.

Then the minds came back and I and I picked up a stone and threw it. You know the mind came back and started you know this is what I would say about fanning fanning the whole thing you know. But in any case it took me a good year not to be over it. I wasn't over it I'd say for about five years, but a good year for the pieces the sort of sort of start coming back together. And in that time I looked everywhere different therapies all the different spiritual disciplines I live in an ashram. I did you know weekend intensives in Scientology which didn't last very long in that. MOYERS: You went down the cafeteria of opportunity. Pema Chödrön: I was I was suffering. And you know I guess to say what I was saying before it was like there was a pain that was maybe unavoidable but then I was causing myself to suffer by struggling struggling struggling and what I was saying and so forth but on the other hand it was pretty absolute. I don't think there was any way to not suffer because the rug had been pulled out so completely the pain was so great and in and into that process sort of near the end of the year I happened to see this

article called "Working with Negativity" which was a chapter out of a book but it was in a magazine and I read it and the first line is something like 'there is nothing wrong with negativity.' Because what I was feeling was fear, rage and tremendous confusion about my rage and my hatred and and a lot and a kind of a deep profound unshakable groundlessness and nothing could fill it, you know. Like people would take me to the movies they take me to nice dinners they do all these things and nothing could get the pieces back together and that was the first thing I had read that just spoke right to what was happening because I I was thinking to myself. All this time from day one when he told me, from day one I thought there's something very profound in what is happening here there is something very profound because all I see now as I look out of my eyes at the world I see that a lot of us are just running around in circles pretending that there's ground where there actually isn't any ground.

And that somehow if we could learn to not be afraid of groundlessness not be afraid of insecurity and uncertainty it would be calling on an inner strength that would would allow us to be open and free and loving and compassionate in any situation. But as long as we keep trying to scramble to get ground under our feet and avoid this uneasy feeling of groundlessness and insecurity and uncertainty and ambiguity or paradox any of that. Then the wars will continue, the racial prejudice will continue, the hatred against people of a different you don't agree with their sexual preferences you don't agree with their religion you don't agree with their skin color you don't agree with their, whatever you know, their politics. It will always continue because something will keep because you can't avoid being triggered what triggers you can get less and less in your life but you know it's if you're trying to avoid being triggered I read something recently where someone said that's like becoming a celibate nun, like me, or monk and then trying to get rid of all the sexually attractive people in the world.

You know it just doesn't work you have to work on your side of it right. MOYERS: Help me to understand this meaning of groundlessness what is that? Pema Chödrön: well what is groundlessness well you experience it all the time you experience it all the time and I don't know about you personally but generally speak with people react against it we experience it as unpleasant when it's insecurity you know you feel insecure that that's a groundless feeling. Embarrassed like off center you know. When my husband told me that we were breaking up you know he had an affair and he wanted to divorce that was a big groundless moment when the planes flew into the towers everyone felt groundlessness it was like our reality as we knew it wasn't holding together. MOYERS: I think that's why some of us went to work you know my wife and I went right down to the office while the second plane was hitting the tower because I felt the need I think she probably did to the ground yourselves Pema Chödrön: Yeah so I'm not saying that that it's entirely a bad thing because I mean ways that we experience groundlessness as a positive thing would be like all wonder you know viewed great beauty that just stops our mind.

And so as I say sometimes it's pleasant but my curiosity has been more around when it's unpleasant. MOYERS: And what was the step from that trauma in your life to taking up the training of becoming a nun? Well it didn't take very long. It didn't take very long curiously enough because believe me it's the last thing I grew up Catholic and the last thing I, not that I had a negative experience with nuns, but I never dreamt of being a nun. You know it was the last thing I ever dreamt but here I became a nun so so the first step was reading that article and then I I found a teacher I wasn't looking for a teacher but I met one and somehow within two years I became a nun I mean it's very very strange. In my life when I've had certain thoughts I say this is a forward thought and I have to follow it. It just happens every so often and for some reason taking the vows represented a forward thought.

And when I look back it was premature my children were young teenagers and it would have been better to have waited until they were older. MOYERS: So did you ever feel guilt over that? Pema Chödrön: Oh yes yes yes yes but but in terms of having done it I think the timing could have been better but there is no other decision for me in life. That was the decision you know I always feel people are very fortunate like this would be you must feel this too that somehow you find your niche or something where you always are somewhat on fire with a positive inspiration for not even what not even for your cause or something but you found something in your life that gives a deep meaning and that doesn't run out. MOYERS: I understand better now what you write somewhere when you say that all you think most spiritual experiences begin with suffering. They begin with with groundlessness. They begin with when the rug has been pulled out.

Pema Chödrön: They do they do and I would say as a teacher of meditation and Buddhist teachings and talking to many other you know much more accomplished teachers than myself -- one of the things that people say is that students can be very attracted to the ideas and very enthusiastic about it like intellectually and conceptually. But it's very superficial. It's not changing them at the core of their being or shaking anything up you know in terms of how they perceive reality the limited kind of narrow way in which we perceive reality. It's not shaking it up at all. But when real hardship enters their lives something that they can't just shake off. Like great loss or pain or anything of this nature where you can't just shake it off you can't just smile and make it okay it's it's the rug has been pulled it is groundless then people start asking and seeking and have profound wish to try out this whole path.

MOYERS: There's a line somewhere someone says, I'm only paraphrasing it, that that when an old culture is dying yes the new culture will be formed by men and women who are not afraid of insecurity. Pema Chödrön: Right I just love that when I read it you know it will be formed by people who are not afraid. MOYERS: Afraid to be insecure what do you think that when you take that to mean? Pema Chödrön: Well that just what I've been saying you know and this was with the article of of Trump or mishays why it's a sort of was like a light bulb going off everything else seemed to be saying look towards the good chant until you in an ecstatic state you know like that the underlying assumption was there was something wrong. And you wanted to avoid this groundless state or this unformed state or this state in which you felt uneasy and queasy.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was saying not at all it's like the the matrix of creative potential, the matrix of the spiritual life. Like if we could rest there which I suppose would be the description of enlightenment or the mystic you know rests. Rest in that place and is completely happy. That's why you know they always say with someone who's very very awake, just to use a term for enlightenment, you know the the the walls could start crumbling in and they they wouldn't like freak out or something because it would be the whole everything in life anything could happen and they're kind of ready for anything to happen. Do you see what I'm saying? MOYERS: Is that what you mean by the term the the awakened heart? Pema Chödrön: Yeah I suppose awakened heart awakened mind enlightenment the Buddhist talk of yeah yeah that you could and you see this is one of the things that drew me to Buddhism because Buddhism or the Buddha taught that every everybody had the potential without exception every every living being has the potential to awaken you know to. MOYERS: To to wake up that's intriguing to me because the knock on Buddhism is that well all of this concentration on yourself the what of the the knock on it, the criticism the public the public rap on it, is that it is that all of this concentration on the self feeds your personal narcissism.

Pema Chödrön: Oh yeah no I mean it can. It can. I mean let's just say just because you call yourself a Buddhist you're just as hookable as anybody else and and Buddhists can become as much fundamentalist as anybody else. MOYERS: As much fundamentalist? Pema Chödrön: sure. MOYERS: You mean that rigid mind? Pema Chödrön: The whole teaching and usually what attracts people as it teaches otherwise but let's just say let's just say it's so basic in us let's just say you're a Buddhist I'm a Buddhist and, I've I have you know been doing this for over 30 years for after all, you know but when when someone hurts my feelings and puts the knife in and I actually think that. They're actually purposely slandering me or gossiping about me or saying a mean word or I just don't come out looking so good you know. Is my first impulse to love them?

No. My first thing is I get hooked and if it wasn't for the way I'm sort of thrilled by the challenge of that I would just bite the hook like anyone else and most. You know Buddhists it doesn't matter we still bite the hook we still get towed under and we can still you know what I say clobber people with our peace signs. So it really doesn't matter what religion we are we can be a fundamentalist or a non-violent, non-aggressive propagator of love in the world and fellowship of humanity and do you see what I'm saying. MOYERS: I do I like this notion that we all are capable of being fundamentalist because we like to be angry at other people's wrongness. Pema Chödrön: Yeah so this is the part that where I get really intrigued is. I feel so passionate about wanting to teach and live personally live by this and that the main thing is

free from fixed mind that was a term of Trungpa Rinpoche free from fixed mind. Free from closed mind. Free from bigoted mind or fundamentalist mind and it all starts with the Shampa it all starts with getting hooked you see what I'm saying. So that's where the work has to be done and no one can be naive and say I'm Shampa-free you know that might be a description of enlightenment you know. Or maybe a description of enlightenment is Shampa's no big problem when it happens it's just another blur from the radar screen you know but it doesn't set off the chain reaction. So we're all. MOYERS: Chain reaction. What do you mean chain reaction. Pema Chödrön: Well it's like a tightening in the stomach or tightening of the jaw. You can see it in other people when you're talking to them you can see that they've just been hooked their eyes kind of glaze over whatever. And if it just stayed there it wouldn't be a problem. But then you just think about it and think about it and think about it and it's like a chain reaction.

So let's say that the Shampa or the charge or the hook quality is very subtle and then the then the charge gets stronger and stronger and stronger and until you're blind and you're able to actually harm another human being or start a hate campaign or. So it's a chain reaction and you can actually if you come to your senses anywhere in the chain reaction you can interrupt it. But it gets harder and harder because you become more on automatic pilot and the the it's like an undertow it's very seductive it. Was it sTKTKTwho said "we who like senseless children yeah shrink from suffering but love its causes. Pema Chödrön: Shrink from suffering but love its causes. MOYERS: How do you interpret that. Pema Chödrön: Well just recently I was a group of group of people and I quoted that and I asked them, without any teaching at all, to tell me what they thought it meant.

And they were just line ups at the microphone because people you know they talked about everything from being alcoholic you know shrink from suffering don't like the suffering but to mass the suffering I drink again and then I'm more have more suffering what what Chantide was really getting at is generally speaking nobody wants to suffer. But our means of going about getting happy are not in sync with our desire to not suffer. That's a basic Buddhist teaching is that sentient beings none of them want to to suffer but their way of going about getting happy escalates the suffering. So yelling when you're angry would be. an example. And I tell this story like last year I knew that if I kept working on a project I was working on I could feel my physical health starting to deteriorate. But the adrenaline for wanting to keep writing, I was writing an article and it was taking a long time, and the adrenaline to want to keep working was driving me beyond what was sensible in terms of long hours and so forth and I could feel that it was making me sick. I have somewhat fragile health. And so I stopped and I said to myself just I got up in the morning and I had said to myself before I'm not going to start on this project till 130 in the afternoon I'm going to spend the morning meditating walking calming kind of things.

And but I got up in the morning and I I found myself at the desk with the pen first thing you know. So so I sat there and I said why are you doing this? So I'm having a dialogue with myself. I'm doing this because I equated with satisfaction I'll finish this paper and that makes me feel good to think that it will be finished so then I said to myself and. And and if you start writing now, will you feel better? No I won't because my health is starting to go. So why are you doing it? So, I just sat there with this feeling like it is someone is going to have to come up bodily and gag me and put a mask on me and drag me out of the house for me not to just start despite the fact that I knew it wasn't good. And then I came down to just because I want to you know I already. You know I already knew I was doing it for this the imagine satisfaction that I knew I wouldn't get you see so we're kind of stuck in that place. MOYERS: Did my did my colleagues get to you to tell you how to get to meet how to do a public diagnosis of me? Did they come to you and say you can get him if you talk about work.

No I'm the same way of course I'm fascinated by that seductive pull that urge to keep doing as the Buddha would say where your desire for satisfaction and happiness are not in sync with the methods you go about using and then you could say the consequences you know of war and prejudice and so forth they all come from that moment of the urge to do the same thing you've already done. MOYERS: Let's pause right there we'll come back to this conversation in just a moment. But first we want to give some public television stations this opportunity to to ask for your support. MOYERS: Among the rolling hills and lakes and the Hudson River Valley just 80 miles north of the clatter of New York City sits the Omega Institute and Oasis for spiritual seekers.

Pema Chödrön made a rare appearance at Omega's campus recently to teach from her book No Time to Lose: a Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. The teachings are based on a text written by the 8th century Buddhist sage Shodridhava. And its contents as Pema Chödrön explains are remarkably relevant to modern life. In Tibetan the word is dunzi. I love this word dunzi. It means distractions sort of distractions that just sort of you you can waste your whole life in dunzi. Just like the lifestyle of just sort of flipping through magazines. Or I don't know. The thing is what we find if we're not used to sitting quietly with ourselves not used to meditation not used to having any inner solitude in our lives we find that we're very threatened by nothing happening. And we are addicted to dunzi, addicted to distractions. And that's why you get on an airplane and it's as if I think they're just like terrified what would happen if the video went off and there was no food and we all had to sit there for the whole you know one and a half hour flight you know and not have any entertainment and you know all the books your book you forgot your book and everything.

It would be kind of interesting to see if people would like freak out. Because you look up at you walk up and down the aisle so you know what everyone would do they'd close their eyes and go to sleep they just try to not be there. I try to meditate on airplanes. It is not easy actually because there is so much the videos are going like this change change change and there's all this electrical sound going through and everyone is working with their little game boys and their little little things like so much happening in that little space you know. Everyone's sitting in their little seats and there's just like chaos. But it's all it's all in the name of entertainment you know distracting you from being in this dreadful experience of being in this airplane for you know for however long.

This lousy world -- this lousy people -- this lousy government -- this lousy everything -- lousy weather -- lousy blah blah blah. Pissed off you know like it's too hot in here, it's too cold don't like the smell and. The person's too tall and front didn't fit too fat next to me and they're wearing perfume and I'm allergic and just nah. So he says the analogy is that you're barefooted it's like being barefooted and walking across blazing hot sand or across cut glass, or a field with thorns. And your feeder bear and you say. This is just you know it's really hurting it's terrible it's too sharp it's too painful it's too hot. Do I have a great idea I am just going to cover the whole, everywhere I go I'm going to cover it with leather, and then it won't hurt my feet anymore. That's like saying I'm going to get rid of her and get rid of him and get the temperature right and I'm going to you know ban perfume in the world and.

And you know there will be no nothing that bothers me anywhere. I am going to get rid of everything, including mosquitoes, that bothers me anywhere in the world and then I will be a very happy content person. We're laughing but it's what we all do that's is how we do approach things. We think if we could just get rid of them or cover it with leather then our pain would go away. Well sure because you know then it wouldn't be cutting our feet anymore it's just logical isn't it but it doesn't make any sense really. So he said but if you simply wrap the leather around your feet in other words shoes then you could walk. Across the boiling sand and the cut glass and the thorns and they wouldn't bother you. So the analogy is if, you work with your mind instead of trying to change everything on the outside that's how your temper will cool down.

MOYERS: Do you look to the Buddha with the same kind of reverence that many Christians look to Jesus or Muslims look to Mohammed. Pema Chödrön: yes I do. The Buddha is a role model of what I myself can do. MOYERS: How so? Pema Chödrön: He he was an ordinary human being with hopes and fears and. Shempa you know ability to get hooked. And he freed himself from suffering, not from pain, but from suffering and found his ability to communicate it so that it was very stirring to people around him and allowed other people to become free. And I believe I can also do that. And I believe everybody can also do that so he's like the role model of someone who. didn't give up on himself. Didn't give up on the world. Didn't give up on other people and freed himself from suffering this unnecessary suffering that Shanti David refers to as we shrink from suffering but love it's causes. We hurt ourselves he says you know so why should others be the object of our hatred as what he says not implying that we should hate ourselves but implying that we could take responsibility for our side of it you see.

But yes I have great veneration for the Buddha MOYERS: Do you pray to him like Christians pray to Jesus? Pema Chödrön: No, no I don't pray to him or even think of him necessarily... as a role model he was a person like myself that woke up the way I could in a way all sentient beings could could, But more Buddha for me is. That awakened mind itself that totally open unbiased unprejudiced mind and heart. And I resonate with that and I come back again and again to that mind and heart as the motivating factor of my life, I think of that as you know if you use the word Christ-consciousness you might call this Buddha-consciousness or Buddha nature and so it's what he uncovered. It wasn't like he was reaching for something he didn't have. lt was more like he had it all along and the as if it was a mirror covered with dust and he removed the dust and then the shining mirror was always there.

So he uncovered that and that's what I resonate with my capacity to do that and everyone's capacity to do that. So the bodhisattva says may all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering. And it means all. It doesn't mean except you know your list of people that you don't think who you think should get theirs. MOYERS: By happiness do you what do you mean by happiness? Pema Chödrön: Contentment. At home with yourself in your world. Not separating yourself from others not hardening your heart or your mind to others or to the world. That profound well-being which is not based on facts, so to speak, you know like changing circumstances it's not based on changing circumstances.

MOYERS: How do you experience God. Pema Chödrön: How do I experience God. You know that in Buddhism they say we do not believe in God or disbelieve in God. We keep it as an open question. So I don't use the word God much I'm not at all even slightly offended by the word God and I know it means a lot of different things to different people. So, if I had to have a definition it would be that open space of mind that allows for ultimate possibilities and doesn't narrow down into a security based or fear based view where my way has to have precedence. MOYERS: Do you describe yourself as a person of faith.

Pema Chödrön: Well I thought about this topic because I knew it was the subject of faith and reason. And faith was not a topic that a term that I had ever used for myself. So I gave it some thought you know. And then I thought well sure I do have a lot of faith but the main faith is that sentient beings have the capacity to awaken. all beings. And that given the right causes and conditions. Many people who are sort of neutral and could get caught by the sweep or a strong seduction towards aggression could equally be swayed towards peace and love and kindness. Because people have that capacity in them. And this isn't to say that I don't see injustice. But I think I'm more of the school of Martin Luther King where you want beloved community where you take the view that wanting everyone to be healed not wanting to win your side and make the other side wrong.

Okay underlying this would be that you want for everyone to deescalate their aggression and not increase their aggression and I equate that with happiness and peace in the world and so forth. MOYERS: On almost any day what I would say on every day in New York you can experience random acts of kindness. But after 9-11 kind of seemed to be everyone's daily behavior I saw so much kindness. And of course it didn't take too long for it to disappear. Pema Chödrön: So this is like a macro big view of what happens with individuals. What we saw in New York and you see with people who are in those states that it's a softness a kindness. It's as people said during those days in New York it's the only thing that makes sense. And then what happens the habit comes back. Because basically the kindness comes out of not being able to escape from groundlessness. And then and when everyone is in the same situation you're all groundless together, the only thing that makes sense is kindness.

It's so interesting you see this almost proves -- you know if you're going to have a proof of faith in basic goodness that sort of proves it. Then the person who believed in basic badness would say no the more fundamental thing is what reasserts itself. And I would say no what the Buddha taught was, what reasserts itself, is the classic text call it adventitious it means removable it's temporary. Neurosis is temporary. Sanity is permanent. So I've done dialoging, interface dialogue in when I was, about 10 years ago I did a lot of it. And I came out of it feeling if your view is that of base is basic badness you see it wherever you go if your view is basic goodness you see it wherever you go. And I said I might be wrong maybe basic badness is the fundamental state but basic goodness makes for a much happier world and for feeling more at home in the world and more friendship. So I came out feeling you know I'm open enough to maybe when I die you know some big plaque comes up says 'you were wrong you're all your life everything you believed in your whole life was wrong.'

I think I'm preparing for that moment you know for not to be anything that I thought it was. And it would be okay and you see what I'm saying. MOYERS: Have you forgiven your husband? Pema Chödrön: Oh sure yeah well not only forgiven him. I tell him you know like, it's a little insulting to him, actually I say you know you're leaving me with the best thing that ever happened it's you know. I'm not sure he's forgiven me. But for sure I've forgiven him, because basically without that it's like people who say I lived such a superficial life until I until I found that I had a disease that wasn't going to get better you know. Do you see what I'm saying? Not everyone uses that to get happier but but for a lot of people when you can't get rid of it it sort of brings you to the bottom. You hit that kind of positive bottom where you surrender and then things begin to open up for you. Someone had given me a poem and it had a line in it which was "softening what is rigid in your heart" work on yourself work on your own aggression.

And that that's sowing the seeds of peace. It's not that do this and then the war will be over in Iraq you know. It's not naive that way but it's talking about sowing seeds of peace. And this is where the meditation comes in. People who meditate they do become much more in tune with being able to notice that they've been hooked and then also notice what they're saying to themselves at that time to escalate the whole thing. In other words it does give you more clarity about what's going on with you. MOYERS: After over 30 years on this path of enlightenment that you began, when you took that vow of to be a nun, do you feel you're close to a state of perfection? Pema Chödrön: No. no. I'm happy I'm very happy. I feel satisfied with my life if I died tomorrow I feel I hadn't wasted my life. But my appetite is insatiable and I feel I have a long way to go you know in terms of perfection.

Pema Chödrön: Who was the Zen master who told his students 'all of you are perfect and you could use a little improvement.' Pema Chödrön: That was Suzuki Roshi yeah. All of you are perfect and you could use a little improvement, yeah. So you know one of the things with the bodhisattva warrior they say that no matter how far you get in terms of being unhooked yourself or being happy yourself always look back at who you used to be. Never forget to look back at the neurosis that you carried for so many years otherwise you'll lose your contact with the suffering of other people. So for the bodhisattva warrior -- our kinship with each other is the crucial thing you know.

So it isn't that really you want to avoid the pain of the world because that educates you about what other people are up against. But this suffering. Remember earlier I tried to distinguish between pain and suffering and that suffering is what could lessen and there could be a cessation of suffering. So you're not trying to tell people that then there'll be no more bad things happening to good people. But that the good people will relate to those things in a way that doesn't escalate their suffering and therefore the suffering of those around them. MOYERS: Pema Chödrön. Thank you very much for being with me. Pema Chödrön: It was my complete pleasure and thank you. I feel very honored, very honored to have had this chance to be with you. MOYERS: And I. thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Log on to pbs.org to hear more from Pema Chödrön to explore the Buddhist faith to sign up for podcasts and to take our poll.

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