“Change Nothing. Be Present.”
An Enlightening Encounter With the Venerable Pema Chödrön
[The following story is the second part of my post from two weeks ago: The Fist of SELF. Reading that post first will give you more context for this one. Peace + Gratitude!]
Breathing Through The Dread
After a year of living as a Zen monk, I returned to Austin in July 2009 for a 10-day vacation. During my inaugural year at Tassajara, I had had no contact with my ex-boyfriend. There was one close call, however, in June 2009, when the heat was high and my spirits low. I found myself sitting on a decrepit wooden chair in the monastery’s decrepit wooden phone booth, punching his number on the touch-tone keypad.
As I dialed his number, which I still know by heart, The Dread began its slow swirl in my solar plexus. I gripped the receiver hoping he would and wouldn't answer. The ringing stopped. My breath bated. Then I heard his soft tenor say he was sorry to miss my call. Hearing his voice made my heart ache and my stomach flutter like a schoolgirl high on her first crush.
A month later, I surprised Stan on a Saturday evening by knocking on his apartment door and interrupting his phone conversation with an old friend. When he opened the door and saw me standing there, he brimmed with excitement. “I can't believe you're here. It's so amazing to see you!” He invited me in, hurriedly hung up the phone, and gave me one of his blanketing hugs. He immediately began peppering me with questions about my life in the monastery. His gray-blue eyes sparkled with warmth and curiosity. He poured some chianti, we saluted and sipped from shot glasses with an image of Niagara Falls on them. Although my heart bubbled with longing as we chatted, I managed to keep my cool and when we hugged goodbye two hours later, I thought confidently to myself, “I got this.”
Three days later, I was standing in his parking lot in a panic. It was Tuesday night and Stan had yet to call me like he had promised to sort out the details of seeing a movie together the next day. As the daylight hours passed and he still hadn't called, I felt The Dread simmering in the viscera. Fortunately, I was busy all day visiting friends and old haunts. Unfortunately, once I began heading back to my friend's house, who lived just around the corner from Stan, The Dread became more intense and I found myself pulling into his apartment complex under the cloak of night. Hoping to assuage The Dread before it escalated from defcon 5 to defcon 1.
As I parked my friend's old Toyota Corolla, my inner therapist piped up: “Do not get out of the car. Do not get out of the car.” Unheeding, I got out of the car and nonchalantly walked toward his second-floor apartment. My sister's smooth, wise voice floated through my mind: “Heather, don't knock on his door. This will make it worse. You can walk away. You can do this,” her voice alternately implored and chided. “This guy's a jerk and he's always hurting you.”
I brushed aside the voices like so many gnats and knocked. And waited. No answer. Even though it was a studio apartment and there's no way he could not have heard me, I knocked again. Silence. I waited. My heart thumped. My palms sweated. The simmering Dread began to roil. I raced back to the car, hoping to get inside before The Dread overwhelmed me. I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, hoping that driving away would drive away The Dread.
And then a magical moment happened. Amid the clamor of voices telling me to knock on the door again, to call him again, to drive away, one steady, neutral voice stood out: “Heather just sit here and follow your breath.”
And I did. I turned off the car and placed my hands on my thighs. As if I were in the meditation hall at the monastery, I sat stiller than a hunter stalking its prey. I attuned the mind’s attention to the sensations of breathing: noticing the quick, short inhalations and exhalations of panic, and as I kept yoking the mind to the breath, gradually the in-and-out breaths, slowed down and lengthened, as did the pauses in between breaths. Until another mini-miracle arose: the thick swirl of The Dread thinned, stilled, and dissipated. The more I followed my breath, the more this ancient, twisted emotion-commotion (aka “trauma”) felt less dreadFULL.
As the swirl slowed down, so did the voices/thoughts. They faded from shouts to whispers to distant echoes. The emotion-commotion had evaporated in the light of compassionate, non-judgmental awareness and a focused mind to reveal the ineffable presence that’s always present. This liberating experience felt akin to sitting on a stable island while a hurricane swirls around and through you, and yet, at the “center” was a pulsing, knowing calm.
Later on, while jotting down this fascinating event in my journal, I described what happened by using this phrase: a somatic dis-identification with what was arising. A bare embodied experience of energy: the body-heart/mind vibrating as an impersonal, intelligent, boundless, and sacred mystery.
All Accomplishing Wisdom
Fast forward six months to a frigid January morning in 2010. I found myself crunching through several feet of snow as I made my way toward a small, wooden cabin nestled among tall, sturdy Canadian conifers. Snow draped itself on pine boughs like a delicate lace and ice sheathed branches like crystal scabbards. My black suede Merrell slip-ons and gray Smart Wool socks were inadequate protectors against the ferocity of a Nova Scotia winter. As I neared my destination, my heart beat slightly quicker than usual, more because of anticipation than effort. In a few moments, I'd be meeting with a rock star of the spiritual world: the Venerable Pema Chödrön.
I had come to Gampo Abbey on Cape Breton Island shortly after Christmas to participate in the annual yarne or “rains” retreat. Back in the day of the historical Buddha, he and his throng of disciples would stop their mendicant preaching and gather for several months during the rainy season to meditate and study. The main reason I left Tassajara Zen Mountain Center where I had lived for the past 18 months was the opportunity to practice with Ani Pema. BTW, ani is a prefix added to a nun’s name and is used similarly to “sister” in Catholicism.
Each of the participants in the yarne retreat was allotted a 30-minute private interview with Ani Pema. As I approached Ani Pema’s cabin, my mind rifled through a rolodex of questions. I didn't want to blow it. I wanted to ask a profound question and have a quintessential spiritual experience with this beloved, internationally known Buddhist teacher. As I stood with my hand poised to knock on the door, I breathed into my gut and tried to relax, which was difficult given that I was shivering.
When Ani Pema opened the door and her thin lips smoothed into a neutral smile, my heart leapt, my mind quieted, and shivering ceased. She was dressed in her burgundy and yellow robes. She seemed to float along the floor as she led me into her sparsely furnished living room. The cabin was so toasty I could have curled up on the floor like a cat and napped! She offered me some tea, and I accepted. She motioned for me to sit in a comfy wingback chair while she floated into the small kitchen.
The informality of this private interview, which we call dokusan in the Soto Zen tradition, surprised me. Formal meetings with the teacher at Tassajara were much more, well, formal! When we had dokusan with the Abbot or Abbess in their (unheated!) cabin, they would sit in zazen posture on a zabuton on the tatami floor. The student would prostrate three times opposite them before sitting down across from them. No cushy wingback chairs and hot tea while discussing the Dharma ;>)
Soon Ani Pema sat down in the wingback chair across from me and we took a few sips of tea. I was simultaneously soothed and enthralled by the spacious radiance emanating from her. Being in her presence was akin to the wonder and calm I felt while walking through the Cape's wintry forest or standing on one the precipices that edged the Abbey’s property. These sheer cliffs dropped several hundred feet into the frigid Pleasant Bay.
After Ani Pema asked me some initial questions about my background and how long I had lived at Tassajara, I decided (or karma decided!) to relate the “breathing through The Dread” story to her. She listened intently to what I said with no flicker of emotion. After I finished, she said:
“Most people can’t get past the panic they feel when a strong emotion arises,” she said. “Anger is just a label for volatile energy. It’s not about doing anything. Change nothing. Just be present. That’s how karmic energy is transformed.”
It felt uncanny to me that she had mentioned how we panic when strong emotions arise. It was almost as if she’d read my mind (or the tea leaves!) and knew that in the weeks before I left Austin for Tassajara that I had punched my ex-boyfriend in the gut. Given my Roaming Catholic sensibility of confessing to a spiritual interlocutor in hopes of absolution, and that we were kind of in a similar set up to a confessional box— okay, minus the darkened box, the screen to mask our identities, and the male priest empowered to wash away my sins—I decided to confess this transgression. Her countenance was as serene as before, and she breathed another spiritual profoundity into the toasty silence of the sitting room:
“There’s a view that’s helpful when working with emotional energy; whether it's anger, jealousy, joy, or sadness, it's helpful to remember that it is the same as all-accomplishing wisdom. But we twist it. Stories get attached to it and we identify with it and it becomes a me.”
Had I heard Ani Pema say this the year before I quit my 9-to-5 life, my face would have contorted into micro expressions of confusion and incredulity. What is all-accomplishing wisdom? What are these stories of “me”? I didn’t contemplate any of this while I was sitting across from her. I just felt warm, relaxed, open, and grateful. Just like how I often felt while practicing meditation during a long, silent retreat. Or sitting in my friend’s Toyota Corolla while “I” breathed through The Dread.
And, just when I thought Ani Pema was done dazzling me with her True Dharma Eye, the Venerable One offered these parting words that I’ve plumbed as a koan for the past 13 years:
“Energy without labels is wisdom.”
“Let everything happen to you; beauty and terror, just keep going. No feeling is final."—Rainer Maria Rilke [A quote on a magnet on Ani Pema’s fridge.]
Thank you so much! This is a wonderful piece! Your great pain is a great teaching for us.
Thank you for sharing this dokusan with Ani Pema Chodren. Your sharing and her words have touched me deeply. 🙏🏼