Pema Chödrön on Presence and Impermanence
These past few weeks, I’ve been eagerly soaking in wisdom from the beloved Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön. I read When Things Fall Apart and a few of her other bestselling books decades ago, but now I’m able to understand and appreciate her teachings in a whole new way.
Listening to a recording of a retreat she taught in 2011 called “Smile at Fear,” I’ve been loving her familiar hint of New York accent (she was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City in 1936), as well as her honest, warm-hearted approach and sense of humor. A mother and grandmother who found her way to Buddhism while struggling to cope with a traumatic divorce in her 30s, Pema has had plenty of real-world experience. She’s also an expert, articulate teacher who regularly reviews and summarizes her key points (she taught elementary school after earning a master’s in elementary education at UC Berkeley).
I’ll be featuring more of Pema’s wisdom in upcoming newsletters, but today I want to share some her teachings on presence and impermanence from the talk I’m listening to, as well as from resources on the Pema Chödrön Foundation website.
On Presence & Pausing:
“We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll become more awake in our lives…One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are…Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”
“Moment by moment, with everything you do, just keep coming back to being here. You could ask what would be a good use of my life, thinking the answer is going to be a career choice or something, but I would say the most important thing is using your life to train in being present—in being here with an open heart. Synchronizing your mind with your body—having them be in the same place at the same time with a brave, honest, but also gentle attitude towards yourself and towards what you see.”
“Pausing creates a momentary contrast between being completely self-absorbed and being awake and present. You just stop for a few seconds, breathe deeply, and move on. You pause and allow there to be a gap in whatever you are doing. Throughout the day, you could choose to do this. It may be hard to remember at first, but once you start doing it, pausing becomes something that nurtures you; you begin to prefer it to being all caught up.”
On Impermanence:
“People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last forever. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget we are part of the natural scheme of things.”
“Nothing is static or fixed. That all is fleeting and impermanent, is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment. It means that life isn’t always going to go our way. It means that there is loss as well as gain. And we don’t like that.”
“Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Whoever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? Pain and pleasure go together. They can be celebrated. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward. Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other. The gloriousness of our inspiration connects us with the sacredness of the world. But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts. It becomes the ground for understanding others.”
“Life is very brief. Also, its length is unpredictable. If you realize that you don’t have that many more years to live, and if you live your life as if you actually had only one day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of the preciousness and gratitude.”
