Capture
What the episode is about
Ezra Klein interviews the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön, author of Comfortable With Uncertainty and Another Kind of Freedom. The conversation is about how to relate to discomfort, uncertainty and suffering: not by trying to get rid of them, but by learning to stay inside them, physically and without storylines.
Moments that struck me
- The distinction between pain (the direct experience) and suffering (the storylines we lay on top of it): suffering is "optional" because it's built from what we tell ourselves. 25:00
- Klein's kids in the rain: they collaborate with reality (they play in the puddles), while Klein resists, trying not to get wet, and gets wet anyway. 23:15
- Hot and cold boredom (Trungpa): cold boredom is staying with the discomfort of boredom without wanting to run away, and it's a sign of progress in meditation. Chödrön's story with her mother in Mexico. 38:58
- The physical gesture as a way in: touching your heart, or the spot where you feel the contraction, works better than any concept. 10:59
- Trungpa's gap: between one breath and the next there's a moment of silence. The story of the fan at the retreat that switches off for an instant and reveals the background. 51:42
Quotes
- "The only way out is through." (Chödrön, quoting a Buddhist expression) 3:12
- "When we resist change, it's called suffering." (Klein, quoting Chödrön's writing) 24:50
- "The amount of growth you're capable of is a direct correlate of the amount of discomfort you're willing to tolerate." (something someone once told Klein; Chödrön: "Oh, that's right on.") 35:35
- "Refraining is very much the method of becoming a dharmic person. It's a quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on." (Klein, reading Chödrön) 43:20
- "Meditation is not a vacation from irritation." 48:50
- Kobun Chino Roshi on fear: "I agree. I agree." Not fighting it, agreeing with it. 14:00
- Suzuki Roshi: "You are all perfect just as you are. And you could use a little work." 56:29
Exploration
Central idea
The path to growth doesn't go through getting rid of discomfort but through learning to stay in it: physically, without storylines, with some warmth towards what you feel. Resistance is the source of suffering; collaborating with reality is the door to something more alive.
Ideas
- Discomfort is physical before it's conceptual: locating it in the body is the first step.
- "Befriending" discomfort: not getting rid of it but sending it warmth and tenderness, and if you can't, sending warmth to the fact that you can't.
- Pain vs suffering: pain is unavoidable, suffering is built by the storylines.
- Meditation as training to interrupt the storylines (not to get rid of them).
- "Collaborating with reality" vs resistance: Trungpa's snow example.
- Patience as the ability to stay with restless energy without acting on it right away; the opposite of patience is aggression.
- Technology has dissolved the daily need to sit with boredom, and that changes us.