Rev. Danny Fisher

Canada’s More Magazine offers a lengthy profile of the much-beloved Tibetan Buddhist nun Acharya Ani Pema Chödrön in a recent issue.  Check it out right here.  One choice snippet:

Compassion is a necessary foundation, since what she demands is so darn hard: Abandon hope, give up fear, let go of all attachment.

Chödrön’s message is neither new nor novel. The spiritual practices she advocates were developed more than 1,000 years ago in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism isn’t a prescription for happiness or wealth. It is not a bromide that exalts the power of the will—à la The Secret—but a complex belief system that requires a rigorous dedication to truth, even when that truth is close to unbearable. “Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is…a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly,” Chödrön writes in her bestselling treatise When Things Fall Apart.

Instead of praying for bad times/things/people to go away, Chödrön counsels leaning into discomfort and following pain—even if the pain is simply looking at your own shortcomings, learning to recognize them without judgment and moving on.

This is the ruthless part. Chödrön’s Buddhism requires one to live with eyes wide open all the time. No fudging, no nudging, no lying to yourself even a tiny bit, not even once in a while. Tibetan monks dedicate their lives to perfecting this stuff; Chödrön’s followers try to do it while also staying on top of the laundry, paying bills and remembering to take the car in for service.