The Wisdom of No Escape

The 18 brief chapters are a warm invitation to seeing life from a different perspective than we’re used to in the West. She tackles prickly subjects gently but directly, rousing us to find our own courage to follow her lead. Her words prompt questions in our minds: What if trying to improve ourselves is an unskillful aggression against ourselves?

 

By David Jones

It isn’t often I find a book that feels like a true companion on my spiritual journey.

It’s even more rare to find passages in a book that resonate with my own experiences.

Pema Chödrön is a well-known author and teacher, and I have many of her books. But it was with this book—The Wisdom of No Escape (and the Path of Loving-Kindness)—that I came to see her, not as A teacher, but as MY teacher. This book helped me understand words and thoughts that have grown in my mind over the years, and it became more intimate for me chapter by chapter. Towards the end, I felt such joy. I recognized myself in its pages.

The book is a series of adapted talks she gave at a month-long dathun (a type of retreat) in 1989. In fact, her talks were partly a practice guide for the month’s program. Since my journey uses Beginner’s Mind as a tool for religious and spiritual deconstruction, her words are a beautiful way to engage well-known Buddhist teachings as if for the first time.

It all begins with a basic insight: people strive to be comfortable.

We try to maneuver our lives to increase comfort and avoid discomfort—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And then she suggests a daring view: what if that’s just a barrier to truly living, a path of illusion that avoids the honesty and lessons of our suffering? What if true liberation doesn’t lie in escaping suffering, but in finding balance by thoroughly experiencing our suffering?

The 18 brief chapters are a warm invitation to seeing life from a different perspective than we’re used to in the West. She tackles prickly subjects gently but directly, rousing us to find our own courage to follow her lead. Her words prompt questions in our minds: What if trying to improve ourselves is an unskillful aggression against ourselves?

My mind gasped. I clapped and smiled.

Her bold thoughts stir the mind, heart, and (dare I say) spirit. Try not to see Hell as bad and something to be avoided, nor Heaven as desirable and something to be pursued. Pleasure shouldn’t be preferred over pain, nor Nirvana over Samsara.

What is the true aim of the bodhisattva? What does it mean to kill the Buddha (or Jesus) if you meet him on the road? After describing the problematic thinking and behavior within the world’s religions, she follows up with the truth “Buddhism is not free of it either.” The paths of belief and no belief, of religion and no religion, are no better or worse than one other, because we’re all merely human.

She tackles these and other topics as a seasoned and skillful teacher. She shows understanding and compassion for our struggles. She talks of making peace with her own depression, chuckling at her own short temper, struggling with her meditation, and how she’s needed to rethink her approach to the Buddhist path.

Her teachings are draped with wisdom and insight.

The most exciting passages for me were her personal interpretations and explanations of things like the Four Noble Truths, the value and purpose of ritual, what it means to take refuge in the Three Jewels, and what enlightenment truly is. Her explanations are often different from the accepted ones I’ve heard elsewhere. “My middle way and your middle way are not the same middle way,” she writes. Beautiful!

She relates the wisdom she learned from her teacher as well as from non-Buddhist sources such as the Native American medicine man Black Elk, Confucius, and Alice in Wonderland. Religion, philosophy, and New Age mysticism are merely different vehicles which carry their own lineages and wisdom, and our esteemed author encourages us to stick with the one which rings true in our hearts without judging the others.

This book carried me along, my guide on a path I thought I knew, pointing out things I hadn’t noticed before. And there’s so much more in this little book than I’ve touched on here. It strikes just the right balance of reassuring the reader while leading them into unfamiliar territory. Pema said that we cling to comfort and probably shouldn’t.

This book may be the most comforting “uncomfortable book” I’ve read, and I absolutely encourage everyone to get a copy.

Be well.

 

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Photo: Shambhala Publications

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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