abandon hope!

If you still haven't read or listened to Pema Chodron, go right now and order something or reserve it at the library or visit your local independent bookstore. Do what you have to do. Everyone should be reading and listening to this woman.

I was sitting in the bathtub this morning with her book, When Things Fall Apart. She's really into getting friendly with being uncomfortable, with being fearful, nervous, angry, agitated, whatever it is. It was in yoga that I first learned to be uncomfortable in my body. I went to these Iyengar classes at the Buddhist Center in Mexico City. I won't go into a lot of detail right here, but is was probably the most collapsed, defeated time of my life. I was lost. I had no bearing. Looking back, I realize that was the best possible state for me to be in, but at the time it just felt overwhelmingly difficult and hopeless.

The teacher was really strict and direct, but in an amused, slightly smiling way. She was always pushing us to be even more uncomfortable than we already were. It was fun for me, for whatever masochistic reason, and I realized in her class that I could be very uncomfortable in my body without fidgeting or running away. I had never done that before. Really, never. Then what began to happen, again and again, is that she would put us in savasana, and I would also feel enormous amounts of emotional pain. She would chant "Om mani padme hum" in this incredibly strong, ethereal voice. I was just there, still, with tears and snot running down my face. For the first time ever, I just felt it, whatever it was, and it was revolutionary in my life.

So I have learned a little about being present and awake in my discomfort. But I read something different this morning, something that takes it even one step further. Pema Chodron instructs us to "abandon hope." She says that hope and fear are two sides of the same coin, that hope is yet another way of wanting things to be different. We are going to feel lots of pain and groundlessness and insecurity. We are even going to die. She says we have to give up hope that it will ever be any different. The word in Tibetan is ye tang che. Absolutely exhausted. Complete surrender. That is the beginning.

I just read it and laughed. Of course. It's hopeless, y'all. We're on a speedboat that is definitely going to sink. We might as well get used to the idea. Pema says don't practice because you're looking for ground or for security or for a safe haven. The practice is realizing that none of that exists.

It's my birthday today. More evidence that indeed the speedboat is sinking. It's also Barack Obama's birthday, and I'm a little worried that it's not fashionable to say this anymore, but I still love Barack Obama. He provided hope in a political landscape that felt completely hopeless. So there's some dissonance there. Maybe we have to have a little hope to keep making progress. If I hadn't hoped that the studio would work, I never would have built it. If I hadn't hoped that Obama would be our president, I never would have campaigned for him, which I loved doing, and because so many of us did it, he won.

Maybe Pema will address that apparent contradiction. I'm not sure I want to be so Buddhist that I never do anything. But in my personal life, I'm becoming a little friendlier with my edginess all the time. I still have addictions, things that I grasp and cling and turn to for solace. One is shopping for clothes. I'm going to do that today. But I'm going to do it knowing that it won't help. I'm still nearer to my death than I ever have been before. I'm still nervous that my business might fail, scared that I will end up old and alone and broke, uncertain about the future of my relationships and concerned about what people think of me. It's a good thing. I need things to practice with. Enlightenment might end up being kind of boring.