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In Conversation: Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker

Alice Walker
Pema Chödrön — October 18, 2014

What happens when a beloved spiritual teacher and a brilliant author come together to talk about the most tender, compelling aspects of our human experience? The following exchange, excerpted from Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation, offers some unexpected answers—and an introduction to the healing practice that has transformed both women’s hearts and lives.

Alice Walker: About four years ago I was having a very difficult time. I had lost someone I loved deeply and nothing seemed to help. Then a friend sent me a tape set by Pema Chödrön called Awakening Compassion. I stayed in the country and I listened to you, Pema ,every night for the next year. I studied lojong mind training, and I practicedtonglen. It was tonglen, the practice of taking in people’s pain and sending out whatever you have that is positive that helped me through this difficult passage.

I want to thank you so much and to ask you a question. In my experience suffering is perennial; there is always suffering. But does suffering really have a use? I used to think there was no use to it, but now I think that there is.

Pema Chödrön: Is there any use in suffering? I think the reason I am so taken by these teachings is that they are based on using suffering as good medicine. It’s as if there’s a moment of suffering that occurs over and over and over again in every human life. What usually happens in that moment is that it hardens us; it hardens the heart because we don’t want any more pain.

But the lojong teachings say we can take that very moment and flip it. The very thing that causes us to harden and our suffering to intensify can soften us and make us more decent and kinder people. That takes a lot of courage. This is a teaching for people who are willing to cultivate their courage.

What’s wonderful about it is that you have plenty of material to work with. If you’re waiting for only the high points to work with, you might give up, but there’s an endless succession of suffering.

Alice Walker: I was surprised how the heart literally responds to this practice. You can feel it responding physically. As you breathe in what is difficult to bear, there is initial resistance, which is the fear, the constriction. That’s the time when you really have to be brave. But if you keep going and doing the practice, the heart actually relaxes. That is quite amazing to feel.

Pema Chödrön: When we start out on a spiritual path, we often have ideals we think we’re supposed to live up to. We feel we’re supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain—breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are—heightens your awareness of exactly where you’re stuck. Instead of feeling you need some magic makeover so you can suddenly become some great person, there’s much more emotional honesty about where you’re stuck.

Alice Walker: I remember the day I really got it that we’re not connected as human beings because of our perfection, but because of our flaws. That was such a relief.

Pema Chödrön: Rumi wrote a poem called “Night Travelers.” It’s about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.

Alice Walker: … Everybody is in that boat sooner or later, in one form or other. It’s good to feel that you’re not alone.

Pema Chödrön: I want to ask you about joy. It’s all very well to talk about breathing in the suffering and sending out relief and so forth, but did you find any joy coming out of this practice?

Alice Walker: Oh, yes! Even just not being so miserable. Part of the joyousness was knowing we have help. It was great to know that this wisdom is so old. That means people have had this pain for a long time; they’ve been dealing with it, and they had the foresight to leave these practices for us to use. I’m always supported by spirits and ancestors and people in my tribe, whomever they’ve been and however long ago they lived. So it was like having another tribe of people, of ancestors, come to the rescue with this wisdom that came through you and your way of teaching.

Pema Chödrön: I think the times are ripe for this kind of teaching.

Alice Walker: Oh, I think it’s just the right medicine for today. You know, the other really joyous thing is that I feel more open, I feel more openness toward people in my world. It’s what you have said about feeling more at home in your world. I think this is the result of going the distance in your own heart—really being disciplined about opening your heart as much as you can.

pemaalice

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Theresa Reed: Monkey Mind

Theresa Reed — February 28, 2020

They say that animals often come to resemble their owners. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I am not sure where that statement came from, but I would probably say there is a nugget of truth to it. Perhaps we do become more like our critters, or more likely, we simply learn from them.

A decade ago, my husband and I adopted a little black cat from the local shelter. As soon as they plopped him in our hands, he began to purr like a motor. We bundled him up, took him home, and named him Monkey.

This name seemed to fit him much better than his original moniker, Phantom. Monkey wasn’t a cat who liked to hide away, and he wasn’t very stealthy either. Instead, he was restless, animated, and liked to play rough. Always in movement, he could barely sit still long enough for a picture. He’s got a true “monkey mind.”

I hate to admit this, but in a way we’re a lot alike.

Like Monkey, I am easily distracted. I blame this on my Gemini ways, but the truth is that’s not an excuse for having too many projects running at the same time with all the technology in the world clamoring for my attention. The blips and dings that alert me that I’ve got mail or texts or other such things keep me in a state of high alert. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” Or, more accurately, “What did I miss?”

Like a pinball whizzing around the flippers and bumpers, my brain is in constant motion. Sometimes I’ve found myself amazed that I was able to get anything done at all.

My writing sessions were punctuated by petting sessions, and cooking a meal required one hand on the spatula while another held a laser pointer to keep Monkey from biting my heels. Disruption via feline was a way of life around my house, so, as you can imagine, it wasn’t easy for a focus-challenged person like myself to remain present much of the time.

One day, I was tapping away on the computer when I noticed Monkey staring down a bug. He was poised to pounce, eyes wide, and completely still. The bug wasn’t moving. Neither was Monkey. This was a total showdown between cat and bug—and neither was going to move until the time was right.

Fascinated, I stopped what I was doing to watch this duel unfold.

The stare-down continued for a few minutes. This cat wasn’t going to flinch until he witnessed a glimmer of activity. Finally, I saw a flicker of movement as the bug slowly lifted his leg. Monkey’s eyes widened as he wriggled his bottom. Suddenly he pounced on the hapless bug, and in an instant, it was over. The bug was lying face up, with no sign of life. Monkey sniffed around it for a second, then sauntered away. The job was done and now it was time for a nap in the sun.

I found myself pondering this long after the deed was over.

How could this cat, who detests the house rules and who seems to be in constant squirm motion, remain so deeply engrossed? How is it that Monkey was able to deftly finish his work while I sat at my desk, still stuck on finding the first opening sentence for my latest project?

The truth was staring me in the face as the little familiar beep that alerted me to an incoming text pulled me away from my work.

I had created a maelstrom of technology and distraction around me. This was preventing me from effectively “killing the bug.” If I was going to be prolific, effective, and calm in both my work and my spiritual practice, I needed to set myself up for success. It was time to commit to making my world distraction-free so I could tame my own monkey mind.

This is an excerpt from a story written by Theresa Reed and featured in The Karma of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, a compilation of original stories by Kelly McGonigal, Alice Walker, Andrew Harvey, and many more!

Theresa Reed has been a professional, full-time tarot reader for more than 25 years. A recognized expert in the field, she has been a keynote presenter at the Readers Studio, the world’s biggest tarot conference, and coaches tarot entrepreneurs via numerous online courses and her popular podcast, Talking Shop. Theresa lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more, see thetarotlady.com.

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Nancy Windheart: The Guru Cat

Nancy Windheart — February 7, 2020

Freddie and I would sit for hours and just hang out, often sitting in a beach chair that I set up in my laundry room. I didn’t multitask; I just sat with Freddie.

As we’d sit together each night, Freddie offered me a visceral, embodied experience of dropping deeply into the lake of awareness that was present underneath my constantly running thoughts. Through his example, which included a kind of energetic transmission that I felt with my whole body, I was able to enter into a relaxed and open state of being where there was no me, no cat, no chair. “We” were simply a great pool of vibrant energy, deeply grounded, connected, centered, and resting. Sometimes we’d both sleep, but mostly I’d find myself in a deep place of awareness that had no edges, no boundaries. Often, insight and wisdom would bubble up, and the clutter that was ever present in my mind and life would simply fall away.

Freddie’s telepathic communication with me was clear and precise. If I popped up into thinking, worry, spinning, or obsessive thoughts, he’d wake up, look at me with intense clarity through his torn and scratched eyes, and send me the clear message: “You’ve left. Come back.” And with that guidance, I could. He’d put his head back down and close his eyes, and I’d drop back into presence and awareness. Through his example, I learned that rather than trying to control or remove my frenetic thoughts, I could simply allow them to exist on the surface and drop “beneath” them into an ocean of awareness that was Freddie’s natural state.

I discovered that the essence of this quiet, open, deep space of pure presence that I shared with Freddie was love. It was not the confusing, complicated human version of what we often know as “love,” but a pure, deep, connected flow of energy, devotion, and presence that I could feel with every cell of my body.

With Freddie’s body in my lap, and our shared experience of deep presence and connection, I discovered that love and awareness were not separate things. I was love, he was love, we were love, love was. We floated together in a lake of love. Everything was love—just love.

I didn’t realize at the time that this was what people called “meditation.” I was simply spending time with my cat, my beloved friend, and sharing an experience that helped me to relate to my life and the world in a different way than I’d known. It was years later, when I learned meditation practices from human teachers, that I realized what Freddie had taught me.

Freddie became my wise, loving lap-cat guru, but he always hissed at me. It became our little inside joke. He would hiss at me, and I would hiss back at him, in my best imitation of semi-feral street cat. I would laugh, and he would look satisfied and amused.

Eventually Freddie’s FIV brought his body down, and he died in the year of my fortieth birthday. My heart cracked wide open—and as I grieved the loss of his physical presence in my life, I knew that our relationship was alive and would continue in a new form. I continued to feel the essence of his spirit surrounding me, and I knew that he was not gone but had shifted into a different state of being.

Two years after his passing, Freddie came to me in a vision on New Year’s Day. He communicated to me, “It’s time. This is the year you step onto your path and begin your training as an animal communicator.” I listened to him. I listened to Freddie because I trusted him more than I had trusted anyone in my life. He knew. He knew everything. I began a period of several years of training and apprenticeship, with Freddie’s wisdom, guidance, and clarity supporting me each step of the way.

My life changed profoundly and dramatically from that time on, leading me in directions I never could have imagined. I left my job teaching music, began my journey as a professional animal communicator, and now have a life I could never have imagined all those years ago, teaching an international community of students and professionals a curriculum that has its roots in the teachings I received from Freddie.

I now perceive Freddie as a spirit guide, an energy that is much bigger and vaster than could have been contained in his small cat form. I remain in communication and connection with him daily, and he continues to teach me and guide me. He continually reminds me of the true nature of reality, the web of connection that I perceived in my childhood—the fundamental, universal, creative fire of love. Usually his guidance is gentle, clear, and loving, but when necessary, I hear his unmistakable, kick-in-the-pants hiss.

This is an excerpt from a story written by Nancy Windheart and featured in The Karma of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, a compilation of original stories by Kelly McGonigal, Alice Walker, Andrew Harvey, and many more!

Nancy Windheart is an internationally respected animal communicator and interspecies communication teacher. Her work has been featured in television, radio, magazine, and online media, and she has written for many digital and print publications. Nancy’s life’s work is to develop deep harmony and understanding between species and on our planet through interspecies communion, connection, and communication, and to facilitate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing and growth for beings of all species through her services, classes, training programs, and retreats. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her animal family of dogs, cats, and chickens. To learn more, visit nancywindheart.com.

Read The Karma of Cats today!

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Memories of Cats I Loved: Brother David Steindl-Rast

David Steindl-Rast — January 21, 2020

Mietzi, 1980s, New York City

For millennia, humans have speculated why some of us are born into riches, others into rags. If
we can’t answer this question for humans, how shall we answer it for cats? Bad karma, you
say? If so, Mietzi must have misbehaved quite badly in a previous incarnation to be born in a
flooded basement this time around. No one knows. What we do know, however, is that the most
disadvantaged pull most strongly on our heartstrings, and so someone rescued Mietzi and her
siblings from their sunless island of soggy rags. No one ever mentioned the mother cat, and I
don’t know what happened to the other kittens of that litter. All I know is that little Lisa
persuaded her reluctant grandmother, and so Mietzi became my mother’s cat.

After that deluged basement, even a tenth-floor New York apartment that was never designed
for pets must have appeared like paradise to the poor kitten. Or so we were hoping. Lisa
delivered Mietzi in a soft-cushioned basket, and the cat was still sitting in that basket when, after
an elaborate farewell from the cat, Lisa kissed her grandmother goodbye at the door. The door
closed, Mother turned around, and the basket was empty.

That the cat was gone was bad enough, but her pitiful meow was not gone. It kept haunting the
apartment for the next hour, while Mother, eventually with the help of her neighbors on both
sides, searched every corner so methodically that Scotland Yard would have been proud of that
job. The voice, unaccountably, always seemed to come from nowhere; yet it persisted.
When the ladies finally dismantled the Sony radio and hi-fi record player my mother won at a
raffle, Mietzi emerged from the only place where she could have gotten as covered with dust as

she did: one of the loudspeaker boxes. A bad start, especially since Mother felt that the kitten
needed a bath. (There must have been lots of water signs in Mietzi’s natal chart.)
No cat could have been more loved, more talked about in telephone conversations with children
and grandchildren, more lovingly reported on at length in every letter.

Mietzi wasn’t young anymore when Mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Mother was still at
home, and I was with her during the decisive days when the doctor was testing whether or not
medication could help her. I was sitting by Mother’s bed then, when Mietzi seemed to get ready
for an acrobatic stunt. Balancing on the back of the rocking chair, she was clearly considering
jumping from there onto a high chest of drawers.
Never before had she tried this. Ears laid back, Mietzi was measuring the distance. “Is she
going to make it?” I asked—and the moment the words were out, I realized that this was the
question my brothers and I were anxiously asking about Mother at that time. “Let’s see,” Mother
replied. Nothing else was said—neither then nor later—but both of us knew what was at stake.
There was no tinge of superstition about this. Everything hangs together with everything; we
know that. In principle then, we may look at one event and find in it a clue for quite a different
one, unconnected though they may appear to be. Some try this with tea leaves or planets;
others think that, in practice, this is too complex an art. There are moments, however, when an
omen lights up with such clarity that it would be difficult to deny its foreboding. Not wanting this
to be true, Mother and I knew, nevertheless, what was going on here.
Mietzi steadied herself on the back of the rocking chair, crouched, jumped, and missed. Have
you ever noticed the embarrassment of a cat when something like this happens? We tried to
console Mietzi, Mother and I, but we couldn’t quite console ourselves that evening.
The verdict was in. What was not decided was how we would handle it, and that is what really
matters.

Mother handled it with grace. Two days later, she was in the hospital again, never to return
home to Mietzi. Her mind was clear to the last, as she took care of unfinished business calmly
and efficiently. She knew in which folder important papers were kept, in which dresser; she
handed my brother the keys with a smile. Only once did she break down and cry: when Mietzi’s
future was to be decided. But a solution was found: since Mother’s apartment was at the same
time the office for her charitable work, which my brother would continue, Mietzi could stay where
she was. The “super” of the building, who was fond of Mietzi anyway, would look after her when
my brother wasn’t there.

Mother was at peace.
I sat next to her bed holding her hand, and she said, “This is how I’d like to die. You ought to sit
there holding my hand and I’d just fall asleep.”

“Well,” I said, “I’d like that, too, but we can’t plan it with such precision.” Not many hours later, I
was sitting in that very spot holding Mother’s hand when she went to sleep for good. So
peacefully did she breathe her last that there was no telling exactly when she passed from time
into the great Now.

Mietzi outlived her by a year or two, mercifully among her accustomed surroundings: the potted
plants on which she nibbled once in a while, the old rugs of which she knew every square inch
by their smell, and my mother’s empty armchair on which she curled up when she got lonely.

This is an excerpt from a story written by Brother David Steindl-Rast and featured in The Karma
of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, a compilation of original stories by Kelly
McGonigal, Alice Walker, Andrew Harvey, and many more!

Brother David Steindl-Rast was born in Vienna, Austria, and holds a PhD from the
Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna. After 12 years of training in the 1,500-year-
old Benedictine monastic tradition, Brother David received permission to practice Zen with
Buddhist masters. An international lecturer and author, Brother David is a leader in the monastic
renewal movement as well as the dialogue between Eastern and Western religions. His most
recent book is i am through you so i. He is the founder of A Network for Grateful Living. Learn
more at gratefulness.org.

Read The Karma of Cats today!

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Led by Spirit

Alice Walker — December 29, 2015

Alice Walker is a poet, essayist, and New York Times-bestselling author who has won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. With Sounds True, Alice has released the audio program My Life As My Self, which vividly recounts her personal, professional, and spiritual journeys. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Alice and Tami Simon speak on what it means to step into the line of fire and receive criticism for what one believes. In this vein, Alice explains her role as an activist in locations such as Gaza and the Congo—and how standing up for one’s principles brings an ineffable lightness to the heart. Finally, Alice and Tami discuss stepping into the role of a societal elder and why it is imperative that we reconnect with the whole of the Earth. (55 minutes)

Search Results for: Alice Walker

In Conversation: Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker

Theresa Reed: Monkey Mind

Nancy Windheart: The Guru Cat

Read The Karma of Cats today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | IndieBound

Memories of Cats I Loved: Brother David Steindl-Rast

Mietzi, 1980s, New York City

Read The Karma of Cats today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | IndieBound

Led by Spirit

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