The Places that Scare Us and Spiritual Friends

By Sara Moreno

The Places that Scare You is American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chödrön’s second book to be published. Throughout her life, Chödrön has written to help establish the monastic tradition in the West, and share ideas with Buddhists of all traditions. In this second book, she focuses on the practice of bodhichitta. Chitta means “mind”, “heart”, or “attitude”, and Bodhi means “awake”, or “enlightened”, or “completely open”. Chödrön equates bodhicitta with our tenderness and ability to love. She says that a part of being able to embrace moments of vulnerability, or the “rawness of a broken heart”, is possible with the help of the “spiritual friend”. Chödrön’s spiritual friend was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a preeminent Tibetan Buddhist Meditation master. After reading Chödrön’s book, I related my personal experiences to her concept of the spiritual friend and Trungpa Rincpoche’s teachings on basic goodness and harmony.

Trungpa Rinpoche said of the spiritual friend: “The real function of a spiritual friend is to insult you.” Chödrön asked to be Trungpa Rinpoche’s student in 1974, and what she entered with him was an “unconditional relationship”. She said it took her years to develop the trust and “personal maitri”, or loving kindness, to completely surrender to the unconditional relationship. Chödrön described Trungpa Rinpoche as someone dangerous to her ego. She could not manipulate him because he was not someone who was “caught up”.

Although she perceived Trungpa Rinpoche as someone wiser, and even superior, Chödrön said that in warrior tradition, there can be a meeting of minds between the teacher and the student. The master warrior serves as a mirror that shows our mind with “embarrassing accuracy”. So while Chödrön felt fear and uncertainty about entering a challenging relationship with Trungpa Rinpoche, she knew needed a candid guide for confronting the things she feared.

I first read The Places that Scare You when I was 20 years old. Looking back on my early twenties in college, I am certain that my close circle of friends were of a "spiritual" nature. I have never had a Buddhist Monk in my life to guide me, but even so, I have been surrounded by people who have influenced the way I see myself and the world. My best friends in college were my two roommates Talia and Andi. We spent a lot of time joking about matters of inconsequence, but we also talked about religion, various styles of parenting, whether or not we should be more concerned with politics, and the question of whether we deserved the good and bad things that came our way.

In the midst of these more serious discussions, no one ever bolted, even if there was dissidence. With both the lighthearted and  earnest interactions I had with them, I learned to appreciate living in the present moment. In spite of the differences in our upbringings, personal philosophies, and studies of interest, there was something between me, Andi, and Talia that kept us connected and listening to each other.  Chödrön says the ambiguity between the views of the teacher and the student can contain uncertainty and paradox, and that we should not bolt when the teacher does not fit our preconceptions (115).

With my college friends, we found ourselves in the “in-between state”: anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness. The excitement of newfound independence was intertwined with academic pressures, shifting relationships, and the quiet aches of loss and failure. Together, we acknowledged the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere and we allowed it to make us tender towards each other. Chödrön calls this open-ended tender place bodhichitta. The challenge is to stay in the middle of the uncertainty without trying to struggle or giving in to complaint.

One of the most important lessons I learned from my spiritual friend, Talia, was about paying attention to the feelings and thoughts guiding my actions. For as long as I can remember, I have had the habit of picking at the skin around my fingertips. Over the years of this picking, my fingertips have become callused. Sometimes, the habit consumes my attention to the point that I cause myself pain from picking so much. When people have taken notice of it and asked why I do it, I tell them that I “do it as I think”, and that answer sufficed for them, and for me my whole life until I met Talia.

Anxiety is talked about more openly now than back when I was in college. During my childhood and adolescence, if the word was used, it was not to name a mental illness. Talia was the first person to suggest that the habit might be an expression of anxiety. No one had ever told me I could have anxiety, and therefore I thought my way of thinking, and its outward expression, was normal.

When she first suggested that I pick at my skin when I am anxious, I got defensive because I believed my thoughts were sound, useful, and meant to have endless links added to them. So I felt as if Talia, my spiritual friend, had insulted me. But later on, when I was alone and started picking at my fingertips again, I stopped to consider what had crossed my mind before I started. Sure enough, I had been thinking about whether or not I would have time to work out and finish my homework before going to class, followed by thoughts about going to work after class, and then going out with friends after that. The root of the thoughts was fear that I would not be able to do everything, and the rapid fire of doubts was being shown on my fingertips. This realization about what I thought was an unavoidable habit changed the way I paid attention to myself.

Rather than avoiding anxiety, heartbreak, and the unknown by distracting myself with a physical custom, I wanted to listen to my thoughts and ask myself where they came from, and if they needed to stay. The introspection Talia provoked led me to understand my thinking was sometimes overthinking.

It was scary to think someone could see something in me before I could. I would like to think I know myself better than anyone else ever can. However, a good friend, or a spiritual friend, can see me from a perspective I will never be able to fully imagine, and it is important to value the unique ways other people see me.

With Talia’s help, I felt closer to bodhichitta. Chödrön said the first step to remaining open is to understand that a feeling of psychological discomfort is a sign that old habits are getting liberated. Now, when I start picking at my skin, I feel I have the choice to stop and come back to the immediacy of my experience or continue struggling and causing physical harm to myself. 

From my spiritual friend, Andi, I learned that asking someone to be vulnerable  is not intrusive, but rather a better way to understand yourself and them.

At first, I was nervous to live with Andi because I knew she liked to psycho-analyze people, and she would do it to me. I had a fear she would try to pick me apart and discover something wrong. Trungpa Rinpoche said that giving and opening oneself is not particularly painful, but the idea of it is very painful. I lived with Andi for two years. In those years and the time since, I answered her questions about my life, thoughts, and feelings. Her reactions and responses have never been negative. If they were not positive, they were always constructive. I have given Andi a lot of material to form a psychoanalysis of me, at first with hesitation but eventually with ease. She remains my friend, and many of the things I have been afraid to talk about (the places that scare me) have lost my attention because she has been there to listen. 

There is difficulty in being genuine about where we are and meeting the unknown without fear. I had to trust Talia and Andi with my vulnerability before we could find harmony. In Talk Four of the Visual Dharma Seminar, Trungpa Rinpoche compared the “basic goodness” to a flower arrangement. The contrasts between the combined flowers still had togetherness. “Things could work just like that,” he said.

Chödrön says that eventually, we will move in the direction of allowing every person we meet to become our teacher. As we benefit from our interactions with people, learning from them without judgment, we can learn to look inward without judging ourselves.

The remarkable result of connecting with people who are experiencing the challenges and fortunes of life similarly to me is that I do not perceive their challenges as something dooming or something that will hurt them. I learn that their challenges are like mine: they exist but not as something negative or a reflection of me being negative. 

Chödrön says that one way of training with “overwhelm” is keeping our attention on the other person. In her chapter “Meeting the Enemy”, she writes about how other people’s pain triggers fear in us, and we respond by turning inward and “erecting walls”. The story about compassion practices Chödrön shared was about a woman whose son was addicted to heroin. The mother would get in touch with the truth of her son’s situation in hopes of helping him, but she would find that it overwhelmed her when she came to the truth, and she could not connect with her son because of how frightening and raw the experience was. The challenge was practicing genuine empathy and keeping her heart engaged without becoming overwhelmed. 

I think Chödrön would agree that people are inherently capable of empathy, sympathy, and compassion. When someone expresses their pain to me, I do find myself going numb sometimes, in order to avoid disrupting my own state of mind by feeling their pain and then searching for reasons to justify it in myself. With my friends and family, it is difficult to feel their overwhelm without it affecting me. Chödrön wrote: “We panic because we feel we can’t handle the pain” and tells readers we should trust this panic and find the courage to turn our attention back towards the other person, keeping our heart open to the pain. To practice loving kindness, we have to trust ourselves and the elements we are working with. Trungpa Rinpoche said “If there’s no trust, there will be no harmony.”

My spiritual friends and I have gotten more comfortable with listening to each other’s pain, fear, and anxiety without turning inward. Because of my friends I have more practice with being supportive, and trusting my wisdom when they need it. I have learned that when I have the chance to be vulnerable, my immediate reaction should not be defensive or aggressive. Trungpa Rinpoche said: “It is such a relief when you begin to give, and give, and give.” When I allow myself to be vulnerable with other people, I begin moving in the direction of allowing everyone to be my teacher.  

Chödrön says that allowing ourselves to experience emotional distress as we give our attention to the present moment is essential to bodhichitta practices. There is a great relief in being vulnerable with someone and their response not making you feel judged or ridiculous. What I learned since being more vulnerable with people is that it leads me to be even more vulnerable with myself. Trungpa Rincpoche said that each time you give, your vision begins to clear more, along with your hearing systems. Sharing my thoughts and feelings with other people and being heard without negative feedback makes me feel safer with my thoughts, and I have grown to relate to myself more without moralizing, or being harsh and deceptive.  

Ultimately, our spiritual friends are the people we need to show us when we are off track, as they are the people we have chosen to listen to. My best friends from college, while I love them, scare me because they have challenged my habits of being. My friends and I never requested to be each other’s students or teachers like Chödrön did with Trungpa Rinpoche, but it has gone without saying that we have grown as individuals from being friends. My friends have been my teachers in feeling and letting go, knowing my ego and letting go, and trusting my basic wisdom.

American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chödrön’s Book

Sources

Chodron, Pema. The Places That Scare You. Boston: Shambhala, 2002. 

Surrendering Your Aggression. YouTube, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OBhY8cWvYU. 

Basic Goodness and Harmony . YouTube, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QKcyCbFB74.