I’m looking out at a mountain whose name I should know but do not; dark green fir trees line its side, pools and patches of snow and ice dot its peak. The last sunlight of the day turns the dark rock into a warm greenish brown. I’m in an old house in a small village in the South East of Switzerland. I’m here for a week of quiet with my mother and our dog. When I arrived, I was tense. I’m still tense now, only a little less. I’ve been thinking of this passage from Pema Chödrön:

You're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you're opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is - working with it rather than struggling against it. You're the only one who knows.

In her memoir The Argonauts writer Maggie Nelson quotes Chödrön’s entire passage above before adding, with a sigh: ‘and sometimes, even you don’t know.’ It’s hard, confusing work, being a feeling human in the world. But I think this work of discernment is called for right now. Not because now is an easy time to practice it. But because being willing to let the world come as it is always increases my compassion. So: Am I being defensive, holding on to my favorite version of the truth, or do I soften, accepting that there’s much I don’t know? I’m the only one who knows.

If we can feel the difference at all, I think we can feel it inside our bodies: ‘these soft houses in which we live and in which we move and from which we can never migrate, except by dying,’ as poet and essayist Kei Miller says. There’s something to know here, in those minutes and hours and days and years before our last migration.

I’ve had Pema Chödrön’s quote taped above my various writing desks for over a decade. Nowhere do I work harder at keeping my ego together than in my writing. For years I thought Chödrön was only talking to her students, but no. The Tibetan Buddhist nun who was born 88 years ago in New York as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown is also addressing herself in this passage. Chödrön may have been a disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche half her life, she may have meditated and practiced for decades, and yet she is also, still, trying to know the difference between protecting herself and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is. I take some comfort in that.

Letting the world come as it is might seem like a terrifying suggestion to some, so here’s a slightly more concrete exercise for when your head is spinning: Be still. Quietly to yourself or out loud, name something you can see, something you smell, something you can hear and something you can touch. Repeat as often as necessary.

This Thursday, on June 19, Jupiter squares Neptune for the first time in twelve years. As much as we might try to work with the world rather than struggle against it, it might be hard to clearly see our own motives in the idealistic fog of this moment. Boundless compassion is as possible as hopelessness and burnout. People will proclaim they’ve found ‘the answer’ and people will try and sell you ‘the answer’. Remember that you’re the only one who knows. And if even you don’t know, give it a few days. Let the solstice on June 21 remind you that seasons pass. That you can make a wish - or not. Silence is just as alright.

Sources

Pema Chödrön: Comfortable with Uncertainty, Shambhala Publications, 2008

Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts, Graywolf Press, 2015

Kei Miller: Things I Have Withheld, Canongate, 2021