The topic for our open Monday discussions this month all center around Pema Chodron’s book Comfortable with Uncertainty. Jessica Rasp recently led a class on “The Wisdom of No Exit” and kicked things off with an except from a great 1994 interview between Leonard Cohen and the Shambala Sun.
“…there is the consolation of no exit, the consolation that this
is what you’re stuck with. Rather than the consolation of healing the
wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind
of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human
predicament and the only consolation is embracing it…(continued below)”
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(Continue reading for the full except from the Leonard Cohen Interview)
suffering, a deep sense of unsatisfactoriness with life. There is no
question about it. The Buddhist theology presents it as the first noble
truth. We live in a world that is not perfectible, a world that always
presents you with a sense of something undone, something missing,
something hurting, something irritating. From that minor sense of
discomfort to torture and poverty and murder, we live in that kind of
universe. The wound that does not heal – this human predicament is a
predicament that does not perfect itself.
is what you’re stuck with. Rather than the consolation of healing the
wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind
of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human
predicament and the only consolation is embracing it. It is our
situation, and the only consolation is the full embrace of that reality.
it presents a bewildering landscape to stumble over. Love is a fire: it
burns everyone, it disfigures everyone…
cooking like shish kabob in your breast, and no matter what you do, the
passions come and go and they sear you, they burn you. If it’s not your
lover, it’s your children; if it’s not your children, it’s your job; if
it’s not your job, it’s growing old; if it’s not growing old, it’s
getting sick. This predicament cannot be resolved. That is the wound
that does not heal, and rather than approach it from the point of view
of stitching or cauterizing it, there is a kind of wisdom of living
with the wound.
does not heal, still the reality is suffering. We come up with all
kinds of new drugs, all kinds of new approaches. Yes, there are all
kinds of human decencies to embrace, and we should really try to be
nice to one another, but nothing dissolves this sense of irritation and
unsatisfactoriness that we all feel. Nobody gets over that.” – Exceprt from From 1994 Interview with Shambala Sun.
Here is the full interview.
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