Chapter 11

“Opening the Heart in

Anti-Racism Activism”
“Pema Chodron and the Lojong Teachings”
Judith Simmer-Brown

Pema Chodron (1936-), an American woman who is a fully ordained nun in

the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, is a renowned author of spiritual classics that
advise her readers on finding sanity and peace in difficult times. Beloved for
her earthy, personal teachings that open the heart, Ani Pema has inspired
many beyond the reaches of Buddhism to see personal obstacles as blessings,
extreme emotions as wisdom, and experiences of vulnerability as an oppor-
tunity. Steeped in the compassion teachings of Bodhisattva mind training
(lojong), which are drawn from the medieval Indian Buddhist saints Shan-
tideva and Atisha, Ani Pema has shown that everyone has inherent kindness
waiting to be cultivated, and to this end has introduced powerful traditional
meditation practices that enable such kindness to flower.
Beyond their meditative value, these lojong teachings have tremendous
potential for transforming anti-racist activism into a profound spiritual
journey. To date, social justice anti-racism work in America has relied
primarily on strategies of litigation, education, and lobbying. The religious
foundations of the civil rights movement have been Abrahamic, and while
the moral leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasized the
interdependence of White and Black lives, the long-term effectiveness of
religious leadership has been limited. Rarely have these issues been presented
as fuel for inner spiritual growth.
American Buddhism has increasingly taken on the ethical teachings of
lojong as a foundation for social engagement, demonstrating that bodhisat-
tva motivation to relieve suffering is a powerful incentive to examine issues
of privilege and oppression. Like Ani Pema herself has engaged in anti-
racism investigations, lojong is one of the practices that has brought social

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 200 Judith Simmer-Brown

engagement to the center of American Buddhism. However, in ethical discus-

sions, major questions have arisen as to whether lojong goes far enough to
effectively address systemic racism. Still, she has been challenged by Bud-
dhist activist teachers to address a bolder critique of the structural sources of
racism, and she has responded with curiosity and openness.
This chapter traces Ani Pema’s life and training and presents her
compassion teachings that have proven so pivotal for American Buddhism.
It will position the lojong teachings she has made famous as an essential
element for socially engaged anti-racism work, while identifying ways that
lojong teachings must be complemented by structural analysis and strategic
activism to change institutional power and privilege. Furthermore, it poses
remaining questions about how structural analysis and lojong may work
together to relieve personal and societal suffering resulting from racism.
Pema Chodron is a fully ordained white American Buddhist nun in
the Tibetan Buddhist lineage of Chogyam Trungpa and Dzigar Kongtrul
Rinpoche, her two primary teachers.1 She was one of the first empowered
acharyas (senior teachers) of the Shambhala Buddhist community, headed
by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. In 1974, she co-founded Gampo Abbey, a
monastic community of men and women on Cape Breton Island in northern
Nova Scotia, where she serves as Director and senior teacher, leading the
annual Yarne (“rainy season”) winter deep retreat. She also has a large
group of personal dharma students, and an international following of tens
of thousands of practitioners who fervently read her books, follow her
recordings, and track her on social media.
Her followers find her earthy, accessible, and fun, as she has a remarkable
capacity to convey the immediacy of the teachings for the everyday life of a
householder. Referred to by the humble nickname “Ani Pema,” or “Ani-la”
(“little sister”—usually a title of a novice nun), hers has now become a
household name.2 Her use of personal narrative and humor, often at her
own expense, has endeared her to beginners and advanced meditators alike,
belying her appearance in formal Tibetan robes and disciplined monastic
lifestyle. Her practical wisdom and palpable compassion make her feel like
a dear aunt or trusted friend. One senses immediately that her monastic
vocation is not a mask or role she plays; she is the first to remark that it should
be understood that “the monastic life isn’t necessarily the best for everyone.
It’s important for you to find out what’s best for you.”3 For her, the discovery
of the monastic life has been full of blessings and has given her the structure
and support to really enter deeply into the spiritual life to find the joys of
freedom and the ability to “relax into groundlessness.”4 These elements find
their way into every teaching she gives.
While Ani Pema’s popularity is heartwarming, there is much more to her
than charm, resonance, and accessibility. She is the product of deep dharma

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 201

training, assiduous practice, and the power of vows to animate a spiritual

life. And while she does not specifically address this, she also happens to
speak from the privilege of whiteness, a social position that influences her
perspectives in both positive and potentially detrimental ways. This chapter
hence explores the traditional underpinnings of Ani Pema’s lineage and
the sources of her profundity and relevance for the present time. It also
interrogates the relevance of her teachings for one of the greatest challenges
of Buddhism in the United States: the prevalence of structural racism in
American Buddhist convert culture.

ANI PEMA’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Pema Chodron was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown on July 14, 1936, in

New York City, the daughter of Reginald and Virginia Blomfield-Brown.
Raised in a Revolutionary War house on a New Jersey farm with an elder
brother and sister, she remembers her childhood as “very pleasant, very
gentle.”5 Her experience as a high school scholarship student at the elite Miss
Porter’s School in Connecticut cultivated her intellectual curiosity. She went
on to study at nearby Sarah Lawrence College, earned a bachelor’s degree
in English literature from UC Berkeley, married a lawyer, and had two
children—a daughter Arlyn and a son Edward. Later while earning a master’s
degree in elementary education from the University of California, Berkeley,
her marriage dissolved and she then married a free-spirited writer. At that
time, she taught elementary school in California and New Mexico.
She traces her first spiritual awakening to an unlikely experience. In her
mid-thirties while teaching school in northern New Mexico, she was sipping
tea in front of her adobe-style house when her writer husband of eight years
pulled up in his car. “I heard the door slam. [He] came around the corner of
the house and just said it . . . ‘Things haven’t been going well with us. I’m
having an affair with somebody else, and we need to get a divorce,’” she
remembers.6 His announcement pulled the rug from beneath her feet, and her
utter shock manifested as “a timeless moment of total, eternal silence.”7 Then,
her impulse was to pick up a rock and throw it at him.
In the subsequent period, she scrambled to figure out what to do with her
life. After a period of searching, she encountered an article called “Working
with Negativity,” written by Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa,
AQ: Please
that happened to speak to her.8 She remembers that she had no idea it was Bud- provide
dhist or anything; the article encouraged seeing emotions as full of wisdom missing
to be embraced, rather than as problems to be removed. From this standpoint, editor name
negativity itself isn’t a problem; rather, it’s battling negativity that causes the for note
ref. 8
unnecessary pain. Finally something had resonated with her own experience.

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 202 Judith Simmer-Brown

Deirdre plunged into Buddhist meditation and inquiry, feeling herself at

home for the very first time. In November 1974, Deirdre made the deci-
sion to ordain as a novice Buddhist nun with sixteen others, at Samye Ling
Tibetan Center in Scotland. The renowned XVI Gyalwa Karmapa presided
and gave her the name “Lotus Dharma Torch.”9 In the early years after her
ordination, she made her home in the Bay Area in California and resumed
her career as an elementary school teacher. In 1978, she then moved to
Boulder, Colorado, in order to work more closely with Trungpa Rinpoche
and to reside in a larger dharma community. In 1980, she became director
of Boulder’s Karma Dzong community, a post she served until moving to
Gampo Abbey in 1984.
At the suggestion of the Karmapa, made during his 1980 U.S. tour, she
requested the full ordination of a Buddhist nun in the Chinese tradition, the
first American woman to do so. On July 29, 1981, at Miu Fat Monastery in
Hong Kong she was ordained as a bhikṣhuni in the Dharmaguptaka lineage,
the only surviving lineage to preserve full Buddhist monastic ordination for
women.10 In 1974, she co-founded Gampo Abbey, an innovative monastic
community on Cape Breton Island, in northern Nova Scotia. It was a daring
experiment; from the beginning it was designed to house monastic women
and men, with separate residences, within the confines of a single com-
munity. It also offered temporary ordination, something previously unheard
AQ: Please of in Tibetan Buddhism.11 In the decades since the founding, Ani Pema has AQ: Pl.
provide continued as resident teacher and primary fundraiser, as well as steady guide check
missing whether the
editor name at the Abbey. expression
for note ref. In the 1990s, transcripts of her Gampo Abbey teachings started to be ‘steady
11 circulated, developing a grassroots following, and her life as a renowned guide’ in
Buddhist author began. Shambhala Publications and Sounds True have in the sentence
the decades since edited and published numerous books, audiobooks, and beginning
‘ In the
courses featuring her work, and additional products like slogan cards, DVDs decades since
and MP3s have sprouted up as well. The royalties for these materials serve to the founding
support Gampo Abbey and Ani Pema’s life in retreat, as well as other projects …..’ is okay.
dear to her heart.
Since 1994, Ani Pema has been a dharma student of Dzigar Kongtrul
Rinpoche, a Nyingma tulku known for his penetrating teachings on Dzogchen
meditation and deep retreat. She has constructed a personal hermitage on his
retreat land outside of Crestone, Colorado, and for the last number of years,
has devoted one hundred days a year there to solitary retreat practice under
his guidance.12 In addition, she spends some months each year in a California
residence, near her children and grandchildren, and is engaged in their lives
on an almost daily basis. Charmingly, her grandchildren never realized that
their unusual granny was famous until early adulthood, when in her company
they were stopped on the street by her adoring fans.

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 203

ANI PEMA’S SPIRITUAL LINEAGE

Ani Pema is part of the first generation of Euro-American Buddhist

practitioners who have been deeply trained in classic practices and texts
of the rich Indo-Tibetan scholastic and yogic traditions. Of the five major
Tibetan lineages, the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma are intimately joined in
their emphasis on meditation practice as primary, supported by studies of
especially the Mahayana and Vajrayana masters and their commentators. In
addition to regular teachings from her lamas, she also took part in a structured
curriculum of Buddhist studies under the direction of Chogyam Trungpa, in
the form of a series of three-month seminaries where she was introduced to
the classic Indo-Tibetan sources of the Mahayana tradition.13 Ani Pema was
a faculty member at many of these seminaries.
One of the most important topics of these sources is that of lojong, or
“mind training,” foundational teachings on the bodhisattva path that date
back to the eleventh-century Indian teacher known as Atisha. These teachings
were a major component of Chogyam Trungpa’s seminary teachings,
entailing memorization, application to daily life, and meditation practices.
The lojong lineage formed the distinctive genre of Mahayana in Tibet that
outlines specific methods for arousing an altruistic awakened heart through
the practices of seeing others equal to oneself, and then placing the welfare
of others before one’s own.
Atisha Dipankara Shri-jnana (982–1054), a Bengali meditation master
and scholar, is credited with transmitting pivotal Indian Mahayana teachings
to Tibet. Atisha drew from the treasury of teachings on the bodhisattva
path dating back to the Indian Prajnaparamita-sutras, the Vaipulya-sutras,
and the teachings of the great eighth-century Indian saint, Shantideva, the
Bodhicharya-avatara (“entering the path of the bodhisattva”) and Shiksha-
samuccaya (“the compendium of discipline”).14 While it is unlikely that
Atisha actually created the lojong texts themselves, he is said to have inspired
the aphorisms collected by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1102–1176). These fifty-
nine slogans form the basis of bodhisattva practices for Tibetan Buddhism,
beloved up to the present day.15 Lojong teachings appear to have been the
esoteric element in the exoteric “path stages” (lam-rim) instructions that
became so important in the Kadampa school, and also its heirs in the Geluk
and Sakya schools. Nevertheless, in the centuries to follow, these mind
training pith teachings “became a shared heritage of all the major schools
of Tibetan Buddhism” right from the earliest stages of their development,
according to translator-scholar Thupten Jinpa.16
The majority of Ani Pema’s published teachings are contemporary
applications of Atisha, Shantideva, and the lojong teachings of Tibet, flavored
further by the interpretations of her Tibetan teachers.17 In phrases that have

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 204 Judith Simmer-Brown

become the titles of her books, moreover, she has created the personal
vernacular for lojong logic: what to do when things fall apart, appreciating the
wisdom of no escape, leaning into the sharp edges of experience, going to the
places that scare you, becoming comfortable with uncertainty. These lojong
teachings represent a revolutionary change in view, attitude, and behavior
based on the experience of the “awakened heart” of bodhicitta, a perspective
that sees that all beings are inseparable from ourselves, understanding that
the true path of happiness is found in putting the welfare of others before that
of ourselves. Lojong builds on a conviction that all beings are fundamentally
complete, good, and wise, and that habits of confusion and emotional
intensity are merely temporary obscurations that keep such goodness from
shining through. Practical lojong teachings urge us to see our enemies as our
greatest spiritual friends, because they show us most effectively where we
are stuck or overly self-preoccupied. They show us that opening ourselves
to discomfort in our experience changes our perspective about personal
suffering and opens us to the wisdom inherent in difficult life experiences.
Embracing failure changes our narrative and releases our fear. Putting the
happiness of others first transforms our entire lives to ones of service and joy.
Central to the lojong tradition is the “sending and receiving” practice called
tonglen, in which we reverse through meditation the logic of self-preoccu-
pation through literally breathing in the suffering of others, while also, in
alternating fashion, sending out to others our own treasured feelings of safety
and pleasure. Tonglen is the most renowned of compassion practices from
Tibetan Buddhism and has traditionally been considered appropriate only for
advanced practitioners. In a Western innovation, Ani Pema began to publicly
teach tonglen twenty-five years ago, and the practice has become widespread
among her Buddhist and non-Buddhist followers. Most popular are her teach-
ings on what she calls “on-the-spot tonglen,” a version of the practice aimed
at helping one to confront painful situations in one’s everyday life.18

CONVERSATIONS ADDRESSING SOCIETAL

VIOLENCE AND INJUSTICE

For Ani Pema, the bodhisattva lojong teachings have increasingly become
invaluable tools not just for the individual practitioner, but also for those
experiencing societal suffering. Her confidence in the power of lojong has
inspired her to address how lojong could relieve specific societal sufferings,
a view that has surfaced within her public dialogues. For instance, in a 2006
interview with political commentator Bill Moyers, she spoke of how comfort
with uncertainty could transform “racial prejudice” and the fear of others
different from ourselves.19 In a classic Buddhist critique of social justice

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 205

activism, she drew upon Shantideva’s advice: if we have trouble with our
world, our first impulse is to try to change it rather than relating it to our own
personal discomfort. Yet, if we, instead, “lean into” the discomfort of our
lives, become familiar with it, and welcome it as a powerful experience of
getting over ourselves, our suffering is alleviated.20
A series of conversations with influential African American women on
national forums provides additional perspective on Ani Pema’s aspirations for
addressing racism. As one example, commenting upon her 1997 dialogue with
Ani Pema, Black feminist intellectual and revolutionary activist bell hooks
once noted: “When I first read [Pema Chodron’s] work, the writing irked me. I
was disturbed by what I began to call its ‘strategic open-endedness.’ I wanted
to be offered solutions, ways out. Instead, she kept extending an invitation to
me and everyone to move into that enchanted space beyond right or wrong—
to journey to the heart of compassion.”21 In their ensuing conversation, Ani
Pema warned against the tendency to develop a “strong sense of an enemy”
when trying too hard to alleviate suffering, because in so doing we actually
vilify the oppressor. She asks, “Don’t you encounter many people who have
good intentions but who get very angry, depressed, and resentful?”22 When
we stay with our own process, noticing how we create barriers and shut down,
Ani Pema observed that we immediately understand how racism and sexism
arise and perpetuate. She advised, “I think it begins with an aspiration to
connect with openheartedness, with deciding that cultivating openness is how
you want to spend the remaining moments of your life.”23
Two years later, in 1999, Ani Pema engaged African American feminist
and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker in a dialogue on tonglen
practice. Walker had just lost someone she deeply loved and was inconsolable;
tonglen practice learned from a Pema recording had helped her through her
difficult passage. She shared how tonglen helped her identify the suffering of
the oppressor: “But really, when you’re standing face to face with someone
who just told you to go to the back of the bus, or someone who has said that
women aren’t allowed here, or whatever, what do you do? I don’t know what
you do, Pema, but at that moment I always see that they’re really miserable
AQ: Please
people and they need help.”24 Ani Pema responded by saying that if we feel provide
our aggression directly, breathing it in with honesty and kindness, we can missing
have “a strong recognition of all the oppressed people who are feeling like editor name,
[we] do. If you keep doing that, something different might come out of your year and
publisher
mouth.”25 details for
A third iconic meeting, with Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday in note Ref. 24
2014 continued with these themes.26 While they did not discuss racism, they
touched upon the themes of fear of discomfort that leads us to react and lash
out, bringing pain into our communities and environments, while also causing
a whole host of resultant issues, including substance abuse, addictions,

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 206 Judith Simmer-Brown

violence, domestic violence, and child abuse. Oprah mused, “Everyone is

trying to feel good, and they do terrible things to try to quiet the noise in their
heads.” Pema responded: “Coming back to immediacy of your experience,
you turn toward the unpleasant feelings, and then things change . . . Why
did this happen? Nothing wrong has just happened here, it’s just that life
is pointing in another direction. This is an opportunity to welcome stuck,
painful feelings.”27
These important conversations shed light on how Ani Pema suggests we
might open our hearts in the face of oppression and injustice in the world, and
how to let go of fixed biases and prejudices that create barriers from others.
When we feel discomfort or groundlessness, or are triggered by difference,
lojong recommends we “lean into discomfort” and discover new alternatives
to habitual patterns of self-protection and bias in order to reverse the suffering
of ourselves and others. What these conversations do not address, however,
is how we might address the societal structures that keep racism in place.
This perspective arises in a conversation in Chicago with younger generation
Buddhist activists in the era of Black Lives Matter.

ADDRESSING STRUCTURAL RACISM

In the mid-2010s, a whole new awareness of the prevalence of racism in

American society dawned with the advent of Black Lives Matter, a nation-
ally recognized activist organization and movement calling attention to the
shootings of unarmed African American men and women at the hands of
police officers. The ensuing exposé of this epidemic of racially motivated
police violence has brought attention to the longtime societal structures
that perpetuate racism, and a greater awareness of white privilege, racial
oppression, and the various power dynamics that keep these structures
in place.28
This development has had a tremendous impact on American Buddhism,
long a bastion of unacknowledged white privilege and appropriation of Asian
Buddhist culture by white cultural norms. While observations about race are
long-standing in American Buddhism, with astute and thoughtful critique of
the whiteness of American Buddhist communities, they had remained mar-
ginal and largely ignored until the advent of Black Lives Matter.29 However,
now these conversations have come front and center across the zendos and
meditation halls, shrine rooms and living rooms, of American Buddhism.
What Jodo Shin-Shu priest Rev. Imamura observed about white Buddhism
in 1992 is now recognized as true: “White practitioners practice intensive
psychotherapy on their cushions in a life-or-death struggle with the individual
ego,” passing for many as American Buddhism.

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 207

On July 1, 2015, a website called “Buddhists for Racial Justice” started cir-
culating among Buddhists on social media. Applying a Buddhist analysis of
structural racism, it spoke of interdependence and the urgency of examining
causes and conditions that lead to oppressive systems of racism. It included
two “Calls to Engage,” one for white practitioners and the other for practitio-
ners of color, recognizing how sociocultural location shapes one’s responses
to racism. Now a division of the North American Buddhist Alliance, these
calls quickly gained over 1400 signatures from members of diverse American
Buddhist organizations.30 Subsequent activities show the growing awareness
in Buddhist communities about the stain of racism, and the importance of
addressing this through education, action, and healing. A Buddhist delega-
tion to the White House at the end of the Obama administration included a
statement on racial justice; Spirit Rock published a resource guide, assembled
more than a decade earlier, on how to heal racism in our Buddhist commu-
nities; and the Buddhist press radically increased coverage of diversity and
inclusion issues with cover stories and whole issues devoted to addressing
racism.31 With the publication of Radical Dharma, Rev. angel Kyodo Wil-
liams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah, each of whom is an African
American Buddhists, emerged as important leaders in raising the conscious-
ness of American Buddhist communities about racism and liberation.32
These cultural changes in American Buddhist communities have radically
altered the context for Pema Chodron’s work. In April of 2016, Ani Pema
was one of the keynote speakers at a Shambhala event in Chicago, called
“Awaken Chicago: The Power of All People Together,” focusing on Buddhist
responses to racism and including a diverse audience with strong representa-
tion from numerous African American community groups. Other presenters
included Rev. angel Kyodo Williams (Kyodo), Acharya Gaylon Ferguson,
and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the Shambhala lineage-holder.33 Ani Pema
presented her customary teachings drawn from the lojong traditions in which
she has been so steeped, addressing how to act to bring about a more just
and harmonious society. Sensing the dynamism of the gathering, she invited
dialogue throughout her presentation.
Ani Pema’s Chicago teachings were a commentary on a verse from the
famous text on the thirty-seven practices of the bodhisattva, composed by
the fourteenth-century Tibetan teacher, Togme Zangpo, based on the original
teachings of Shantideva.34 In the twentieth verse, Togme Zangpo emphasized
the importance of subduing the enemy inside, especially anger; otherwise, the
external enemies will proliferate and will not be conquered.

If one does not conquer one’s own hatred,

The more one fights outer enemies, the more they will increase [. . .]
To tame one’s own mind is the practice of the bodhisattva.35

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 208 Judith Simmer-Brown

If anger is a natural response to injustice (and regarding this Pema, indeed,

remarked that “it is an appropriate response”), the first priority should,
nevertheless, be to subdue our own minds, and not to go to war. Hatred
only cuts into our ability to act intelligently and skillfully and can cause us
to escalate violence. “Respecting and feeling our anger can allow us to see
its power, and to creatively use it to act to correct injustice, and to empower
us”—Ani Pema taught.
Her talk did not address her own white privilege, class privilege, or her
privilege as a Buddhist monastic, and likely it did not occur to Ani Pema to
include this. However, knowing she was speaking to an environment outraged
by racial injustice, she invited contrary points of view, saying that she “means
it to be challenging.”36 Many stepped up to the microphone to contest her in
one way or another, especially about whether anger is warranted in the face
of systemic injustice. The most direct challenge came from Kyodo, who
remarked, alluding to Pema’s place of privilege: “Most of us do not have the
experience with a four-hundred-year old system that is designed to keep people
oppressed, but is also designed to affect the conditions in which someone has
the spaciousness to discover their own liberation.”37 Kyodo went on to say
that the legacy of slavery of African Americans affects even their ability to
awaken and free themselves from anger. These systems of oppression tell the
oppressed that if they aren’t willing to play by the oppressor’s rules, then no
one will listen to them. That is why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., remarked
that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”38 Kyodo urged Ani Pema and the
assembly to learn how to “rethink our relationship to the anger we witness,
and think about how we reorganize ourselves in response to that anger, and
figure out what we can do to make sure that those people can be heard,
because that’s why they’re rioting.”39
This short challenge epitomizes current Buddhist People of Color’s
critique of the mainstream white privilege interpretation of how to bring
about social change. While Kyodo would never contest lojong’s effectiveness
in working with our own minds, contemporary Buddhist wisdom declares
that lojong must be accompanied by a more nuanced understanding of our
own sociocultural location. White privilege has the “luxury of obliviousness”
inherent to its very workings. As Sociologist Allan G. Johnson writes: “The
ability of whites to act as if they have no race at all but are simply human
beings, while people of color must have what W.E.B. DuBois called a double
consciousness. ‘It is a peculiar sensation,’ he wrote in The Souls of Black
Folk, ‘. . . this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of
others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused
contempt and pity.’”40 From this perspective, a Buddhist practice that focuses
only on our common humanity, working with our own individual biases and

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 209

emotions, is undoubtedly important but can only be part of the quotient for
undoing the pain of racism. If lojong is used to “spiritually bypass” structures
of oppression like racism and sexism, it will be viewed by the oppressed with
suspicion.41
Back in Chicago, Ani Pema humbly acknowledged to the audience the truth
of Kyodo’s point, saying that liberation can never be only for ourselves, but
must prepare us for “more and more challenging situations. It is stepping out
into the challenge zone, which is where we learn, that the change happens.”42
But she reiterated that if we do not work with our own minds, our own anger,
we will not have a chance of changing external circumstances. While Kyodo
agreed, she ended her remarks asserting, “It’s a falsehood that we can attain
personal liberation if we ignore the outer conditions.”43 This is the essential
koan of this important conversation.
While Ani Pema herself exhibited her own courage to step into discomfort
in this charged Chicago environment, she later acknowledged that many there
were muttering, “Pema didn’t get it.”44 She was clearly puzzled, confident
that individual practice is helpful, but knowing it may be insufficient to make
all the necessary changes in systems of oppression. She has been pondering
this in the years since the Chicago program, personally following the Black
Lives Matter movement and ruminating on how to help. On June 11, 2016,
her Facebook page had a rare personal post:

It has finally really gotten through to me how dangerous it is to be black in

America, especially for black men . . . In the US, racial injustice has been going
on since the days of slavery. But what is different now is that the videos of the
murders [by police] are there for all to see, and white people can no longer
ignore what is going on. I am one of them. I don’t know what the solutions
are . . . [T]here has got to be a way for us to move toward justice for all these
victims of endemic racism. The root problem is fear and hatred and how this
escalates which is where my kind of teachings could be useful. I am committed
to continue to help where I can.”45

Critics say that Pema’s own training to focus on personal practice reflects
the strategies of traditional Tibetan Buddhism that prioritize individual mind
states and practice, filtered and appropriated through cultural patterns of
American white privilege, that places the primary focus only on the individ-
ual experience of working with one’s own mind. They add that while no one
would contest the importance of these practices, focusing solely on them is
insufficient to really address the generational and societal suffering resulting
from racism. Choosing the former as the sole approach reflects the myopia
of the luxury of obliviousness embedded in the white privilege of much of
American Buddhism.

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 210 Judith Simmer-Brown

Critics from the other side argue that discarding lojong and tonglen as
excessively individualistic, exchanging them for only systemic analysis, dis-
regards one of the treasures of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and returns anti-
racist work to the realm only of the activist that can often politicize, polarize,
and secularize this important work. It is difficult to imagine having sufficient
personal clarity to skillfully address systems of oppression if our own minds
are clouded by rage, hopelessness, or defensiveness. And if we employ
systemic analysis without lojong, we miss the opportunity for spiritual trans-
formation that radical reframing of personal interest affords us. A systemic
understanding that addresses our own sociocultural locations combined with
a lojong practice that encourages us to experience suffering as opportunity,
can transform anti-racist work for our entire society.
The 2016 conversation between Pema Chodron and Rev. angel Kyodo
Williams represents this powerful koan in American Buddhism. How can
the historic and penetrating teachings of lojong that engender mutually
transformative engagement with the suffering of the world be joined with
the worldly wisdom of understanding oppressive systems of privilege—
encompassing complex issues of race, class, and gender—in a way that
brings out the best of each? How can social justice activism be informed
by technologies of spiritual transformation embedded in Tibetan Buddhism,
and vice versa? This crucial project of Tibetan Buddhism in America has
the potential to engender an ethical system of social transformation that
powerfully transforms individuals and society as a whole, transmuting our
way of addressing the underlying issues of privilege embedded in sexism,
racism, classism, and heteronormativity.
American society yearns for a truly spiritual path of social engagement,
one that fully integrates personal transformation with societal transformation.
The Engaged Buddhism movement of the 1990s and 2000s spoke of this as
an acknowledgment that “social work entails inner work, and social change
AQ: Please
provide and inner change are inseparable.”46 In the decades to come, as American
missing Buddhism matures its own methods of social transformation, the enduring
editor name legacy of Pema Chodron will show that the greatest opportunity we have in
for note Ref. our spiritual journeys is discovered within the greatest obstacle and suffering
46
in our personal lives, and that “nothing ever goes away until it has taught us
what we need to know.”47 This is lojong’s path of opening the heart.

NOTES

1. Chogyam Trungpa (1939–1987) was an incarnate lama from the Kagyu and
Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. Escaping Chinese oppression in 1959, he
emigrated to the West and established an international network of meditation centers

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 211

called Shambhala, as well as Naropa University based in Boulder, Colorado. Dzigar

Kongtrul (1964-) represents the next generation of Tibetan teachers. He was born in
India to refugee Tibetan parents, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1989. His meditation
community is called Mangala Shri Bhuti, based in Crestone, Colorado.
2. Customarily, when a novice nun receives full ordination, or has become
a revered teacher, the diminutive “Ani” would be considered disrespectful and
inappropriate. Pema has continued to allow this nickname to follow her to fame and
renown.
3. “Pema Chodron: A Personal Journey,” talk recorded on the 30th anniversary
of her ordination. DVD (Portage, MI: Great Path Tapes and Books, 2005).
4. “A Personal Journey,” 2005.
5. Lenore Friedman, Meetings with Remarkable Women: Buddhist Teachers in
America (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000), 96.
6. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations, https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=mm_​
0bw34​0Tk. Accessed August 15, 2018.
7. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations.
8. The article appears as a chapter in Chogyam Trungpa, “Working With
Negativity,” in Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation (Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 1976/2001), 73–82.
9. “A Personal Journey,” 2005.
10. Ibid. An account of Ani-la’s ordination appears in Judith Simmer-Brown, “The
Prospects for a Bhikṣunī Saṅgha in Tibetan Buddhism,” in Buddhist Studies from
India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish, edited by Damien Keown
(New York and London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2006).
11. Michaela Haas, “Pema Chodron: Relaxing Into Groundlessness,” Dakini
Power: Twelve Extraordinary Women Shaping the Transmission of Tibetan Buddhism
in the West (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2013), 129–131.
12. Her life in retreat is described in Haas, 125–135.
13. These seminaries were based on Jamgon Kongtrul’s Sheja Khunkhuab,
Gampopa’s Tharpa Gyen, and Atisha’s lojong texts. Richard Barron, tr. and ed., The
Autobiography of Jamgon Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors (Ithaca: Snow Lion,
2003), 342, n. 687; Gampopa and Khenpo Konchog Gyaltsen, The Jewel Ornament
of Liberation: The Wish-Fulfilling Gem of the Noble Teachings (Ithaca: Snow Lion,
1998).
14. Shantideva and Padmakara Translation Committee, The Way of the Bodhisattva
(Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006); Charles Goodman, tr., The Training
Anthology of Shantideva: A Translation of the Siksasamuccaya (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016).
15. Thupten Jinpa and Shonu Gyalchok, tr., Mind Training: the Great Collection
(Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006).
16. Jinpa and Gyalchok, 5–9.
17. While all her books draw intimately from applications of lojong teachings, her
primary ones that directly address lojong (all published by Shambhala Publications)
are Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are (2001); Always Maintain a Joyful Mind and
Other Lojong Teachings on Awakening Compassion (2007); Be Grateful to Everyone:

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 212 Judith Simmer-Brown

An In-Depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong (2017); and The Compassion Book:
Teachings for Awakening the Heart (2017). There are also numerous recordings of
Ani Pema’s that address lojong.
18. Pema Chodron, “Tonglen on the Spot,” Tricycle Magazine, Summer 2002;
https​://tr​icycl​e.org​/maga​zine/​tongl​en-sp​ot/ Accessed August 18, 2018.
19. “[I]f we could learn to not be afraid of groundlessness, not be afraid of
insecurity and uncertainty, it would be calling on an inner strength that would allow
us to be open and free and loving and compassionate in any situation. But as long as
we keep trying to scramble to get ground under our feet and avoid this uneasy feeling
of groundlessness and insecurity and uncertainty and ambiguity and paradox, any of
that, then the wars will continue. The racial prejudice will continue.” Bill Moyers,
“Faith & Reason,” Interview with Pema Chodron, August 4, 2006. https​://bi​llmoy​ers.
c​om/co​ntent​/pema​-chad​ron/,​ accessed August 7, 2018.
20. Bill Moyers, “Faith & Reason” interview; Shantideva, BCA 5.12–14.
21. “Pema Chodron and bell hooks on Cultivating Openness When Life Falls
Apart,” Shambhala Sun, 1997, reprinted in https​://ww​w.lio​nsroa​r.com​/cult​ivati​ng-op​
ennes​s-thi​ngs-f​all-a​part-​2/
22. “Pema Chodron and bell hooks on Cultivating Openness When Life Falls
Apart.”
23. Ibid.
24. Pema Chodron and Alice Walker, “Good Medicine for the World,” in Pema
Chodron: Collector’s Edition, Honoring Ani Pema Chodron on Her 80th Birthday, 38.
25. Chodron and Alice Walker, 38.
26. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations, 2014.
27. Ibid.
28. Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of
an Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
29. Two of the most important scholarly articles on the subject are Kenneth K.
Tanaka, “Epilogue: The Colors and Contours of American Buddhism,” The Faces
of Buddhism in America, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 287–298; Wakoh Shannon Hickey,
“Two Buddhisms, Three Buddhisms, and Racism,” Journal of Global Buddhism,
vol. 11 (2010), 1–25. For personal and prophetic work predating BLM, see: angel
Kyodo Williams, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace
(New York: Penguin Books, 2002); Janice Willis, Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and
Buddhist—One Woman’s Spiritual Journey (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008).
30. https​://no​rtham​erica​nbudd​hista​llian​ce.or​g/brj​/; Ann Gleig, “The Shifting
Landscape of Buddhism in America,” Lion’s Roar, February 3, 2018, https​://ww​
w.lio​nsroa​r.com​/the-​shift​ing-l​andsc​ape-o​f-bud​dhism​-in-a​meric​a/. Accessed August
15, 2018.
31. Gleig.
32. Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (Berkeley: North
Atlantic Books, 2016).
33. Teachings and events of this program are available on Shambhala Online, https​
://sh​ambha​laonl​ine.o​rg/aw​aken-​chica​go-aw​aken-​world​-week​end/.​ Accessed August
15, 2018.

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 “Opening the Heart in Anti-Racism Activism” 213

34. Dilgo Khyentse, The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-Seven Verses on the
Practice of a Bodhisattva, Padmakara Translation Committee, tr. (Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 2007).
35. Khyentse, Verse 20, 132.
36. “Awaken Chicago,” Shambhala Online.
37. Ibid.
38. Three years after the March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke
with journalist Mike Wallace in 1966 about the race riots that had spread across the
U.S., explaining them in this way. https​://ww​w.cbs​news.​com/n​ews/m​lk-a-​riot-​is-th​
e-lan​guage​-of-t​he-un​heard​/. Accessed August 17, 2018.
39. Ibid.
40. “The Luxury of Obliviousness,” Unraveling the Knot: Allan G. Johnson’s
Blog, https​://ag​johns​on.wo​rdpre​ss.co​m/201​3/09/​13/ob​livio​us/. Accessed August 16,
2018. See also Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power and Difference (New York:
McGraw Hill, 2017), 117–120.
41. “Spiritual bypassing” is a term coined by Buddhist psychologist John
Welwood in 1984 to describe “a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and
practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological
wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” This also applies to unresolved social
issues. See Carla Sherrell and Judith Simmer-Brown, “Structural Spiritual Bypassing
in the Contemporary Mindfulness Movement,” in Social Justice, Inner Work, and
Contemplative Practice: Lessons & Directions for Multiple Fields, edited by Sheryl
Petty. Initiative for Contemplation, Equity and Action (CEAI), Contemplative Mind
and Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 2017), 75–94.
42. Sherrell and Simmer-Brown.
43. Ibid.
44. Personal Interview with Pema Chodron, April 2018.
45. Lion’s Roar, July 11, 2016: https​://ww​w.lio​nsroa​r.com​/pema​-chod​ron-s​peaks​
-out-​again​st-ra​cial-​injus​tice/​.
46. Kenneth Kraft, “Prospects of a Socially Engaged Buddhism,” in Inner Peace,
World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1992), 12.
47. Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating
Fearlessness and Compassion (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2004), 160.

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