In this warm and wide-ranging conversation, Pema Chödrön reflects on her life, practice, teaching, and making Buddhist wisdom accessible in everyday experience as the milestone of her 90th birthday approaches.
Pema shares what “winding down” looks like for her, and why, at the urging of Anam Thubten Rinpoche, she continues to teach. At the heart of the conversation, Pema unpacks her new book’s (Another Kind of Freedom) central question: what does freedom actually mean? It’s not the conventional idea of escaping one situation for a better one, but a deeper, unconditional freedom found by moving toward experience rather than away from it.
The conversation touches on counterintuitive teachings on disappointment and boredom as spiritual signposts, the art of working with people without getting overwhelmed, and why praise and blame are equally superficial, illustrated by a perfectly timed airport story.
Pema also offers a memorable image for “inviting all sentient beings as guests” without overwhelming our nervous system and shares how, in this later chapter of her life, formless practice and the aspiration to live free from fixed mind guide her day to day.
This heartfelt conversation is a profound look at what lifelong practice can become.
Watch this interview or read the episode show notes at shambhala.com/podcast.
Another Kind of Freedom: https://www.shambhala.com/another-kind-of-freedom.html
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:37 What Pema is up to at This Very Moment
04:32 What is true freedom?
08:44 Teaching from experience instead of theory
12:28 Why Pema wrote her new book, Another Kind of Freedom.
15:46 Encountering the Myth of Freedom for the first time
17:02 Working with praise and blame
21:22 What Pema’s focusing on in her teachings
23:00 Working with disappointment and boredom as a tools
27:30 Working with people, the good and the bad
34:05 Pema's personal practice
