Summary: Pema Chodron: "No Right, No Wrong"

Rose Barrett

In her essay "No Right, No Wrong," Pema Chodron reflects on how her experiences as a student of Trungpa Rinpoche enabled her to realize "don't know mind," a level of non-attachment that allows one to avoid making judgments about what is right and what is wrong. She talks about how this understanding helps unmask one's true self and also its importance in fulfilling the bodhisattva ideal.

Chodron discusses her devotion to her teacher as an example of "don't know mind." She mentions how Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings were often provocative and unsettling, and his lifestyle did not rigidly follow the precepts of Buddhism. "His whole teaching was about leading people away from holding on to some kind of security," she says. She reflects on the changing opinions she has had concerning his actions, from being upset by them to feeling that "everything he did was to help others" to eventually just acknowledging the things that she learned from Trungpa without ever knowing who he was or why he acted in any certain way.

Chodron found this inability to judge actions and people in terms of good and bad to be important in the realization of the true self; she compares Buddhism and psychotherapy and expresses the opinion that "Buddhism is about diving into your real issues and fearlessly befriending the difficult and blocked areas…" An important aspect of this for her is having "the courage of living in the ambiguity," of not judging anything in yourself or others as right or wrong. She relates how many people, after having a painful experience, seek to place the responsibility for their suffering onto somebody: "The habitual human pattern is to try to get rid of our own suffering by blaming it on someone else, or by blaming it on oneself. In either case you make somebody wrong."

As a teacher, or "student-teacher," the bodhisattva vow is very important to Chodron. Her concept of "true morality" comes from the realization of the interconnectedness of all things, rather than a classification of things as right or wrong. "If another person is not healed, then you are not healed, and if you aren't, they aren't." She describes our human tendency to become attached to what we see as good and to dispel what we see as bad, and advocates practices that enable you to "get used to sharing and giving what you're usually attached to and want to keep for yourself," namely joy, inspiration, and delight; and being "willing to take on suffering and develop compassion for it, and even relax with it."

Chodron's attitude seems to be that neither right nor wrong are indications of truth, and that in order for human beings to truly alleviate suffering and live with joy, they must choose "the wisdom of no escape," fearlessly acknowledging themselves and others while realizing that "you can't make it right, you can't make it wrong."