Ann Tashi Slater: On Embracing Impermanence

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Fernando Ona: Tashi Delek, we begin in the space between this Bardo space. And as we gather in this shared inquiry, I just wanted to ground us, not in abstraction, but in the fullness of this textured impermanence as lived experience. Ann, it is a blessing to be here with you. And as we begin, I want to invite all of us into this present moment and orient toward your deep relationships with your lineages, ancestors, peoples, all of it, to actively face and accept the realities of the lived experiences you write about. And I'd like us to begin, as you do in your book, with your grandmother. That first chapter, Ann, oh my gosh. The stories, her stories, your stories, and how they are so profoundly reanimated in this book. It just brings me to my own grandmother and the stories my grandmother also told and continued to whisper in my ear. And so, you know, there's so many questions I want to ask you about this first chapter where you drop us into Darjeeling. And your arrival in that first chapter in 2004, I believe.

Ann Tashi Slater: That's right.

Fernando Ona: Your grandmother's funeral. And you, in a way, awaken us into, as you launch into this chapter, into that bardo space. And I was just, I want to ask, how does ancestry become a kind of bardo space? A living presence between past and present? Because it's so alive in this chapter and throughout the book. But I'm just curious how, because in a way, it's not only a connection to your grandmother, but the lineages that you're part of, that are animated by your stories that I feel like are animated in your grandmother's stories that she would tell you.

Ann Tashi Slater: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Fernando. And first, let me say thank you for hosting this and inviting me to CIIS and to all of you for joining us tonight. It's such an honor. Thank you. So yeah, the first chapter of the book is about my grandmother's funeral, which was indeed in 2004, and that I attended. I mean, it was the first full Tibetan funeral and probably the last that I will certainly see. And what happens is the Tibetan lamas sit next to the body, to my grandmother's body, and they read from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to guide her through bardo. And this is a kind of anchor for the book, because it anchors the whole idea of these teachings, which are actually meant to be as much for the living as for the dead. And so I saw that when I was at the funeral in Darjeeling, which I'll explain more later about that. But yeah, speaking to your point about lineage and this connection to ancestry as a kind of bardo, I do think that because there is a space in a way between you and your ancestors, but there's also a continuity or a line. And I see it, as we become aware of that space and that connection, then it's a space of possibility. And in that possibility, we can, you know, so for me, for example, with my grandmother's stories, you know, she told me a lot of stories over the years. And it just opened up, right, opened up a space that in some way, you know, first literally was there, but that I had not been aware of before that.

Fernando Ona: And in a way, it feels like it awakens in that space, right, that the stories aren't just stories told that are static in a particular time and place. Right. But they extend beyond that, right, because it informs right now, in a way, like throughout the book and at the start, really, that I am witnessing it, you navigate not only ancestry as past, but as really present. That in that presence, that we can then connect to things that are ongoing and continue to evolve and change as you go through various experiences of your life. Right. And as you witness other people's lives and the people that you not only encounter as deep relationship, but just in your classroom or in your writing, right, that those stories don't remain in the past. And your lineage isn't just some static point in time, right, but it becomes connected to periods of time right now.

Ann Tashi Slater: Yeah.

Fernando: I don't know if that makes sense, Ann, but I just, as I was reading it, I was like, wow, this is a reminder that we just, we're not just telling stories in a way.

Ann: Yeah, I think that's very true.  And certainly that was my experience of it or has been my experience of it. And the past is interesting because we often think, of course, past is past. But I often think of it as, especially if we're not aware of it, which I was not for a long time, my whole lineage. But it doesn't mean that that lineage isn't there, right?

Fernando: Right.

Ann: It just means that we're not aware of it. And so I always think of it as if we're like caring, if we don't know about it, that we're carrying news that we're not aware of. That's what it always feels like to me. And so it's because it's there and it can be discovered if we look into it. And then it unfurls and you can enter into it in this really fascinating way. And with my grandmother, I started asking her this when I was an adult about these stories. What always strikes me, too, is that if I had not, that all of that would have died with her.

Fernando: Right. Absolutely.

Ann: Right. And this book would not exist.

Fernando: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ann: Because her stories are so much a part of it. Yeah.

Fernando: Well, and that's what makes it a living story and a continually living story and a story that also changes with you as you live this life. Right. And what I found really, as you were navigating through this experience of going through a Tibetan funeral ritual, if you will, with the lamas reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as you and your mother are with your grandmother in this space, in Darjeeling. Right. You know, what was remarkable to me was, you know, the story or what you shared around the astrologer and the reading, that divination. And how there was a whole bunch of things, if I recall, that came up in that divination. Right. But what was remarkable was, when you shared that there was an unresolved relationship that your grandmother had with your mom. I think that's how it went. And that how in that space, in the space of that deep ritual, of that transition, of that, what Tibetans, because I'm part of these lineages, what we are, they're so important as we transition to the next, right, to the other, right. And yet, and yet, what that astrologer shared in that moment and what you were remarking in that experience really related to now. In that, in that space. And I was curious how that even that, that divination, how that informed how you understood the connection between, right, just your ancestry and the past and this present and how that in between brings us into a constant engagement with, Hey, wait, what is this awakening of the news you were saying, right? News that we don't yet know. Right?

Ann: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and what happened is that in a traditional Tibetan funeral, a horoscope is drawn up. And it's, it's, this was new to me, this, this I didn't understand because I knew that there was such a thing as a birth horoscope, of course. And, but in the Tibetan tradition, there's a death horoscope. And the death horoscope is drawn up to, or cast, you know, to determine what kinds of rituals are necessary for the dead person and to help them through Bardo. And here Bardo, the Bardo we're talking about is from death to rebirth. And so, for example, maybe there are certain remedies that need to be carried out, you know, in order to protect the person or to make their path easier. And so the, the horoscope will detail those things. And some of these, what also is kind of detailed, if you will, in the horoscope is what things the dead person remains attached to, which I found very interesting. And so in my grandmother's case, it was, it was kind of, you know, we're listening and there was like a red hat, a red dress, you know, and that kind of thing. And I'm like, yeah, okay. And like this, this very, very ancient Tsepo, which is the astrologer Lama was, was reading this out. And then he goes, it's like, he says, and you know, red hat, red dress and unresolved relationship with her daughter.

Fernando: Yeah.

Ann: And I was like, wow. You know, and, and of course, you know, there was, and this is part of what I started to become aware of is this, this question of legacies and patterns, you know, that are carried down and what we're talking about the past. And in this sense, you know, carrying news that we're not aware of. So, for example, my grandmother had a difficult relationship with her stepmother and she and my mother had, you know, the difficulties that we often see between mothers and daughters and similar for me with my mother. And so what I became aware of, and I hadn't thought of before, was that, that this had carried down through the generations. And then I started thinking about my own daughter and was this going to happen? You know, was this going to happen? Was I going to carry down this pattern? And so one of the things that we can find, you know, when we become aware of, of the past is the things that we do want to carry on and the things that we don't want to carry on. Right. And so it's not like, so yeah, yeah, we're bearing news of which we're not aware, but as we become aware of it, we can be like, Okay, yeah, this, this is something I'd really like to continue. And this is something I would not like to continue. And therefore, what can I do to change that? Right. But we can't have that. We can't have those thoughts if we don't know what the pattern is.

Fernando: Right. and I, what I, that's what I deeply appreciated that, that it wasn't just the awareness, but it was awareness connected to a recognition, a deep recognition of, oh, wait, this is pattern, right? There's a pattern. There is, there's a storyline to this. And, and in addition, that, in that attention, in that deep awareness, there wasn't a running away. It was, it was facing it in a way or being curious. I'm curious what you think, because I felt like it was being curious about that too. There was a question like, wait, what is this? Why is this astrologer doing, saying this? But it cascaded into other things too. It felt like.

Ann: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very true. And I think that, you know, it's not like I heard that and had this like big epiphany and I was like, that's it, I've changed. I'm not going to carry this on with my daughter. You know, it was a gradual process. And I remember returning to my home in Tokyo from Darjeeling, you know, after the funeral and, and this stayed with me. You know, this, this one of the things that stayed with me. And I remember thinking about it, not in a very, you know, I mean, in a way it worried me. Honestly, it worried me, you know, because I thought, oh gosh, and this brings up, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book, which is this idea between the distinction between karma and fate. And we often think of karma as being fate, right? In the West anyway. And, but it actually means action, which was new to me. Right. And so the idea is that we often think, oh, gosh, you know, now I, I know what this pattern is. Am I fated to repeat it?

Fernando: Right.

Ann: Right. And so that is a frightening idea for us. Right. And so, but the idea is that, karma is, karma means what actions we can take, right? To once, you know, to, to change, you know, whatever, whatever it is that we want to change. And so what I realized is that the example that always came in my head was that it was like hearing, it was as if I heard that a hurricane was forecast. And I sat on my porch, you know, like whistling a tune and hoping it wasn't going to hit my house. Rather than, you know, boarding up the windows and making sure I got my supplies and all that. And so it's the same thing. And so, you know, if you know, you know, if you know that you have this, a certain legacy in your family, or if we take a broader view, for example, in society, right? In our, in our, not just so we can have individually our families, our community, and then our larger, you know, kind of global society. And so as we see these patterns, right, as we see these patterns, we can't, you know, we don't have to just like throw up our hands and go, oh gosh, you know, well, we're fated to just keep carrying this on, but that we can think, can we do something different? And that's what I did with my daughter little by little, you know, as I realized. And what I realized is that, and we think again, that it's difficult, it's difficult to do, because how am I going to, you know, how am I going to change society or how am I going to change? But often it's very incremental things. You know, of course, through the work that you do, right? That it's very incremental things that, that little forks, little forks in the road, and you decide to go this way instead of this way, or in my relationship with my daughter, or things I do in my community, I just decide to take a certain action, that leads us in a certain direction, right? And so again, going back to the personal example with my daughter is at times where I could, I knew that I could sort of repeat a lot of the things that I had been told either by my mother or my grandmother, I chose not to, I chose not to, and those were in those particular moments. And it was really interesting to me to see, because if I had said whatever it was that I had heard, she would have reacted in a certain way and we would have kept going down that path, right? And then I was struck by the choice that we have.

Fernando: Well, I appreciate that because in a way, it doesn't become a repetition anymore, right? And in the process, in an ongoing process, right? It's an attention and awareness that, it may not even happen overnight. It's not going to happen necessarily in this lifetime, but it is an engagement with that process that seeks to in a way, break that repetition, right? There is, or that karma and the consequence of karma, it's the awareness that we have that agency to engage with it if we meet with it, if we connect with it, which I really, that really struck me. So in, you know, early in my twenties, I was really present with the transition of my best friend and his process of dying. It was a very difficult time in my life, early twenties. And, you know, this is, early twenties, in the United States of America, right? I was at the time living in the deep south. And this is a time when all I'm thinking about is living, is life, right? I had no conception or idea of what it means to confront and deal with death. If anything, I was running away from that, right? Everything I was doing was just like fully living in my early twenties. And here I am in my early twenties at that moment of supporting someone in this transition. And I am like, what is this, right? What is going on here? Right? And it was actually, my grandmother said, this is meeting your suffering right now. In a way, she said in her own way, and what I was hearing in your writing was, don't be adverse to the suffering. It's hard. She wasn't saying this isn't hard. She wasn't saying that this is something that is going to hurt or provide pain, right? But she said, face this. Face this. And not as a resistance. But this is part of change. And it brought me to your great grandfather. And I want to hear you tell the story because it brought me there, because it was in the face of what your great grandfather experienced, as I think he was going from Tibet to Darjeeling. I'm not, I'm forgetting now.

Ann: That’s right, that's right.

Fernando: But I was like, Oh Ann, you triggered that for me in a way to remember that at that moment, I was, there was edges of despair for me, like fear, anxiety, despair. I was confronting my own like, Oh my God, I'm going to die. This is early twenties. And then I read about your great grandfather. And then at the same time, later in your book, I read about your own illness. So I want to first hear about like, because it's so, in a way, you're saying something about how we're living with this. And your whole book is about change and permanence, right? Like, for me, it's like life, life, life. Life is this.

Ann: And it's only this in the sense that, you know, we, it's the only thing we can count on, actually, you know, and we want to, we want to count on all sorts of things. And we want, we want permanence, right? And everything, you know, speaks to the, you know, the fact that that's just not the way of the world. And that the only thing that's for sure is change. And so that the, the, the story that you're referring to is, you know, my great grandfather was coming down from Tibet to, back home to India in the early 1900s after completing a diplomatic mission. And he was caught in an avalanche. And so, it was this beautiful, you know, sunny morning and suddenly he and his pony and a number of the other men and the animals were all buried. So he, you know, under the snow, he, you know, this is a story my grandmother told me, that he started praying, right? And he was praying to Guru Rinpoche. Guru Rinpoche is also known as Padmasambhava. And he, according to legend, composed the Tibetan book of the dead in the eighth century. And my great grandfather was a very devout Buddhist. And he knew very well the teachings of the, of the Tibetan book of the dead. And he started, he had his prayer beads, you know, and he was praying and he's like, you know, Guru Rinpoche save me, save me Guru Rinpoche. And he stuck his hand up through the snow. He managed to get his arm loose and stick his hand up and, you know, wave his beads back and forth. And some of the men who were above ground saw him and they pulled him out. And this story really illustrates some real, it didn't, you know, to me when I first heard it, I'm like, wow, you know, that's, that's really amazing. But later…

Fernando: Yeah, totally.

Ann: Right, exactly. I'm like, wow, that's so great that you did that.

Fernando: I'm like, wow. Yeah, exactly, totally.

Ann: But later, for reasons I'll explain in a minute, it really, I really understood the import of it. And the, I think really the central lesson of the Bardo teachings is that we accept reality, you know, that we want to accept reality, but not give up hope. And in his case, what that would have meant is that he accepted that he was, you know, buried under the snow. And if he had given up hope, he would have been like, that's it, you know, I'm through, there's nothing I can do. And in an avalanche is, I think you have, you know, what, 20 minutes or something before you suffocate.

Fernando: Yeah, less than, absolutely, yeah.

Ann: Less than, yeah. And so, um, if he had given up or just thought, oh, this is my fate, you know, it's my fate to die here in the snow. He would have died. Um, if he had engaged in denial, for example, and thought, yeah, this isn't that bad. Like, it's like, you know, it's probably okay, or I'll be at, that probably would have been the end of him as well. Or if he had done what we often do, which is that we just wished it hadn't happened. You know, we're always like, why me? Why me? And so while you're thinking, why me, you've got like tick, tick, tick. So…

Fernando: Absolutely, yeah.

Ann: So it's this very like, like microcosmic kind of story that illustrates these really profound things. And the other point here is that, so, um, acceptance, right. So he accepts his situation, what you're saying as well about facing, right. Facing suffering, facing the truth. He accepts that. Um, he doesn't give up. And then what I didn't realize before is that acceptance, I always thought acceptance was more about kind of just being like, well…

Fernando: Right.

Ann: That's it. You know, there's nothing I can do.

Fernando: Like a resignation, right?

Ann: Exactly, yeah. I accept this, in the same way, like if you say, okay, I accept that I'm doomed to have a difficult relationship with my daughter, right. That kind of acceptance. But actually what I realized from this story is that his acceptance of his, the truth of his situation, the reality of his situation allowed him to take action. And I think that's the piece that is so profound, right. And that is very, um, uh, very beneficial for us, you know, is to, to think so then, cause if he had, then it wasn't like, well, okay, you know, I accept that I'm under the snow, but I'm not going to give up. And then you just stay there and you're still going to die, right? Um, but he, then he like managed to get his arm up and save himself, right? And so…

Fernando: Which I love, I totally loved that. I imagine him reaching up, right. Um, into the blue, blue sky, right. And he had his prayer beads in his hand, didn't he? Or…

Ann: He always had his prayer beads. Yeah, yeah he always had his prayer beads.

Fernando: Yeah. So I just imagine him with his prayer beads, you know, bursting through, right. This layer of snow, right.

Ann: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fernando: In, in, and engaged in that action, right? You know, engaged in that realness of that situation, right.

Ann: Exactly.

Fernando: And deeply engaged with it, not just like, oh, this is, as you say, this is not a resignation. This is not even a resistance. This is an actual lifting up into the space, right. A deeper action.

Ann: Right. Right. It's going more deeply into the reality of the situation. Yeah. Um, and so for me, uh, the way I, I came to see this is, uh, what you were referring to earlier about an, an illness I had. And so, um, in 2010, I was plunged into my own Bardo and Bardo, Bardo, as I was saying before, it means, you know, like death to rebirth. Um, it also means birth to death. Bardo basically means a between state. And so, um, it can also be, uh, in a, like, uh, if there's an accident, if we have an accident, like he did, or if you're ill. And so for me, um, what happened is in 2010, I woke up one morning, just out of the blue, I was supposed to travel the next day and I woke up and I was very ill. I had gone to bed fine and, um, I had terrible fever, nausea, joint pain, um, and, uh, ended up in the ER and they didn't know what was wrong with me for about 10 days. They thought I had malaria. They thought I had dengue. They thought, so anyway, it turned out that I had something called endocarditis, which is a bacterial infection of the heart lining. And so it was in my heart valve. And, um, then, you know, I was on, in the hospital for six weeks and I had IV antibiotics and so on. And I thought, well, I'll get better. Now I'm going to get better. They figured out what it is now, but things got a lot worse because what happened is the, um, what can happen is some of the, uh, bacteria can travel in your bloodstream to other parts of your body. And so for me, it traveled to my brain. And so, um, I had this, uh, brain abscess and so it really looked like I wasn't going to make it. And I was, I remember lying in the hospital bed because it's a really weird situation because you're very, very ill and, um, but you're just lying there, you know, day after day, week after week. And so everything was white, you know, the ceiling, the curtains around my bed. And so I, it, I thought about my great grandfather cause it seemed parallel to that in some way, like being, you know, just like, like how he was suddenly caught in the avalanche and I was suddenly like plunged into this, this Bardo of my own. And going back to what you were saying about lineage, um, I really felt I'd never thought that much before then about, um, the idea of mindstream. And I felt like, you know, I had heard this story so many years before, but somehow, and this is, this is one of the things I love is that the, um, the Tibetan book of the dead, right? So Tibetan book of the dead was composed in the eighth century. It was hidden. Uh, it's called a, a terma, which is like a treasure teaching. And it was hidden in a cave and it was found in the, the 14th century. So we think, okay, well, in the 14th century, somebody trekked up this mountain with their shovel and got it out, but that's not actually how it works, right? And so is that, terma are, um, are like buried in, it could be a cave, it could be a lake, hidden in a lake. It could be hidden in a tree. It could be in the sky, dreams, mindstream. And, uh, also it says, the teachings say in the mind of a future disciple. So a disciple who's not yet born. But the idea is that, at the right time, when you need to, when it needs to be discovered, it will. And that, I really thought about because this story that I'd known for a long time, the, and it was kind of in that sense, right in front of me, I didn't see it until I really needed it.

Fernando: Absolutely.

Ann: I didn't really understand. And…

Fernando: And it animates when you need it. It animates and it animates when you're awake to it, which is what I, what, what, you know, I'm, I'm, as I'm reading that chapter and you are lying there in that bed after Dr. Condo visits with you and has all of these conversations with you and you're, no one knows what's going on. There's this deep uncertainty that's happening and your partner is right next to you and here you are. Like I have a whole life ahead of me, but what's going on? Like we weren't supposed to be here, right? And it's the story that awakens in this space, right? This, this, this, it is, I felt like, Oh, your great grandfather is there with you in a way, right?

Ann: In a way. Mhm.

Fernando: It is, it is, it is connected to that energy, right? In this deep, deep uncertainty and the impermanence of that situation, right? Cause in a moment you could have been gone, right? You could have transitioned, right? And then that Bardo, you're in that space and awaken to it, right? To me, there's a deeper attention to it…

Ann: Mhm, mhm.

Fernando: That animates us, that, that story in a different way.

Ann: Right, right. Exactly.

Fernando: It feels like that. I don't know if that makes sense, but it calls us into that, it calls you into like, Oh, wait a second Ann, here I am in this bed. You know, what am I… And I was just like, Holy, wow, this is, this is again, not an overnight thing, right? Like you've been told this, you've been exposed, you've been connected to these stories over and over and part of a lineage, part of a tradition.

Ann: Yeah, exactly. And it goes back to what we were saying about, a little earlier in our conversation here about suffering and that we, you know, we think of course that we don't want to suffer. And if we, we actually, or sometimes people think, oh, you know, so the Buddha, right? So when he was Gotama, right? Before he became the Buddha, and he set forth from his father's palace, and to seek enlightenment. And often I think, you know, it's thought that he was trying to end suffering. And in a sense that's true, but in a sense it's really not true because we can't, we can't end suffering. And there was no way, like, I couldn't like, you know, wave away my, this horrible illness that I thought was actually going to kill me in my forties. When, and I was just like, you're saying like, I'm like, I felt like, you know, isn't there someone here I can like appeal to? I'm like, you know, just, you know, just a second, because I'm, I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I have children, I have like things to do, you know? And so there's, maybe there’s some mistake here. And, but what actually the Buddha, you know, was seeking and that we also can seek is the, it's how we engage with the suffering that is inevitable, inevitable, in life, right? And so, you know, we can't do away with it. There's always, and you know, the thing we always know about, you know, sickness, old age and death, there's that, but I think there are many different kinds of suffering. And so we're never going to, cause I think partly as humans, you know, we have this impulse that we just want to like get rid of it. You know, once and for all.

Fernando: Especially in our culture, right?

Ann: Exactly.

Fernando: In our culture, we're like, oh, let's not suffer. Suffering is something to be avoided, right?

Ann: To be avoided, right.

Fernando: Totally distant from ourselves, right? Suffering happens, should happen to others, not ourselves, right?

Ann: Exactly.

Fernando: Or we should not be in that space. But the teachings are really not that suffering, suffering is everywhere, but it's not just everywhere. It's just that we can meet it, right? We can face it.

Ann: Right. And what I understood from my experience with illness, as well as my great-grandfather’s story and other things my grandmother told me is that, you know, I thought that, you know, so for example, they say like, you know, when in Bardo, let's say when we die, or literally or metaphorically, we're seeking, we're kind of like pilgrims in search of lost harmony, right? And so we're in search of lost harmony. And so I always thought the harmony is, you know, the kind of equilibrium we lose because of the things that happen that make us suffer, you know, like illness or…

Fernando: Right.

Ann: Whatever it may be. And what I understood from my experience of illness was that it's actually not that, but that it is the equilibrium or harmony we lose when we forget that impermanence is the way of the world. You know, that's what we struggle against, right? Because there's nothing we can do about that, but what we can do is, and this goes back to the question of agency, what we can do is, we have control or agency over how we engage with that.

Fernando: And that's what I appreciate about this wisdom that you, that is throughout this book that you're writing, right? It's that, it's precisely this, that our agency, and not just our own agency, but also our collective agency with this too, right?

Ann: Yeah.

Fernando: And that it's that dynamic relationality that, that we encounter the suffering differently. And in a way, you say precisely within the book, it's like you transform it, right? When you encounter it, that suffering transforms different, it doesn't hit you, it hits you differently. It sits with you differently. You engage with it differently.

Ann: Right.

Fernando: And it doesn't stick to you, right? Because you're not attached to it in a way, it feels. Like you work at this, this engagement with that suffering. So it's not sticking you, sticking to you that you create the resistance to it, right? In a way you're letting it almost go while still holding it, right? Still being, being in it and being in it, not only with yourself, but with your, with the relationships you have with the world, right? Whether it's humans or beyond humans, right? That we engage with that as we face it together. Yeah?

Ann: Yeah. I think that's very true. And I think also that counter-intuitively we work against our own happiness, you know, because I don't think there are many people who you would ask and say, you know, do you want to be happy? And they'd be like, no. It's like the Dalai Lama says, everybody wants to be happy, right? We all want to be happy.

Fernando: Right.

Ann: And yet, yet, we create more suffering for ourselves. And so, by like turning away from, you know, what things that are painful for us. And so, and I realized too, like one of the stories my grandmother told me was about my grandfather's death, when he died, that she was very determined to bring him back. He had a heart attack in Calcutta. And then she brought him back to Darjeeling because she wanted him to die at home and be able to have the traditional funeral and set off well in Bardo to a good rebirth. And she, it was, one of the things that, in the teachings they say is that you shouldn't cry. You shouldn't cry when somebody dies. And that they say your tears rain down on the dead person like hailstones, right? And that if you accept it, of course, it's easier for you, but also that it's easier for them, right? Because otherwise it keeps them tethered, tethered to this world is the belief, right? But it also keeps you tethered to your grief. And what's interesting, and I understood from her is that, it doesn't mean that, of course, it doesn't mean that you're not going to feel sad and we're not going to feel sad. I mean, when my father died some years ago, and I was completely devastated and I was very sad. But what it means is, interestingly, is that it allows us to grieve more, right?

Fernando: Yes.

Ann: So it doesn't mean we're not going to feel sad or we're not going to grieve, but it means that we can open ourselves fully to that experience of, instead of it, I talk about in the book, there's a chapter about coming, it's called Coming to Realize Your Dead.

Fernando: Yeah. I love that chapter.

Ann: I was really surprised when I first read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and I thought, gosh, this is really interesting because the belief is that when we die, we are in denial about it. And so as my grandmother said, the dead person hovers around the altar room saying to everybody, why are you crying? I'm right over here. And then at some point they realize, gosh, something's happened. But actually the idea is that we're trying to get back to our old lives. We don't want to let go of the lives we had even though we can't get back to them because they're over. And so this idea of acceptance, right, is that, you know, and why the teachings say this, they're saying like, it actually says this, or you're dead.

Fernando: Yes.

Ann: You know, they say to the person like, you're dead. And that may seem really unkind or kind of cruel or whatever, but that it's actually said with great compassion and that the idea is that the... And this is one of the things I find very moving about the teachings and why they've been studying them and writing about them and writing both fiction and nonfiction related to them for so long is that, it's basically saying like, yeah, death is part of life. It's a natural part of our lives and you're dead and that's okay. Because we think it's absolutely not okay. It's not okay. And we can say it in the sense obviously of death or our own death, but the death of anything makes us sad, either the death of somebody we love, the death of a relationship, the end of a marriage, whatever it is. But it's this idea of, again, going back to what I said about facing reality. Because the great truth is that, that reality is there whether we accept it or not.

Fernando: And when you accept that reality, there's a deeper sense of transformative liberation. There's a deeper sense of, I can, not necessarily just move on, but I can actually live. There's a living in that space as well. And maybe living is not the word. It’s almost like, there's a teacher of joy in that space, in that space of life. That's why I wanted to ask you about, in that space, can impermanence be a teacher of joy and not of loss? Or, not only of loss. That it's in this both and in a way, right? That impermanence, if we face something like that death, whether it's a loved one, an animal that we love, right? Even a tree, like I've lost trees in a forest and I lament that loss, right? But there's also in that facing, as you say, as we become deeply aware and attuned to it, right? There's almost that liberatory, there's a joy because we're here in this moment now, we can go on, right?

Ann: Yeah, I think that's very true. And that's one of the really profound things I think about this is, that it's, because sometimes people think, oh, why should I think about death? Because whatever time I have here on the planet, I don't want to spend it thinking about death, right? I want to enjoy myself. But the idea is that it actually allows us to live more fully.

Fernando: Precisely.

Ann: And one of the people I talk about in the book is Michel de Montaigne, the French philosopher. And he said, he used an example in his essays, in one of his essays, about an old Egyptian custom, where when you were kind of eating and drinking and making merry at some kind of feast, they would bring in a corpse to remind everybody that this would not last forever. And you could be, well, that's kind of dark, right? But the idea is that it would encourage you to enjoy yourself, right? To enjoy the moment, enjoy your friends, love your friends, do the things you want to do. If you're dream of taking a trip to India, go. Because our tendency is to think we'll do things later and that we're going to have time later.

Fernando: I'll do it when I'm retired, right? Or I'll do it when the kids are grown up.

Ann: Right. Exactly. Or somebody who, let's say there's somebody who you feel you should make amends with. And you're like, yeah, I'll tell them next week. Or I'll apologize, or I'll ask so and so to marry me later. But of course, there may not be a later. And at some point, even if we live to a hundred, like my grandmother did, there won't be a later after that. And so one of the beautiful things I think is that this encourages us to live now, to live now, which is what it's all about anyway.

Fernando: And in a way, it shifts our attention, right? When we live now and we orient towards, not only death, but in these in-between spaces, right? In these, the bardo spaces that are within the context of impermanence, like change, right? And what I appreciate about you consistently bringing to attention, is that attention, right? Is that connection to attention. I've been, you write in one of your chapters about the practice of  Kora, circumambulation. And I have been, and you know, I've done the circumambulation around Kailash, for instance, which is sacred to our peoples. But I've been in a practice with a group of unhoused veterans and a group of women who've experienced violence on the streets, here in San Francisco. And we have been walking around spaces they have felt been desecrated in their lives. And all we're doing is walking around those spaces without any, there's, we're just walking around them, right? And it reminded me of how, and you reminded me of this too, that  Kora and circumambulation and the rituals that help us stay within permanence, especially when things feel unbearable, right? Or challenging or overwhelming, or they don't have to, right? But that walk that I did around Mount Kailash with my grandmother, right? Or the walk that I do with unhoused folks around places that have been desecrated, right? That these practices of ritual help us shift towards what we pay attention to. Because the folks that I walk around these spaces in San Francisco with and these sort of urban Koras that we've been doing, it actually releases the energy differently because they're paying attention to what is actually really traumatic in their everyday lives. And it shifts it. It actually shifts it. You know, folks the other day were like telling me, you know, Fernando, I did that walk and it doesn't hurt me as much as it used to. I don't avoid it. It just shifted the energy. Like I can sit under that tree that's at the corner of that block differently. I don't know if that makes sense. In the way you're like, the orientation of what you in that particular chapter with Kora in it, was like, you know, you were saying to me as I was reading it, Fernando, how are you paying attention in these bardos, in these spaces? I don't know if that makes sense, Ann.

Ann: It does. It does. Yeah. And Kora, for anyone who perhaps is not familiar with it, is a kind of ritual circumambulation. So Fernando, you did a ritual circumambulation around Mount Kailash, which is in Western Tibet. And very impressive. It's very arduous, I think, but impressive that you did that. But it can be around any, you know, for example, I grew up in Marin, you know, and Mount Tam or Mount Tamalpais is there. And in the 1960s, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen started a circumambulation tradition around Tam that actually still continues today. And what Snyder said is that it's a way of, you know, stopping and paying attention. They had like kind of way stations along the way where they stop and chant and so on. And not only paying attention to what's around you, but he said also a way of looking at yourself, right, as well. And Whalen, it was interesting, said in an interview that at that time he was worrying about a lot of things. He had a lot of problems with personal issues and that this stopped him from worrying, was walking, right? Walking, you know, around the mountain and he was able to, he said, open up to things and see them. And it goes back to, I think, that sort of aligning or, you know, kind of alignment with our, because what happens, I think is that we get out of alignment with our, whatever you want to call it, inner compass. And so I think this is a way that we can sort of like get back, you know, get back in alignment. It could be, get walking around a mountain. It could be walking around like a, you know, a lake or something, or, you know, even the belief is it could be in a straight line if you have nowhere to circle.

Fernando: Right. Exactly.

Ann: But the idea is that it gives us, it changes the way that we pay attention. It not only changes the way that we pay attention, but it changes what we pay attention to.

Fernando: Precisely.

Ann: Yeah. Right? And so it's a very powerful, right? Very powerful practice. And I talk about it, yes, in the chapter about paying attention, where we can, and often these days, it's said that we don't pay attention. They're like, oh, everyone's distracted and so on. And I would say, actually, we do, we're always paying attention. It's really a question of what we're paying attention to.

Fernando: Exactly.

Ann: And so it, like, are we just like paying attention to the tapes in our heads and the thoughts we're having, or are we paying attention to, you know, I talk in the book about, I've lived for many years in Tokyo. And one of the things that actually helped me learn about paying attention in a different way and helped me to recalibrate. And I, for example, discovered when I moved there, that there are many, many different kinds of, well, there are many different names for different kinds of rain. And I remember, because, you know, I grew up like rain was rain, right?

Fernando: Yeah, just rain.

Ann: And there are all these Japanese words for like, you know, there's one like for fine drizzle, and then there's one for like a downpour, and then there's one for like the, you know, the plop, plop, you know, of the early raindrops, when, you know, big raindrops or like little raindrops and so on. So point being, that this actually gave me a very, very different attention to rain.

Fernando: Yeah.

Ann: And I never, at all, you know, if you had asked me before, I would have said, it's all the same. The question’s like, like rain is rain, right? But what I noticed too is that as I, and this would be an example of this paying attention in a different way to what's around you, because you know how often we can go from point A to point B. And if someone says, what'd you see along the way? You'd be like, nothing, right? ‘Cause like…

Fernando: Yeah, exactly.

Ann: You know, you were like…

Fernando: I was just getting from point A to point B.

Ann: Right, exactly, I was thinking about my meeting or whatever, you know, what I'm going to have for dinner. So, yeah, so it's, and the idea and going back to the Bardo teachings, again and again, the Lamas say to the deceased person, as well as to the living who are listening to the prayers, not to be distracted.

Fernando: Yeah.

Ann: And so, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead or, the one that my great grandfather helped for it to be translated into English for the first time and brought to the West. And in that edition, that translation is quite kind of old English, the way it's written. And so what it says is that they say, you know, let not thy mind be distracted. And the idea, of course, for the deceased is that what I mentioned earlier is that, pay attention to the reality of your situation. Don't be thinking, you know, I wish I was back at my house instead of here, you know, and wherever here is, right? Or I wish I was still, you know, doing all the things I love to do instead of dead, right. And then for us, the living, the idea is that distraction can cut us off. It can cut us off from real life in a sense, because we're lost in this kind of our reveries and projections and worries, going back to the idea of worry. I mean, one thing that makes me laugh is that allegedly Montaigne said that the worst things in his life never happened to him, right? And so we do all this like, cogitation, we're like, oh, you know, what if this, what if that, and if you look around, everything's actually okay, right?

Fernando: Mhm, absolutely.

Ann: And even if it's not, you know, so for example, many of us today are worried about the news cycle and all the different things that are happening. And those, whatever that is, is, you know, so whatever has happened has happened. And if we pay attention to it and we're like, paying attention to it allows us to accept it in the way I was talking about before. And we can accept it not in the sense of saying it's okay, whatever it might be that worries us about it, but that it is what's happening, it is the situation. And that we cannot lose hope and we can think then what might we do here. And that action, action in the, in the Buddhist sense is interesting. I always thought it meant like you have to like do something, but it is a kind of doing, but it's body speech mind, right? And so it's like physical actions, what you say, what you think. So it doesn't mean you have to go out and like, you know, start a campaign or something. It just could mean that you, you start, you change the way you think about something or you change what you say to somebody, or that kind of thing.

Fernando: And that is the action, right? The action is actually you're aware of where you are in that place, in that space, at that moment, in that radical present, right? And in, and in the impermanence, it's where you are in that change…

Ann: Right.

Fernando: You know, where, how are, how you are in that change and, and what do you choose in that space to be in that change? Yeah? And that's why I was, you know, the, you know, for me, I'm, I'm curious what you think about what wisdom, you know, impermanence offers us in this world that feels like, oh, what's going on in this world, right? In this world that we're in. And what, what does this impermanence offer in terms of our own becoming and regenerating in this, this, what feels like constant change too, in the edge of what the world feels like right now for many of us, you know? I mean, where does our attention go to and how do we, you know, and, and, and for me, it was interesting to read about your practices, your rituals, your engagements with the world to bring you into that radical now, right? Again, not in despair. And I, you know, it's not in the spiral of, of, of, of anxiety and frustration, but it's like, it is how it is Fernando right now, not as resignation and not towards resistance, but it is right now what it is. And this is where I am. And this is, this is where I'm going with this. Yeah?

Ann: Right. Mhm. Yeah. I think so. And I think that another thing that's interesting is that we can say, well, this is what it is. And I feel, that makes me feel better because I'm like facing it, but sometimes I find, you know, it doesn't make me feel better. And, and I'm like, actually, I still feel really bad about this thing. And, but that, that's actually a kind of acceptance as well. And sometimes I think, well, I'm just going to be feeling bad about this now, but because what happens sometimes is that, you know, we, we put on these layers of like struggling against, like, you know, I shouldn't feel bad about it or I should accept it. And so on. And sometimes, you know, so I think it's more just sort of being like, and, and paying attention to how we do feel about something is a lot what it is, right? And then that how impermanence, you know, can guide us now, you know, as I think that it's also very much the, it's very much, or the uncertainty, you know, uncertain, like uncertainty is what you mentioned, like when I was in the hospital, I mean, there was so much uncertainty.

Fernando: Yeah.

Ann: What was wrong with me? Was I going to make it? What were the different treatments? It was incredibly uncertain and terrifying. And I think this kind of groundlessness, you know, it just like felt like the, the ground below me had fallen away. And, and I was just sort of spinning in space. And I think that it's also just allowing for like, not knowing, you know, this sort of not knowing, right, that that, that's okay, because we want to know, you know, we want to know, like, what's gonna happen. And, you know, and we want things to be different, and to just sort of be, be okay in that space of not knowing.

Fernando: And in that unknowing, there, that's the certainty, right? The, in the unknowing. And in that, there is the there's, not the stickiness to being stuck. It felt like every time you were in these spaces, there was like movement, there was, you know, you know, you talk often about like, sort of, hey, in a way, that alignment, the balance, that harmony, it's not that everything is perfectly in order, but it is in this moment in this now, that I'm really present, right? And I'm feeling all the feels and right, there's movement in this right, this flow, because it's in that impermanence, it carries me, you know, it carries me now, right?

Ann: Yeah.

Fernando: And that's why, you know, when you, you bring us back into your grandmother, and to that time with your grandmother, after you speak about your encounters with your mom at this time, right, and this these moments of, oh, you know, mom is, you know, as your mom is even thinking about, like, what, what, do you want to be brought back to Darjeeling? Do you want, you know, and you're having these conversations, and always just like, no, I just like, I'm here, you know, put me here, right? In this way. And I was remarked, what was remarkable to me is that there was an alignment to that now, right? In this, we have this time right now with each other. And there's a lot changing, there's a lot going on, right? And you remark in that chapter that it is enough to just be in the presence of her, right? With all the stories, with all the things that, with a great grandfather that helped translate, right? The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with a grandmother who continues to teach you lessons about the bardo, right? To a mother who's in the space of, hey, right now, let's just be, right? With all that's going on in this world.

Ann: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And I think it's just the world, you know, turns and turns, right? And it's always, it's always changing. And what, what we can do is, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is there's a story you hear often in Buddhism that the chance of being born human is the same as the chance of a blind tortoise that comes to the surface of the ocean once every 100 years, putting his head through a golden yoke that's floating on the waves. So we're very lucky. You know, we're very fortunate to be born human. And that we can, the idea, and this is, I think, really one of the fundamental and beautiful truths of the bardo teachings, and that I discuss in various ways in my book is that we can, it's, it encourages us to, to like the Buddha, you know, went forth from the palace to, you know, find, to find a life that was right for him, and that we can embrace the life that we have, you know, whatever that means. And that I talk in, in the book about confirming our humanity, which is…

Fernando: Yes!

Ann: Yeah, which I think is a really, is a really interesting idea and very inspiring, you know, this idea that we can confirm our humanity by actually, you think, oh, you know, like, what does that mean exactly? Or I need to do things, but actually, in a sense, it just means by, I think fundamentally, it means by living the life that's ours to live.

Fernando: I love that. I absolutely appreciate that. Oh my gosh, and I really just that, I just want to sit with that wisdom right now, because it's just so, that's, that's, there's so much there in that, and I, that wisdom just animates all of this right now. Ann I am, I feel so, so profoundly blessed, um, um, with not only the stories you tell, but the deep wisdom that, that is, that is so deep within you, that is so profound to your reality, your existence in this world. And I am, I feel blessed to, to engage with you, uh, this evening about this fantastic book, but more than this book and, and the stories of, of, of your people, of your experiences and how you've animated them with the teachings of the bardo in spaces of deep impermanence. Yeah. And I, and, and these lessons, I, I feel like I'm going to continue to discern and reflect on, but I, I really, I'm, I feel so blessed to be in this space and sharing the space with you. Um, and I just want to say thank you for your wisdom and showing us how impermanence is, is not a void, but a vibrant threshold. Um, and that, that the bardos, um, uh, are part of that way. So thank you for this Ann.

Ann: Thank you so much Fernando and thank you for your beautiful questions and for making space for, you know, all of the different things that we talked about in this conversation and to all of you for joining us. I'm really grateful and honored. Thank you.

Fernando: Yeah. So everyone, thank you for being here and being present with Ann and Traveling In Bardo, uh, The Art Of Living In An Impermanent World. Ann Tashi Slater, many blessings to you. Tashi Delek. Thank you.
 

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