The Wisdom of No Exit with Jessica Rasp

The topic for our open Monday discussions this month all center around Pema Chodron's book Comfortable with Uncertainty. Jessica Rasp recently led a class on "The Wisdom of No Exit" and kicked things off with an except from a great 1994 interview between Leonard Cohen and the Shambala Sun.

"...there is the consolation of no exit, the consolation that this is what you're stuck with. Rather than the consolation of healing the wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human predicament and the only consolation is embracing it...(continued below)"

(full except from the Leonard Cohen Interview)
"The first reality is that there is a wound and there is suffering, a deep sense of unsatisfactoriness with life. There is no question about it. The Buddhist theology presents it as the first noble truth. We live in a world that is not perfectible, a world that always presents you with a sense of something undone, something missing, something hurting, something irritating. From that minor sense of discomfort to torture and poverty and murder, we live in that kind of universe. The wound that does not heal - this human predicament is a predicament that does not perfect itself.

But there is the consolation of no exit, the consolation that this is what you're stuck with. Rather than the consolation of healing the wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human predicament and the only consolation is embracing it. It is our situation, and the only consolation is the full embrace of that reality.

What about love, though?

I believe we know that love is a terrible wound itself, and that it presents a bewildering landscape to stumble over. Love is a fire: it burns everyone, it disfigures everyone...

I think in people's hearts they understand that the heart is cooking like shish kabob in your breast, and no matter what you do, the passions come and go and they sear you, they burn you. If it's not your lover, it's your children; if it's not your children, it's your job; if it's not your job, it's growing old; if it's not growing old, it's getting sick. This predicament cannot be resolved. That is the wound that does not heal, and rather than approach it from the point of view of stitching or cauterizing it, there is a kind of wisdom of living with the wound.

Then what about compassion?

You know, we come up with all kinds of things, but still the wound does not heal, still the reality is suffering. We come up with all kinds of new drugs, all kinds of new approaches. Yes, there are all kinds of human decencies to embrace, and we should really try to be nice to one another, but nothing dissolves this sense of irritation and unsatisfactoriness that we all feel. Nobody gets over that." - Exceprt from From 1994 Interview with Shambala Sun.
Here is the full interview.