When No One Seems To Care

In this talk, we examine the challenge of working for the good of all beings and not getting acknowledgment of one's work. How do we manage to continue without recognition or appreciation? This can be a place of practice.

Transcript

Tonight,

I'd like to talk about one of the great challenges in this practice,

The challenge of doing the work of a bodhisattva.

As many of you know,

Bodhisattvas are these mythical,

Iconic beings who have the opportunity to leave this world of suffering,

To move into the world of nirvana,

But they choose not to.

They choose to stay in this world to alleviate suffering,

And they choose not to move into the realm of nirvana until everyone else has gone before them.

Of course,

This is akin to our vow that we'll make at the end of the evening tonight,

To save all beings,

An impossible vow.

And I think of it as impossible in part because not just that beings are numberless,

But that my self-centeredness is infinite,

Is boundless.

Diane Rossetto talks about our dream of self-centeredness,

And I'm aware of this every day,

Sometimes every moment of every day.

And yet,

There is the capacity to move out of that self-centered stance.

And there are moments when we find ourselves able to do that.

All of you do that.

Find yourselves taking care of a child,

Or seeing someone in need and helping out,

Being called forth out of this self-centered dream.

But what I've seen lately is that people have come to talk to me,

Friends,

Colleagues,

Zen students about the experience of feeling that their bodhisattva work,

Their work as helpers is unappreciated,

Isn't seen.

And then often they feel ashamed because they feel that they shouldn't need appreciation,

That this should be selfless.

And so they feel caught,

And they feel wrong.

This was particularly vivid for me this week when a friend of mine published a book.

She's a journalist.

Her name is Barbara.

And she had done a wonderful piece of investigative reporting that freed an innocent man after spending 34 years in a Georgia prison for a murder that he didn't commit.

Barbara heard about this seven years ago,

And she tirelessly investigated and talked to witnesses and went through old documents.

And finally,

This man who's been in prison since age 22 was exonerated.

And in fact,

The prosecuting attorney in the courtroom burst into tears as she apologized to him for the great injustice done to him and his family.

And so I wrote to Barbara and congratulated her on the book and on Ben achieving his freedom,

Which Barbara had worked for for so many years.

And she wrote back,

And I could almost hear the tears in her email.

She wrote back saying,

I've been so down about how the book seems to have dropped with barely a ripple,

Like a stone tossed on a pond that disappears.

I worked so hard,

Both on the investigation and on the writing.

And I hoped that Ben's story would serve a larger purpose,

To point out the flaws in our justice system.

Now Barbara is a renowned person in her field.

She's won many awards.

And my first thought was,

Wait,

You need this still?

You need reassurance that your work matters,

That you matter?

After all these years,

You too?

Several people lately have talked to me about the pain of not being thanked,

Of not feeling seen for the good work they're doing.

I expect all of us have had this experience of not being appreciated,

Of feeling that we go unnoticed,

Or at worst,

We are derided or scorned for what we've done.

I've also come to know a lot more about people caring for others.

Perhaps some of you are caring for people,

Caregivers.

And one in four people in the United States is a caregiver.

Caregivers are those silent workers who day after day,

Hour after hour,

Take care of other people,

Often without any thanks.

The Bodhisattva is supposed to do this work gladly.

Guanyin hears the cries of the world,

And in hearing the cries of the world,

She alleviates suffering.

And a lack of concern for being thanked,

For being appreciated,

Seems to be one of the gold standards,

Not just in our tradition,

But in many traditions.

There's a famous story about Bodhidharma,

Who was in legend,

The first to bring Buddhism to China.

And he came to visit the emperor of China in the 6th century,

Emperor Wu.

And the emperor was proud of all he had done for Buddhism in China.

And he told Bodhidharma that he had built temples and he'd given lots of support to the monastic community.

And the emperor asked Bodhidharma how much merit he would gain for these actions.

And Bodhidharma famously replied,

No merit.

And the emperor was of course shocked.

In the Jewish tradition,

There was a great scholar and philosopher,

Maimonides,

In the 12th century,

Who listed seven levels of charity,

And the highest level of charity is when the person who is giving does not know the person who receives,

And the person who receives does not know who gave.

And this of course is so understandable,

Because that way there's no sense of indebtedness,

There's no sense of shame,

All well and good,

Except that there's no acknowledgement,

No thank you.

And last night I was looking back at Norman Fisher,

Our great Zen teacher,

His book Training in Compassion,

In which they list 49 slogans that we practice with to train the mind.

And they're wonderful,

And his book is wonderful.

And the last slogan that we are supposed to practice with is,

Don't expect applause.

And then he goes on to tell us why.

Most of the good work that's done in this world doesn't get applauded,

Doesn't get a thank you,

Doesn't get recognized.

So what do we do then?

How do we work with the tension between our aspiration to do good without expecting applause,

And the fact that the heart yearns to be seen,

To be appreciated,

Not to have our good work overlooked?

Well,

My friend Barbara wrote to me,

Again,

A week after her first email,

And she had been working on this,

And she said that she had come to some very important insights.

She said,

I've come to realize that you can't fake,

You can fake caring,

But you can't fake showing up.

I'll repeat that.

You can fake caring,

But you can't fake showing up.

So now I'm trying to run toward trauma,

To arrive during the hard hours when a friend or colleague or family member has been waylaid by physical injury,

Or emotional grief,

Or some job setback.

It's so much easier to avoid the heartache,

To reason that,

Well,

I wouldn't really know what to say,

To drive away without knocking on the door once I've tried to show up.

I know now that that's wrong.

I still struggle to make that call or ring that doorbell,

But I'm working on it.

And what I've come to understand is that the Bodhisattva's practice is not to be without self,

Is not to be without the yearning for appreciation,

But simply to work on continuing the work regardless of appreciation,

To work on just showing up.

I had this experience myself as a young student when one of my teachers tragically lost a child and I didn't know whether to go to the funeral because I didn't know if it was appropriate.

I thought,

I'm not close enough to my teacher and I'm so junior.

And then several weeks later,

I went to him and I apologized for not showing up.

And he,

In a very gentle,

Kind way,

Said that he had learned that whenever the thought crossed his mind to show up for someone who was in need,

That he learned to act on it,

Not to second guessing.

And so my practice has come to be to grab that thought when I think,

Ah,

I should reach out and find out how that person's doctor's appointment went.

I should reach out and give that person some money who's asking.

And I grab that thought and I hold it and then I watch the excuses come in and I hold on to the thought and when I can.

Barbara said she'd realized one more thing in this struggle to cope with feeling not seen.

She said,

I realized it is enough to help repair the world.

It is more than enough to help repair one life.

And what she said she had done is turned to her community.

In her world,

It's a Christian community,

But she had turned to them and they had helped support her,

Both in the pain of not feeling recognized and in the value of having saved one life.

Sangha is for us the place where we practice with this,

Where we struggle with this,

Where we accept the humanness of wanting applause,

Where we practice with the possibility of not getting the applause and showing up anyway,

Lending a hand anyway.

And in this way,

We move in and out of the self-centered dream,

As Diane Rossetto says.

She says these are the turns we make over and over as we are transformed in and out of the self-centered dream.

The transformation that we aspire to is similar to the stone in the river.

The stone doesn't know that it's getting worn smooth,

That its shape and contour are changing.

It has no idea.

It just keeps accepting the river,

The river that is our lives.

Thank you.

So now,

I invite you to sit comfortably.

Reviews

Superb. Speaks so directly to my feelings and pain.

Wow, thank you, Robert! A beautiful point about “showing up” delivered with kindness.