Holding The Suffering Of The World: A Reflexion On Ukraine

Mindfulness allows us to hold the suffering of the world in open, loving awareness. There we can meet whatever we see or experience with a heart that naturally embraces others, even those far from us. Open to suffering, we are moved to extend our desires for well-being, safety, and peace.

Transcript

Today,

I'll be talking a little bit about holding the suffering of the world.

This meditation and talk were inspired by the situation in Ukraine,

But obviously this extends beyond Ukraine also.

So why don't we start with our meditation?

And as always,

You can start by finding a way to sit comfortably,

A way that you can remain alert and awake,

The body upright,

The spine aligned,

The head aligned with your spine and resting in a comfortable place at ease.

Can close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so.

We can start by taking a few full deep breaths on the in breath,

Inhaling deeply,

Filling the lungs,

Allowing the chest to expand on the out breath,

Gently releasing,

Relaxing.

As you do this,

You might notice the gap between the end of your exhale and the beginning of the next inhale.

It's that small moment of rest and quiet.

Just a few more rounds of these full deep in breaths and relaxing out breaths.

Now allowing the breath just to be easy,

Natural,

Smooth.

And sweep the awareness gently through your body,

Noticing any areas of tension and gently softening and relaxing.

Now calling to mind some being who has helped you,

Has shown you kindness or has been good to you.

Could be a mentor or teacher,

Could be a grandparent or elder,

Could even be a pet that expresses its love for you every time you return home.

And if there's self role and it's hard to pick,

Just select one.

And for that being,

Recall a moment when that being said or did something for you,

Act of generosity,

An act of love.

Just remember how that made you feel.

It's the gratitude and love growing in your heart,

The esteem,

The appreciation for how that being has helped you,

Encouraged you.

Now silently send well wishes out to that being.

May you be well.

May you be safe from inner and outer harm.

May you be at ease.

May you know peace.

Now going to mind some of the images that you may have seen from Ukraine in the last days and weeks,

The refugees,

Mothers holding frightened children,

Old people abandoning their homes,

The sick,

The injured,

And directing your care,

Your concern to them.

May you be well.

May you be safe from inner and outer harm.

May you be at ease.

May you know peace.

Now bringing to mind all of the doctors and nurses,

Ambulance drivers,

Merchants and shopkeepers in Ukraine trying to provide food,

Fuel,

The musicians that played in the capital's independent square during the war,

The peace protesters in Russia.

To them we send our care,

Our concern as well.

May you be well.

May you be safe from inner and outer harm.

May you be at ease.

May you know peace.

And finally bringing to mind the combatants,

Both the many who are risking their lives to defend their country and also the Russian soldiers,

Many of them young conscripts who did not know where they were going to fight or why.

We extend the same concern,

The same care to them.

May you be well.

May you be safe from inner and outer harm.

May you be at ease.

May you know peace.

And may there be an end to war.

An end to suffering.

A return to homes for the refugees.

Reuniting families.

Just allow your heart to be full with all of these well wishes.

You can feel their power,

The strength of your concern,

Of your care.

Feel how real it is.

Now when you're ready in your own time,

You can come gently back.

Maybe take a few deep cleansing breaths.

And open your eyes.

I think one of the hardest things that we as humans do is to know how to react to,

Respond to the suffering of others.

And even more when the suffering is so great on such a large scale.

It brings up so many emotions,

The heartbreak and perhaps anger,

Helplessness.

As we've talked about in some prior talks,

The quality of compassion has this extraordinary ability to feel the pain of others.

I mentioned before the neuroscientists tell us that there are mirror neurons that actually create within us the same emotional responses as if we were suffering whatever we see in the other suffering.

That it mirrors the experience inside of us.

The first question I think is can we allow this,

Not trying to solve it or to do anything initially,

But first just to feel what that is.

Joanna Macy said this,

We have to honor and own the pain of the world,

Recognizing it as a natural response to an unprecedented moment in history.

People feel if they let the spare in,

They'll be paralyzed because they're just one person.

But paradoxically,

By allowing ourselves to feel the pain for the world,

We open ourselves to the web of life and we realize we are not alone.

This really goes,

I think,

To the heart of who we are as humans and whether we have a very small sense of self,

Like each person,

An associated atom,

Or you think of our competitive culture,

Everyone trying to succeed or individualism or particularly with the pandemic and our isolation.

Or is it really with this sharp edge of compassion that we can remember again how closely we are connected?

This also from Joanna Macy,

If I can suffer with the world,

I am huge.

I think this also can break a very fragile sense of what we think happiness is.

If happiness is trying to make everything perfect,

Perfect friends,

Perfect partner,

Perfect work,

Perfect body,

Perfect clothes,

This is really a recipe for constant misery,

I think,

Because nothing is ever quite right.

Life then just becomes basically unsatisfying at every turn versus the happiness of realizing who we really are,

That the mind-heart is so closely connected with other people,

With the rest of the world,

That we are very much bound up together.

Here's advice from Pema Chodron,

Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them.

Moving closer to fear is at the heart of fearlessness.

So how do we do this?

How does this all happen?

The first thing I would say is cultivate mindfulness.

Mindfulness really is not just one thing,

We have a term mindfulness,

But when we say mindfulness we really mean many things.

Mindfulness can take a lot of different forms and I'm sure all of you have experienced some of its different attributes,

It has this ability to calm the body and mind,

To stabilize our attention and sometimes experience sort of great vastness.

But it also is another quality or dimension of it,

It is that this non-judgmental awareness that really can hold all experience,

There's nothing too big that cannot be contained,

Can be held.

And really provides an answer to this question of what do we do with suffering,

Sometimes enormous suffering that we see in the world outside of us.

In some ways it's no different from how mindfulness works with our own suffering.

And as we've explored before,

The RAIN acronym describes these steps,

The recognize,

Allow,

Investigate,

Nurture.

The first step with mindfulness is simply to recognize what's happening right here in this moment.

And that could be all sorts of emotions arising in the heart,

The sorrow,

The anger,

The helplessness,

The pain that we experience as connected beings.

And start by recognizing it.

For me sometimes I just use a very soft mental note when I feel something stirring in the heart.

It's like what's there right now?

And just naming it,

To say sorrow or to say helplessness.

And then really to allow it,

To open to it,

To see what's there,

To not back away,

Retreat.

And then investigate,

Go inside and see what's moving inside the heart.

How does it manifest in the body?

Just witness it as it changes,

It moves.

And then the last step is to nurture,

To care,

To be gentle with whatever you're holding.

This is from Rumi,

The poet Rumi.

Your task is not to seek for love,

But to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Again,

Your task is not to seek for love,

But to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that have been built against it.

Another thing is the loving kindness.

As we meditate together today,

I often use this when I see something happening,

Often something I'm helpless to control,

Is to see if I can offer kindness to whoever that person is,

Even no matter where they are,

How far away,

When I feel the heart move and often this helplessness with it,

To send those phrases,

May you be well,

May you be at ease,

May you be free from inner and outer harm,

Or even people close by to you who are suffering and you don't know what to say or do,

To send those phrases.

It just gives really words to the natural movement of the heart to embrace whoever this is,

Embrace them with your kindness.

And then from there to allow those circles of kindness to spread farther and farther.

I'd also say it's a moment in which too we can check ourselves to see,

Well,

Where are we not reaching?

In this case,

Many people have commented on this dichotomy,

Neighboring countries and Ukraine are often responding that they want to take in refugees because they're Europeans and they're like us,

They're just like us.

But everyone is just like us.

And we can look beyond Ukraine to Yemen,

Somalia,

Miramar,

Many places of conflict that perhaps are not receiving the same attention.

And the last is in the face of war somewhere in the world,

Can we seek peace in our actions?

Can we tilt the universe a little bit back with what we do?

Thich Nhat Hanh as one of the precepts for his community or the vows of community wrote this,

Aware that much suffering is caused by war and conflict.

We are determined to cultivate nonviolence and compassion.

I am determined not to kill,

Not to let others kill,

Not to support any act of killing in the world,

In my thinking or in my way of life.

And of course,

We can give money,

We can donate things,

But we can also just think of one thing that we could do to try to move the world towards non-harming,

Move it in that positive direction.

So for the last moments,

Why don't we just go back inside for a second?

You can close your eyes and just rest with this question,

How you hold the pain of the world.

You can recognize and allow whatever feelings and emotions there are,

You can sense that you are here with friends,

That there are others who can help you feel and carry this together.

And when you're ready,

You can come back.

So thank you so much for your kind attention.