Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 90

I wake up to the chant I’ve heard over and over again over the last couple of weeks ringing in my heart:

No justice, no peace

Deep in my bones what I’m feeling into is the clear and undeniable link between ethics and meditation. This is one of the first things I learned about Buddhist meditation.

What we do matters. It matters for our own peace of mind.

What we collectively do matters. It matters for the peace we so desperately long for in the world around us.

This mantra, chanted millions of times over by activists across time and space, states simply and unequivocally that without accountability, without each and every one of us taking it upon ourselves to hold ourselves and each other to the highest standards of behavior, we will never realise our deep heart wish for all of us to be free from suffering, for liberation from the habits that bind.

 As long as we live in a world where Black people cannot get justice for the unlawful, state-sanctioned killing of Black bodies, none of us will be able to live in peace.

One of the most fundamental truths of reality is that we are deeply and completely interconnected. In the African Ubuntu tradition this is summarized beautifully with the simple saying:

I am because we are

And it’s not just that everything and everyone on the planet at this moment is interconnected, we are also connected to everything that ever was and ever will be. We are made of the cloth of our ancestors, of their minds and hearts, of all that we’ve inherited from them materially, psychologically, somatically.

Our descendants will inherit the results of our actions, the world we choose to participate in and reinforce, over and over again.

My practice is fueled by the hope that they may also inherit a world I chose to help change, to make more kind, equitable and safe.

The world our descendants inherit is up to us. The choice is ours and ours alone. And I don’t just mean biological descendants, I also mean karmic descendants.

As a serious meditator I know that to change my mind is to change the world. When I begin to see the habits that bind I also begin to see the possibility of doing things differently. But this seeing requires radical honesty. Over and over again.

How have I contributed to the perpetuation of greed, hatred and delusion in my own mind and in the world around me?

What is it in my own story, how I have arrived here and what I have done so far with my energy and brief time on this planet, that I don’t want to own, can’t look squarely in the eye, with which I struggle to hold the tension?

Where do I continue to subtly buy into the lies of separation and supremacy that this world has been built upon? How do I benefit from those lies?

Without these questions and many, many more, justice eludes us. And what I mean by justice is the enactment of real ways in which we address wrongdoing. Ways in which we honour the first noble truth of suffering, by seeing it clearly, right here and right now and doing something about it.

By seeing clearly what gives rise to it. And by seeing clearly what liberates us from it.

And in that seeing clearly not giving into the fear that arises. And in that not giving into the fear that arises allowing our hearts to break open and true, fierce compassion to emerge.

This clear seeing requires all of me, not just the thinking mind. I must be willing to feel and engage wholeheartedly with the sometimes deeply uncomfortable tension in the body when I know there is further to go in myself, more to uncover as to my own deep, deep ignorance.

We all come to practice carrying the wounds of our trauma. If we are not able to turn towards our deep wounding and fully feel the pain of that wounding, then we will never be able to fully and unconditionally meet others in their wounding.

Their pain will elude us.

If we are not able to engage with the unresolvedness of our wounding and accept completely and unbiasedly the suffering there, we will never be able to meet our fellow human beings in the field of their own deep pain.

Their cries for help will instill fear in us.

This is what the Buddha taught. That all of what afflicts us does so because we reject our own deep trauma. We refuse to admit that we’ve been hurt and that we’ve layered on top of that hurt coping mechanisms and strategies to try and deal with that hurt.

We’ve woven together and then invested deeply in views, opinions, and biases that drive words and actions that drive deeper and deeper wedges dividing us from ourselves, the world and each other.

I am reminded of the wrathful deities in the Tibetan tradition. These are beings that appear angry and invoke fear in those who look upon them who have not yet seen the true nature of their own anger.

Without a clear seeing, knowing, feeling and liberating of anger we fear any form that represents the pure, raw energy of that feeling. This is why some become afraid when they see Black bodies marching for change, chanting for justice, calling out for peace, no longer quietly accepting the way things are.

Those who are fearful of the protesters in the USA right now do not see clearly the love that is driving this movement.

Anger in and of itself is nothing to fear. In its pure energy it is simply that which is within us yearning for freedom, which knows that that freedom will never be possible for us or anyone else without justice.

Anger is in fact one of the very experiences that makes us human. To not feel anger in the face of grave injustices is to be cut off from one’s humanity.

When we are no longer cut off from our humanity, when we are willing to sit in the messy, filthy, crusty, nasty, smelly, gut-wrenching, animalistic truth of who we are then it is through that sitting with, that full embodiment of, that we realise our truest, deepest nature.

This is the greatest paradox of practice. And it takes a great willingness and trust to do this work. It is not for the faint of heart.

Those who are protesting are heroes. In decades from now they will be celebrated in the same way that people like Nelson Mandela, Dr. Ambedkar and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are celebrated today.

That is the moment we’re in. If you look closely, you many even see yourself in this moment. Are you ready?