When our country – or our global community – is broken, how do we practice? Faced with incomprehensible violence, injustice, lies, greed, and destruction, how do we cope, let alone respond in accord with our bodhisattva vows to help free all beings and end all delusions? Our first responses are usually anger, fear, judgment, and an effort to assign blame. Then may come a desire to check out – to ignore what’s happening because we feel powerless to do anything about it. I discuss how our Buddhist practice can help us remain open, strong, and responsive.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The U.S. Is Broken
Acceptance of Conditions and What That Really Means
Practice Doesn’t Tell Us What to Do, but How We Should Do It
The Practice of Bearing Witness: Setting Aside Narratives and Seeing What Really Matters
The Practice of Taking Care: Staying Healthy and Strong
Taking Action: Unleashing Generosity and Willingness to Engage
The U.S. Is Broken
“Our country is broken.” In the United States of America, I’ve heard this quite a number of times recently – in the media, on social media, and from people I know.
Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Wikimedia Commons.
How terrible things are is always a matter of degree, and of course there’s never been a perfect age. It can be strangely comforting to look back in history and see people have been crazy since time immemorial.
But the United States is approaching a new degree of brokenness when it becomes perfectly legal for someone to travel to a turbulent protest as an armed vigilante, and kill anyone they encounter who acts aggressively, even if that aggression is provoked by the very presence of an armed vigilante.
A new degree of brokenness when there was an overt attack on our national capital, encouraged by a sitting president, in order to overturn the results of a national election.
A new degree of brokenness when voting restrictions and gerrymandering guarantee the power of a party which would, in many cases, not otherwise win elections.
Also troubling to look around the world and see few places doing any better than we are, and many places much worse. At least I can talk publicly about our country being broken without being disappeared in the middle of the night!
Acceptance of Conditions and What That Really Means
But I’m not here to talk about the state of our country, I’m just guessing you are – at least to some degree – distressed, angry, outraged, disappointed, and/or fearful as you contemplate the situation, whether you’re American or not.
I’m not here to convince you things are going to get better. It is my responsibility as a Zen teacher to offer you something helpful in these difficult circumstances, but a rosy vision of worldly progress, justice, peace, and democracy is not something Buddhism offers. Actually, instead, Buddhism’s statement about the state of the world is, and has always been, “What did you expect?”
From a social justice point of view this could be seen as a potentially dangerous and negative point of view, suggesting we can’t or shouldn’t do anything to improve the world. However, if you set aside – for the moment – the question of what we should do from here on out and reflect instead on your current state of body and mind, the question “What did you expect?” can be helpful.
A situation can be painful, stressful, troubling, scary, or horrifying… but this is pain. Pain is part of life, and as unpleasant as it is, it’s not (usually) the end of the world. The Buddha had a teaching about pain versus suffering, explaining that a painful experience are like being shot with an arrow. It definitely hurts. But what we do is promptly pierce ourselves with a second arrow, making everything much worse. The second arrow is essentially our angst-filled lament: Things shouldn’t be like this!
Who said? Who gave us a guarantee? Even if we feel promises were made, why do we think anyone has the power to make such promises?
In his essay “Outline of Practice,” Chan master Bodhidharma says, “The sutras say, ‘When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.’ With such understanding, you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.”
“Don’t be upset, because it makes sense” doesn’t mean “you deserve it” or “this adversity was pre-ordained and there’s nothing you can do to improve things.” It does mean that a whole infinite web of causes and conditions led to this moment, this set of circumstances. One thing led to another and here we are. There’s no use in wringing your hands about what might have been, or clinging to your ideas about the rules that are supposed to govern worldly affairs (no matter how just and appropriate those rules).
Here we are, and some measure of relief of body and mind can come from accepting that instead of resisting it. We don’t have to accept this set of circumstances from here on out, however. That’s just passivity. Acceptance is about the causes and conditions that have led up to this moment, which we cannot change.
Practice Doesn’t Tell Us What to Do, but How We Should Do It
What’s next? After we make some degree of peace with the fact that things have turned out this way, how do we respond? What is an appropriate compassionate and generous response when your country is broken, or you find yourself in some similar set of discouraging circumstances?
Zen does not tell us what we should do, but how we should do it. Zen prepares us to respond in a way that fulfills our greatest potential. We aim to put ourselves in the best possible state to maintain our equanimity, think clearly, and respond appropriately.
I have spent 20 years experimenting with how best to employ Zen practice if we want to live a generous life of sustainable bodhisattva practice. That is, if we want to find a way to be helpful in the world, but also do so without burning out or sinking into despair. You may or may not have taken the bodhisattva vows, but in essence walking the bodhisattva path means living with an intention to free all beings from suffering, end all delusions, enter all Dharma gates, and to achieve perfect enlightenment. It’s understood from the beginning that these vows are impossible, but that doesn’t matter. The bodhisattva aspiration is about the orientation of our life toward compassion and responsibility. The essential point is this: A bodhisattva never says, “not my problem.”
To live a sustainable and generous bodhisattva life, I recommend including three ingredients in your practice. Over time, we need to learn to balance the three ingredients carefully so we remain engaged and intimate with the world but also take care of our lives. I’ve talked about these three ingredients in other podcast episodes (148 – Three Ingredients for a Generous Life in a Crazy World), but here I will talk about this three-ingredient approach as it applies to practicing when your country is broken.
First, to briefly review the ingredients:
Bearing Witness: Exposing ourselves to the suffering in the world in all its forms out of compassion, momentarily setting aside the question of whether we can do anything to stop the suffering or not.
Taking Care: Engaging in activities, relationships, and practices that nourish and sustain us. This includes our spiritual practice, our exercise, our eating well, our sleep, our relationships. Much of our lives is Taking Care of ourselves and our responsibilities.
Taking Action: Participating in a tangible way to help alleviate or prevent the suffering we witness, working for positive change in the world.
Creating a sustainable, vital, generous bodhisattva practice means including all three of these ingredients. And it’s a dynamic process, that’s why I called them “ingredients,” imagining a scenario where we keep “cooking” our practice: Adjusting ingredients based on circumstances, on the kinds of ingredients we have available, and how tasty the results are.
The Practice of Bearing Witness: Setting Aside Narratives and Seeing What Really Matters
Starting with Bearing Witness: Many times, what’s most troubling as we witness injustice, suffering, violence, etc. is the fact that we don’t know how to help, or that we can’t help. Without a way to alleviate the suffering we see, what’s the point of looking? Compassion arises as a motivation to action – without an action to take, isn’t it subjecting ourselves to pain and distress for no good reason?
It can be painful, confusing, and troubling to Bear Witness, but there are very good reasons to do it. The liberation promised by our practice – including greater freedom, equanimity, joy, ease, and intimacy – is based on facing reality squarely. Not escaping from it or gaining access to some alternate realm of existence or spiritual state where you’re untroubled by anything. The suffering in the world is part of reality, part of your reality. It may seem counterintuitive that if you want to be truly happy you should you regularly Bear Witness to the suffering in the world, but it’s true. If you shut out suffering, you are carefully shutting out part of reality, and this will severely compromise your practice and your life.
What about when compassion arises but we don’t know how to help, or when we can’t help? Bearing Witness is still important. In fact, to truly Bear Witness, we need to temporarily set aside any question of how a situation relates to us – how it affects us personally, or how we’re culpable, or whether there’s anything we can or should do about it. To see clearly, and to open fully to the truth of what’s in front of us, we have to set aside all agendas. When we do this, amazingly, we have a much greater capacity to allow whatever emotions arise to pass through us.
Truly Bearing Witness also means we set aside our narratives and judgments. This isn’t to say we suppress thoughts that arise, but that we stay grounded in our perceptions. We may be listening, watching, or reading, and we stay grounded in whatever responses arise in the moment within our body/mind. To whatever extent we can, we let go of spinning up commentaries about what’s right or wrong or who’s to blame. Doing this can allow us to bear witness more deeply, until we recognize that what we care most about is the suffering of sentient beings. That’s at the heart of our concern. It’s not ultimately about this or that policy or political party or societal phenomenon or whatever. It’s about living beings in pain or fear, life potential being limited or crushed, or peace and beauty being sacrificed.
If you can open your heart like this, you may feel very sad. It’s important to remember this is not the end of practice. We don’t just wallow in the sadness, giving way to despair. We also Take Care and Take Action, which I will get to next. When we are taking time to Bear Witness, though, it’s helpful to remember that just bearing witness, as difficult as it can be, is bodhisattva activity. As we witness, we face reality, which gives us a ground for practice. Simply through witnessing, we ensure other beings are not suffering alone. We allow for our natural compassion to arise, increasing our sense of connection with all living things. We allow ourselves to be informed; without worrying for the moment about how we should respond, possibilities for response may occur to us.
The Practice of Taking Care: Staying Healthy and Strong
As we Bear Witness – in this case, to the brokenness of our country, and the brokenness of many countries around the world as well of our global community – how do we avoid getting stuck in reactions like anger, hatred, outrage, despair, depression, anxiety, and cynicism? This is where Taking Care comes in.
We need to Take Care of ourselves and our responsibilities in order to maintain our health and strength. Taking Care is not self-indulgence. It’s not deciding you’re not going to bother with Bearing Witness or Taking Action because you’d rather just enjoy your life. It’s not focusing on relaxation and pleasure for their own sake because, heck, you deserve it! Instead, Taking Care is something we do with full and open awareness of all other aspects of life. It’s being embodied while aspiring to the bodhisattva vows to free all beings, end all delusions, enter all Dharma gates, and live the Buddha way.
Joy, play, relaxation, and pleasure may come into our practice of Taking Care, but that’s not all there is to it. Within the context of our bodhisattva vows, we also need peace of mind, clarity, support, and a relatively healthy lifestyle. Taking Care includes exercise, eating well, and getting enough sleep. It entails maintaining relationships and the financial and material well-being of ourselves and our families. Taking Care includes our zazen, spiritual practice, and participation in Sangha.
Our overall health can profoundly affect our state of mind and heart as we face what’s going on in the world. When we’re strong, we feel we can deal with just about anything. When we’re weakened, it’s easy to sink into a negative state from which it’s difficult to escape.
One of the best ways to Take Care when Bearing Witness is making us depressed, angry, or fearful, is to ground ourselves in this moment. We do this in our zazen, and we do this in our mindfulness practice throughout the day. Pausing and taking a few breaths can help us do this. Grounding ourselves in the present moment is essentially about aligning ourselves with the independent dimension of reality – the timeless and boundless reality of this very moment. The dependent dimension – the dimension of space and time and causality – is real, but it is only half of the truth of our life.
Right here, right now, we are alive. We are – the vast majority of the time – okay. We may imagine all kinds of terrible scenarios that may unfold in the future, but the truth is we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything, just as it is, is part of seamless whole – one luminous, remarkable reality. Despite everything, it’s a miracle life even exists. There are infinitely reasons to be grateful at this moment, we’re just usually blind to them because we’re all wrapped up in self-concern and obsession with the past or future.
The longer we practice, the more we sit zazen and practice mindfulness, the deeper our personal experience of this independent dimension of reality. It becomes as real as the dependent dimension, not just a comforting thought or a philosophical notion. Perception of the independent dimension becomes a touchstone that’s accessible to us at any moment.
Taking Action: Unleashing Generosity and Willingness to Engage
The relief provided by perception of the independent dimension does not in any way, shape, or form relieve us of our bodhisattva responsibilities. It doesn’t even make the sadness go away when we Bear Witness. Instead, it makes us stronger, so we’re capable of Bearing Witness without succumbing to hatred, depression, or despair. And we’re capable of including the other essential ingredient in our practice, Taking Action.
As I said earlier, Zen doesn’t tell us what we should do to enact our bodhisattva vows in the world. It doesn’t tell us how to address injustice, save our democracy, avoid the catastrophic effects of global heating, make sure truth triumphs over blatant lies and conspiracy theories, end the culture war, or prevent dictators from taking over the whole world.
Maybe it’s a bummer our spiritual tradition doesn’t give us answers to questions like these, but I think we should be happy it doesn’t. If it did, those answers would quickly become irrelevant, limited, and even dangerous, because the world is a complex, ever-changing set of circumstances. The best answers and responses – such as they are – will arise through us: Alive and participating, Bearing Witness, Taking Care, aspiring to the bodhisattva way, learning, adapting, and doing our best. Practice equips us for that participation.
Taking Action means… what? It isn’t limited to getting into the streets to protest, or volunteering for political campaigns, or working within an organization aimed at positive change, although all of these are definitely ways of Taking Action and I hope everyone will consider participating in them. Taking Action is also not limited to being nice to your family members and greeting the grocery store clerk in a friendly way. Or to voting your conscience and donating to good causes.
First and foremost, Taking Action means openness: Openness to manifesting generosity with your time, energy, and resources. Openness to participation and engagement with the world instead of sitting on the sidelines. Openness to learning new things and exploring new territory. Openness to the possibility that what you do matters. Openness to the possibility that you aren’t doing everything you can, yet. Openness to the infinite ways we, together, can make the world a better place.
You may not know how to Take Action in response to the brokenness of our country, and world. That’s understandable, and even when we find a way to respond, that’s not the end of the process. Things change, and a different response becomes required.
But we must avoid passivity simply because we don’t yet see a way forward. We won’t find a way forward unless we’re looking for it – unless we’re engaged, open, curious, and willing. A beneficial and positive response is extremely unlikely to come knocking on our door. We need to go out and look for it.
A bodhisattva is open whatever might happen and looks for opportunities to be of benefit. To get a sense of this way of engaging the world, imagine you are out and about and you happen upon the scene of a terrible accident. The authorities are clearly overwhelmed, and injured and traumatized people are everywhere. Unless you were in the middle of your own life-threatening emergency, wouldn’t you wander around looking, asking, finding some way to help? You wouldn’t worry whether your contribution was significant enough, and you certainly wouldn’t sit on the sidelines because you couldn’t single-handedly remedy the situation. You would do what you could. Maybe you would get water for people, or make needed phone calls, or just sit and hold someone’s hand. Maybe you would act deliberately cheerful in order to encourage a kid, or blather on about some irrelevant topic in order to distract people as they waited for medical attention.
As we look for our way to respond, according to our capacity, we must remember we’re only part of Indra’s net. Whatever we do will be only a small contribution, but if every aspiring bodhisattva did something, we’d make an awesome difference.
Once we have found something to do – some small way to work toward positive change in the world, some way of alleviating or preventing suffering, ending delusions, affirming life – it’s essential to let go of attachment to results and base our motivation in love. If we think too much about whether we’re making a difference, or whether it’s likely that what we hope for will be achieved, we will quickly be discouraged. While we should be somewhat discerning in our choice about how to Take Action (we do hope to be of benefit), ultimately, we are simply manifesting our bodhisattva vow – participating in a flow of life, energy, and generosity because that is how we want to live. Even if there’s little hope of success, we Take Action because it is the right thing to do.
In summary: Practice means living deliberately. That means we turn toward reality, we turn toward challenges. Feeling distress about the state of the world, we turn toward our experience. How do we make this into practice?
Zen doesn’t tell us what to do, it prepares us to respond in a way that fulfills our greatest potential. If we include the three ingredients of Bearing Witness, Taking Care, and Taking Action in our practice, we can live sustainable, even joyful, generous lives. We must not give up. That’s not what bodhisattvas do.
Photo Credit
TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DC_Capitol_Storming_IMG_7965.jpg
