As we witness the nice struggling of the Russian-Ukraine struggle, says Dan Zigmond, we’ve an ethical obligation to concentrate. Via mindfulness, he suggests, we will see the world because it actually is and take proper motion.
Photograph by Karollyne Hubert.
In Buddhism, we speak quite a bit about taking refuge. We take refuge within the Buddha, the enlightened trainer; within the dharma, the teachings; and within the sangha, our neighborhood of practitioners. However in instances like these, it might really feel unsuitable to take refuge, if it means taking refuge away from the struggling on the planet.
After the killing of George Floyd, I used to be requested by a reporter whether or not meditation at a time like that was immoral. It could possibly really feel that means — like hiding or turning away — however I stated I believed that meditation is the other. It’s the observe of not turning away — of paying full consideration and going through no matter is occurring on this second.
We’ve got an obligation to see the world clearly and to face struggling head on.
Mindfulness is a phrase that’s usually used to explain this observe of paying consideration. It’s not a phrase that was used very a lot in English till a few many years in the past, and it could possibly sound sort of fancy. However in Pali, the language of the Buddha, it wasn’t a flowery phrase in any respect. It was a quite simple phrase, sati, that meant “remembering.” As a result of mindfulness actually is that straightforward. It’s the fundamental observe of remembering the current. That features not simply what’s occurring in our minds, and in our private life, however what’s occurring within the wider world.
As you most likely know, the Buddha began his life as a prince. His mother and father tried to shelter him from all information of struggling. They didn’t simply protect him from horrible hardships, like struggle; they didn’t even permit him to affiliate with anybody who was sad. However he rejected hiding away from the reality of struggling, not simply because it felt immoral, however as a result of it was additionally ineffective. It didn’t assist anybody to run away from struggling, not even himself.
So subsequent he tried the other, working in direction of struggling. He invited as a lot hardship as he may by following a path of maximum asceticism. However that didn’t work both. In reality, it practically killed him. What did work ultimately was discovering stability: neither courting struggling nor avoiding it. He referred to as this the center means.
The center means is about residing in actuality. We settle for actuality within the sense that we don’t deny it. We don’t faux that issues are totally different than they’re. However we don’t cease there. The Buddha described many alternative parts of the center means path, and certainly one of these he referred to as samma-kammanta — proper motion. After we see the world because it actually is, we take motion. Based mostly on the readability we develop in our mindfulness observe, we reply to the world with compassion.
After we actually take note of the terrible occasions unfolding on the planet, in fact we wish to assist. We wish to do what we will to cease them. Which will take totally different kinds for various individuals; proper motion will look totally different for every of us. However we will’t do something with out first paying consideration — seeing the hurt, seeing the struggling.
Like so many individuals, I’ve been pondering quite a bit just lately concerning the struggle and destruction in Ukraine. Then a wierd factor occurred: I spotted I used to be Ukrainian. And I don’t imply this in some metaphysical means, like “We’re all Ukrainian,” though I suppose we’re. I imply extra actually.
I abruptly remembered a dialog I had with my grandfather about thirty years in the past. I knew he had been born in Denver, however I knew nothing about his mother and father, and I requested about them. He instructed me his mother and father had been from Ukraine, or at the least from a city that’s now a part of Ukraine.
Remembering this dialog, I recalled the identify of the city — Mukachevo, within the west of Ukraine — and I regarded it up on the map. I requested round my household and located I truly had two great-grandparents from what’s now Ukraine.
After all, at some degree it doesn’t actually matter that these two ancestors I by no means met had been from Ukraine. However it introduced house to me how related all of us are. That in that city proper now, in that besieged nation, perhaps there’s somebody whose great-grandparents knew my great-grandparents. Perhaps there’s somebody residing of their outdated home, or at the least on their outdated block. Who is aware of how many individuals there are related to me? I suppose the Buddha would say, all of them.
The good Zen trainer Thich Nhat Hanh understood that meditation may itself be a political act — that seeing clearly was a political act. His good friend Martin Luther King, Jr. felt the identical means. I don’t know if Dr. King meditated per se, however he definitely understood the significance of paying consideration. In a letter to a colleague in Boston, he defined why he wished to provide himself sooner or later every week to what he referred to as reflection. It was much like Thich Nhat Hanh concept of a weekly day of mindfulness. Dr. King wrote to his good friend, “My failure to replicate will do hurt not solely to me as an individual, however to the full motion. For that purpose, I really feel an ethical obligation to do it.”
I really feel the identical means. Meditation will not be solely permissible within the face of nice struggling; it’s a ethical obligation. We’ve got an obligation to see the world clearly and to face struggling head on. Meditation is the other of hiding. It’s the act of exposing ourself to every second precisely because it comes. A few of these moments will likely be joyous. Some will likely be very painful. However we face every one regardless.