An Empty Room
When a society is orderly, a fool alone cannot disturb it; when a society is chaotic, a sage alone cannot bring it to order.
—The Book of Leadership and Strategy
Where we are
As I write this, in the last 24 hours over 3,000 people died in the US from Covid-19. The numbers are not going to get better any time soon. Even though vaccines offer light at the end of the tunnel, millions of people in this country face uncertainty, isolation, and hardship over the next few months—some through mistaken beliefs, some through personal choices, many through the force of circumstances beyond their control.
Even with the election more or less behind us, ideological, political, and economic forces continue to shred the fabric of our society. When these factors are combined with the challenges of widespread pollution and its effect on the planet’s climate, we have at best a temporary respite from the troubles of our times.
Where we may be going
We may want to make a better world, but more than a few people hold the view that in the short term (the next decade), we are heading into a maelstrom of unrest comparable to that of the Civil War. Like most storms, this maelstrom may have to play itself out before anything solid can be built, or rebuilt. Even that may not be possible given high tech's willingness to destroy the body politic with social media for nothing more than financial gain. Quite different forms of governance may have to evolve, a process that usually takes decades, if not centuries. If history is any guide, this process usually involves a lot of turmoil and, quite often, bloodshed.
What to do?
For me, what to do is hard to put into words, but it has something to do with fulfilling a responsibility—a responsibility that comes out of my own training, in particular, my training in the bodhisattva path, a path that has always resonated with me and one that has provided me with guidance and direction in some very difficult situations.
Mahayana Buddhism talks about the two aims. The aim for oneself is to clean up one's own mess. In more formal language, it is to find a way to end our own struggles with life, not by creating an ideal world, but internally, by finding a way to live in and with the human condition. In Buddhism, this aim is realized principally through seeing through life's illusions and knowing the groundlessness of experience.
The aim for others is the expression of that understanding through how we live, an expression that sees the humanity in each and every person, treats them with courtesy and respect, stands for justice, and understands them for who they are, in short, the social expressions of the four immeasurables, equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and joy.
Even wise leaders must await appropriate circumstances. Appropriate circumstances can only be found at the right time and cannot be fulfilled through being sought by knowledge.
—The Book of Leadership and Strategy
In the current uncertainty, I put my attention and energy into living the best way that I can and the best way for me is the practice of taking and sending (tonglen). It is through this practice that I fulfill my responsibility to both others and myself, by taking care of my own garbage and cultivating the qualities that will translate into help for others.
Taking and Sending and Mahayana Mind Training
All methods of Buddhist practice are directed to that result in one way or another. Taking and sending is one that speaks to me. The following instructions are taken from Mind Training in Seven Points, the mind-training text that I know best. You’ll find links to it and to other resources at the end of this article.
Taking and sending is not a complicated practice and it can be applied to everything we experience. Its applications are broad and profound.
Whether I am happy or sad, ill or well, having a miserable time or enjoying life to the full, whatever my circumstances, I can practice taking and sending. When I was ill in the three-year retreat, this was the only practice I could do, and it was then, I think, that I forged a solid relationship with it. Among other things, it led me to my first significant experiential understanding of what Buddhist practice is actually about—the end of struggle.
It’s a simple practice. Whatever my reactions are—attraction, aversion, indifference—taking and sending gives me a way to relate to them without being consumed by them and without dumping them on others.
Even though my life is relatively peaceful right now, I am quite aware that I am still affected by the pandemic, the political turmoil, and uncertainty and confusion. Another instruction that comes to mind is:
I meet what is happening. Millions of people in this country are struggling more than I am with illness and death, unwanted connections and unwanted disconnections, financial uncertainty, fear, and isolation, and threats to their well-being, their families, their jobs, and their homes. I don’t try to avoid, suppress, or ignore the pain, difficulty, unfairness, inequity, and heartbreak. I take all of that in, in the form of thick black smoke and feel it in my heart. It hurts, but I don't try to change the hurt. I just feel it. Then, I send out my good health, my well-being, my home and garden, the food I eat, my ability to understand what I read, the joy I take in music and in walks. I give away everything that I enjoy and value in life and imagine that it brings peace, happiness, understanding, and strength to every person struggling in their lives.
I do this with everyone—no favorites, no prejudice, no bias. I take joy in taking in everyone’s struggles and sending my peace, well-being, and joy into their lives. Yes, it’s an imagined exchange, but it sets something in motion. Parts of me are not happy with this exchange and that leads directly to another instruction.
Whatever arises—anger at what is going on in the world, despair at the lack of leadership and effective action, despair also at the proliferation of conspiracy theories and their adoption by significant sections of the population, disgust with those who feel they have the right to impose their utopian ideals on others and those who feel they have the right to tell others how they should think, feel and live, uncertainty as to how all this is going to play out, attachment to my home and means of support—I take the same feelings from others. In return, I send them the quiet, comfort, peace and support that I do enjoy in my life.
But then it gets a bit more difficult. With, say, the despair at the lack of leadership and effective action, I now start taking in the mindsets of those responsible, who seem to be capable of doing nothing to alleviate the problems of millions when they have the power and means to do so. I find that taking that mindset into me is harder than taking in illness and fear. I feel the hardness and the cold in me, and wonder what it is like to live that way. When I do take it in, when I actually feel what it might be like to have that steeliness of character, I touch into times in my life when I have ignored or turned away from situations when I could have been more understanding, could have been kinder, or could have done something to help.
It’s the same when I take in those who resonate with one or other conspiracy theory or ideology. When people see the world differently from me, it’s all too easy to slide into I’m right and they’re wrong. Instead, as much as possible, I take in the feelings of being left behind, unwanted, unvalued, not knowing how to be in a world that has changed beyond recognition, not knowing who or what to trust, a world that has rendered as pointless or out of date much that gave meaning to my life, a world that has squashed me at every turn, a world that is intrinsically unfair, a world that does not support a life worth living.
Having lived outside or at the margins of society for significant portions of my life, I know these feelings and I know the pain and alienation behind them. In exchange, I send what was one of the harder lessons for me, the simple gesture of taking joy in others’ goodness, in their abilities, and in their accomplishments.
I've come to see that when I dwell on the arrogance and righteous anger of those who would tell me how I should think and feel, I'm essentially looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of myself. I then do taking and sending with the reflection in the mirror, no matter how distasteful or disgusting I find the reflection. As I recognize that I have my own ideas about how others should think and live, I remember the disappointments I've felt when the world did not meet the expectations I had as a child, for fairness, kindness, justice, and encouragement. Then my anger and disgust dissolve, and I understand their yearning for the world to be a better place.
More fuel for taking and sending, you may say, but when I touch these points, it forces me to face my own capacity to be cruel, to hurt others, to do evil. While I can sit here now and send out peace and freedom, giving away what I have learned through practice, I still have to face the fact that, in different circumstances, I could have been like the people with whom I’m angry or disgusted.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil.
My own capacity for evil is a truth that I have to face squarely. When I see it and acknowledge it, practice becomes real. It becomes a matter of life and death. Only then do I appreciate the real importance of attention, compassion, and faith, three doors to freedom.
This is the heart of the practice, to listen to what is arising in me, to meet it, and to keep meeting it until it lets go on its own. One of the most important practice principles I’ve learned is that I don’t control my reactions. I can only meet them, feel them, and experience them to the best of my ability. They let go when they are ready to let go. I don't call the shots.
If I hold even the slightest hope that they will release, my preoccupation with how I want to feel guarantees that they remain in place.
To rest in what arises, to rest without distraction, to rest without controlling, to rest without trying to do anything, this is one path to the groundlessness of being, to mind nature in traditional vocabulary. To do that, however, I have to have the skill and capacity to experience anything and everything that arises and I have to be willing to do so without any thought of personal gain or benefit. Only then can I know that I am nothing and that, because I am nothing, anything is possible.
In the end
Sometimes I suspect that Chekawa, the author of Mind Training in Seven Points, had a wry sense of humor. His last instruction is a kicker:
For me, this is where I come back to the sense of responsibility I mentioned earlier. In many respects, practice is about cleaning up my own mess, and I can hardly expect to be thanked for that.
We are not always aware of the ways that we help others. Mind nature, empty, clear, and free is like a quiet room filled with light, with an unrestricted view. Whenever I come into or sit in such a room, it evokes something similar in me, a peace, a clarity, a sense of freedom, easing if only for a moment whatever may be bothering me at the time. Maybe it's enough to be that room.
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