Reflecting on how inner healing ripples outward to ease the world’s suffering.
Dear friends,
I hear from so many people who feel alarmed and helpless at the state of our world. But we’re not helpless! We’ve all heard the phrase, “can’t see the forest for the trees” or perhaps it’s the opposite direction, “can’t see the trees for the forest.” Big picture small picture: Both are always with us. This summer in our world, we have wildfires burning; rivers flooding and sweeping away children and adults; bombs dropping with fiery deaths; politics filled with ego and hatred; children starving in Gaza, Sudan, and more, and we may feel, ”I don’t know what to do!”.
For most of us, there have been internal struggles: personal loss, sickness, fear and other heavy emotion. We are each a microcosm of our universe. As we learn how to navigate the heavy emotions and pain of our personal lives with wisdom and compassion, such learning helps us understand how to bring such strength and love to our whole world.
July was a challenging month for me. Hal was sick, in the hospital (he’s ok now) After days of sitting by his bed I took a break and went out to the lake to swim. On the way home, driving down a wooded road at dusk, a large deer leapt out of nowhere and totaled my car; deer dead too of course. I was really shaken, feeling so helpless, sad, and angry, life out of control. I sat there in my smashed car on that wooded dirt road and first cried, then meditated for a long while.
Tears flowed. But eventually there was a sense of spaciousness and peace. The tears opened me to deeper held pain that is “the pain” we all share, not just “my pain,” and to remember the profound peace of the true self. This was just a week after those lethal Texas floods. I also couldn’t sit in my backyard for long because of the heavy smoke coming in from Canada fires. In Gaza, so many people are starving! My grief and anger went far beyond my immediate situation. But as I open to my own healing, I heal the world.
The Dharma reminds us that everything arises out of conditions and ceases when the conditions cease. So often we cannot control the conditions, only how we relate to the outflow of those conditions. I can’t directly control forest fires or world starvation. I can’t control my husband’s health or the way a deer runs. I can watch my reactivity as anger, fear or despair arise and I may hold such emotions with compassion. And no surprise, as I relate in this way I do reduce my own and the world’s suffering.
In both classes and our fall retreat this is the direction we will focus with our practice – Vipassana, Pure Awareness, and practices of the loving heart – and the instructions that John, Aaron and I will offer. How do we truly reduce suffering and remember our innate inner peacefulness and joy, yet with no denial of painful conditions? How do we become less deeply caught in our old conditioning? As the Buddha reminds us in one of my favorite scripture quotes, “ Abandon the unwholesome. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. Cultivate the wholesome. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.” I find such hope in these words.
I hope to see you in our fall classes, workshops or September retreat.
With love, Barbara
