Despite feeling tremendous relief just a few nights ago, when Catharine Masto Cortez was declared the winner of the Nevada Senate race and my wife, and I danced around the living room⎼ today I feel heavy once again. Why is that? I was so happy the Democrats exceeded expectations and maintained control of the Senate. The outpouring of support for the rights of women and to vote has clarified for all that the GOP war for autocracy can be stopped.
But sometimes, we get so caught up in a situation, a worry, expectation, and lose any perspective. We might be too frightened, traumatized, or invested and we see things only one way, as if the moment stood isolated in time. And we lose sight of how the situation came to be.
We might lose sight, for example, of just how traumatized we all were by past threats and those still looming. We have the GOP barely gaining control of the House and, of course, keeping control of the Supreme Court. And their leaders, DJT and others like him, are still threatening to seize the Presidency, avoid prosecution for their crimes, and impose their will on the rest of us. And the chaos they might yet cause, with their program of hate, lies, and division, and denying the factual results of this and past elections.
But not only is no human an island but no moment. The past sets up the present, as this moment educates the next. One moment’s mistake can lead either to another mistake ⎼ or to insight, when we can allow our heart, mind, and senses to be open to it.
I was reading a book by Joan Sutherland, a Zen meditation teacher, called Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with Koans. In chapter two, she talked about how a new form of Zen developed in China in the eighth century in response to catastrophic times. Over just ten years, two-thirds of the population died due to rebellion, invasion, famine, and disease. The Tang dynasty of the time went from a flourishing empire to, afterwards, a barely surviving one, where life was so tenuous.
Of course, this mirrored back to me our own time, marked as we know too well, with so much disease, so many climate disasters, and the threats mentioned earlier of violence, and the attempted destruction of our democratic form of government.
No moment is the same as any other, but how did people, in awful times in the past, or going through awful times today, cope? Can we today, or those from the past, reveal ways of living that can help us through the pain to something we could welcome, to ways of living that meet our needs and strengthen our humanity?
I especially look to people like Zen adepts, those who have spent years studying the mind, body, and heart, and living harmoniously with others and nature.
The Zen adepts and innovators of the 8th century, according to Sutherland, realized that trying to escape their world through a narrow path to personal peace or religious ceremony would not serve them or their culture. They needed a sense of immediacy and, awful as it was, they got it.
We might be tempted to put off work on ourselves or facing tough situations because we just can’t, or don’t know how. Maybe we’re better at self-judgment than we are at self-embracing and don’t know how to simply stop, look, and be kind. But for the Zen adepts, the chaos and pain, the continual shocks, the inability to know what would happen next gave them the motivation to stop whatever illusion-making they were accustomed to. Stop putting anything off. Take care of themselves. And it rooted them to each moment of life.
They began to take as wide a view as they could and discovered a practice not aimed at getting free of the world but being free in the world.
Instead of just introspection, they looked at everything around them, from wondrous mountains to blighted fields. And seeing, in the suffering and beauty, themselves; in the ruined towns and starving refugees, they saw their lives and their practice. Looking out was looking in. Opening their minds and hearts meant opening their hands and digging in.
The way we focus, or the quality of our attention, can increase or decrease how much we take in as well as the pain, fear, or joy we feel. If our attention is open and wide enough, we realize we’re always on an edge or at a door. So many choices are rising before us. If we’re sensitive enough to it; if we can examine the implications of what our choices might lead to, and comfortable enough with ourselves, we might perceive how not to fall off the edge.
Imagine this⎼ we take a seat in a quiet spot. When ready, we ask ourselves: “Can you let your mind and body naturally and effortlessly respond to the following questions?” A few seconds later, we continue: “Can you imagine paying attention to the feeling of space that the whole room occupies?”
This is the beginning of a modern practice distantly related to what developed in 8th Century China and other Asian nations; it develops a sense of spaciousness and flexibility of mind. Combined with a regular meditation practice, it teaches us to take that larger perspective the Zen adepts discovered. We expand our perspective so we know ourselves not as an enclosed, isolated self but related to all the eye, ear, heart, and mind can touch.
The practice is from a fascinating book called Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain Training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain, by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins. It teaches open-focus attention and how to discern whichever form of awareness is appropriate to a situation.
We can, for example, use a narrowly focused, object-oriented attention, such as a breath-counting practice. Or we could use a more diffuse, objectless attention that softens and expands our focus, as described by Fehmi and Robbins. We notice not only whatever pain we feel but everything else⎼ the space of the room we’re in⎼ the space our body occupies⎼ the distance from the center of the pain to other parts of our body, etc.
This practice allows us to notice whatever arises and be ready to respond appropriately, to take in the wide view we need so we can act in ways that most benefit our world. These are just two forms of powerful attention and concentration. They can be used in many ways but work best when focused on increasing insight and compassion.
At any time, there’s so much we don’t know. Yet, the obviousness, the in-your-face quality of the unknowns we face today are so frightening. We want answers, now. But if only we can find a way to constructively live with such threats and unknowns with a little less anxiety⎼ what a benefit that would be!
Maybe the work we do to find such a way can become the work we do to transform ourselves. To make ourselves stronger. To Get Out the Vote, counter the threats, and help others. According to Sutherland, for at least one prominent teacher of 8th Century China and his students, hell was not so much the trouble they saw around them. Hell was turning away from it.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock