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Dear MBSR Friends,
Be strong
Work here now, inside time.
Where we fail, catch hold again
And climb--Hafiz
In an earlier election letter from 2016, I wrote about traveling home from our son’s that election night in semi-disbelief, asking myself how I could have become so oblivious to the unhappiness and suffering of many people who had lost their jobs and homes and felt that big government had done nothing to help them, and that they had been forgotten. Once again, I found myself taken by surprise, so it alarms me that I am still not in touch with the dissatisfaction of so many Americans.
Despite the times being different from 2016, my consideration of human frustration and suffering brought to mind once again the recollection of hearing the Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn. He spoke about how when the boat people were fleeing from the Vietcong at the end of the Vietnam War, as they were trying to save their families, friends and pets by loading them onto boats, however leaky, or even onto doors, “if one person in the boat was able to remain centered and quiet inside, it meant the difference between life and death for everyone in the boat.” I found myself wondering as the current results came in, if I could remain quiet enough to become much more reflective about what path might need to be taken now.
While trying to anchor myself once again, I am remembering Jon Kabat-Zinn’s sharing his belief that the power of mindfulness lies in its being, at heart, about RELATIONALITY. It feels helpful to me to think about how deeply relationship with self is connected to our relationship with others and by extension to the quality of our lives. A major premise of MBSR is that we frequently tend to live in a very small part of ourselves. And as I was once again watching the news in semi-disbelief as the results came in, I couldn’t help wondering how we human beings can become so identified with an ideology that we on both “sides” can lose all capacity for compassion. It is my experience that when under duress that we often have the propensity to live in and identify with too small a part of ourselves, and perhaps too small a part of the country and the world.
In that 2016 Election Letter, I also wrote about attending a Harvard Medical School Conference on Meditation and Psychotherapy which included the most important leaders in the field of psychology and psychiatry, as well as the Dalai Lama and Kabat-Zinn (as the only person not officially in that field). At one point the Dalai Lama in his customary pose of innocence began to chuckle after the conversation had become very “intellectual” and he suddenly asked the people on the stage and those of us in the audience, “What is modern psychology?” A number of very intellectual responses were offered and then suddenly Kabat-Zinn stood up and said with great intensity and clarity, “Modern psychology is the West’s attempt to alleviate the suffering of those beings who have mistaken a small part of themselves for the whole.” Revisiting that memory now I can’t help wondering about the tendency toward the toxicity of isolationism, as well as our tendency toward dualistic and polarizing thinking that has too often inflamed us as we have approached elections throughout history.
The beauty of the skill set that is taught in MBSR is that it is based on the premise that we live in a small part of ourselves and that the stories that we tell ourselves about the meaning of the inevitable disappointments, shocks and losses that we all experience in life are often worse than the event itself, and at the least exacerbate the pain, too often causing deeper suffering. How is it that if a person gets a diagnosis of cancer, his or her whole identity becomes one of cancer patient? Or if we identify too completely with a political party or religion our whole identity can become that to the exclusion of our humanity.
For those of you, dear former MBSR class members, related to this all too human tendency to live in too small a part of ourselves, let us remember Kabat- Zinn’s story of climbing the mountain with his 10 year old son, Will, recounted in the chapter in Full Catastrophe Living, “Working with Emotional Pain: Your Suffering is Not You…But There is Much You Can Do to Heal it.” When the going got tough climbing the mountain, JKZ and his son, paused and re-grouped, innerly and outerly. Facing their fear they were able to find another path up the mountain, You may remember that they waited until the storm cleared, and then they took off their shoes when necessary where the rocks were too slippery from the rain. And, then, when they got to a safe place, Kabat-Zinn had Will take off his back pack and he had Will stay on that ledge, while he made two trips to the top with the heavy back packs, and then came back for Will. They paused, they honored their fear, and then they found their path.
After thanking my cousin and so many others in our country who worked so tirelessly for this election, let me close with some words from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and author of Women Who Run with the Wolves:
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. ….When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
And, lastly, with a deep bow and a little more poetry,
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