Being With to Discover ‘the Love that Will Not Die’
Notes to Pandemic X
(in loving memory of bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh)
Lotus Flowers Only Grow in the Mud
The last two years have been intense, to say the least. One of the books I have turned to many times has been Pema Chodrom’s, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. The book itself is excellent and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend doing so, but perhaps more than the book, I am awed by the power of Buddhist wisdom for these times.
Thich Naht Hanh a great Buddhist monk and teacher who died last week put it perhaps as straightforwardly as it gets: “I could not like to go to a place where there is no suffering. I could not like to send my children to a place where there is no suffering, because in such a place they have no ways to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.” Suffering is necessary. It is a gateway.
It is one thing to hear these words and agree intellectually, but it is quite another to actually live by them.
In the book Chodrom reminds us that “When Things Fall Apart,” we are forced downward, not up; and that the journey takes as long as it takes—lifetimes even.
In the process of discovering bodhichitta,[1] the journey goes down, not up. It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.” (When Things Fall Apart, emphases mine).
This pandemic and the period of space-time it has coincided with, and which might very well never end, is a perfect example of this kind of mountain that calls upon us to descend and be with, acknowledging the shadowy and traumatic material of our collective psyche, our collective lives past and present, without necessarily getting anywhere else.
But, as Chodrom also states: it is not only dark and discomfort down there. There is love. Love then becomes the mechanism, the pathway and the reason for it all. It is when we spend time going down, facing and being with that which we thought was dark and unwanted, that we can discover love—"the love that will not die.”
I have read these words many times, and they resonated, but it wasn’t until a particularly challenging period at the end of last year, and the beginning of this one, that I got dimensions of this at a whole new level.
Ritual Reckonings: Lumps that will not shift
As the end of the year comes closer,[2] I see no choice but to have some ritual reckoning. I light incense, I scrub my skin, I make fire and look inwards. This might be common for many of us, as we reach the darkest night of the year, and as the solar calendar gets ready to turn. For me it’s kind of intensified because my birthday also falls in this time (December 29), so with solstice, Christmas, my birthday and the New Year—the universe makes it pretty clear that I must take stock. This happens pretty much every year, but this year the necessity feels more visceral. This isn’t a mental stock-taking, which is I why I can’t use the word “reflect”—I am actually not able to reflect. Rather, I find myself forced to be with what is; and what is, is very uncomfortable. I can’t put many words to it except that it feels like the unprocessed, undigested and perhaps undesirable material that is in and around me. Many call this undigested material trauma—whether individual, collective, ancestral or present day the undigested, unintegrated material is here, and is making itself known, and felt.
For several days now (perhaps longer), I feel my body weighted down by grief, cynicism, and a general sense of dread—perhaps it’s the existential kind, I can’t exactly tell the difference anymore. What makes it worse is that I have no story. No clear reasons for these feelings, sensations really. I mean, a little thing here or there, but nothing that really seems to explain them; well, except the state of the world. But that’s not new….
As I scan my body there is a lump in my throat comprised of inexplicable consternation, frustration, numbness and something more that I cannot quite name. Something related to grief, but different because it is sticky and congested rather than oceanic and moving through. This difference matters. I realize that I can feel that sticky congestion in various parts of my body, but I don’t seem to have any leverage. I have no story, nothing I can do to fix or even move this—so I do what some might call pray. I pray for answers, for respite, anything to make me feel better. Respite comes in glimmers. A sweet smile from my daughter, a kind gesture from my friend, an apology from my husband, a moment of awe and gratitude in my garden. Nothing takes the feelings away, but these moments resource me, they give me the capacity to go on, to be with this discomfort with a little more spaciousness, a little less despair. I still struggle, but I tap into some warmth and compassion. Fleeting as it may be, it helps.
When the pandemic began, and then continued, I spoke and wrote a lot about the fact that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. But more than that, —and everything I wrote was to myself as much as to anyone else— that we needed to train our muscles for being with shadowy and uncomfortable material, for being with rather than always trying to get through. As we near year two of this tremendous rite of passage, I find it important to remind myself of this larger perspective and to catch myself when judgement takes over, when part of the suffering is compounded by the fact that I am mad at myself for “still” being “only here.”
Why add the “still”? Desire to be elsewhere is part of our problem
A newish teacher of mine, Thomas Hubl, would question my use of the word “still”: why still? Why assume you would be over struggling at this point, or ever? What assumptions about progress and time are you holding, he might ask. Catching myself with this “still,” just now, allows me to see that a layer of my suffering is brought on by my own judgement of myself for not being “further along,” for not yet being “evolved enough” to handle the muck.
As many of us know intellectually, but perhaps struggle to accept in practice: healing is not a destination, it is a never-ending path.
The desire to be elsewhere—to get to the end of this journey, to perfect ourselves— can never help us because it is a part of our predicament. At the most basic level this is because it simply compounds our suffering. How often do we feel unwell, sick, stuck, and rather than just being with, and having those feelings, we make things a hundred times worse because we are mad/frustrated/sad with or at ourselves for not being able to feel better, heal, etc. However, the desire to be elsewhere is also and perhaps more harmful because it is inextricably and furtively constitutive of the monster of White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy—a term bell hooks, who tragically passed in December, so aptly coined—that we so desperately need to end.
White Supremacy Capitalist Patriarchy is inextricably tied to modernity and is all about the need for things to be a particular and best way. It is about climbing the civilizational ladder towards progress, accumulation, improvement, perfection. And it is always based on a vision of what belongs and what doesn’t; what is primitive and what is advanced; what is good and what is bad. This is why we call the western enlightenment mind dualistic. It separates all life into the desired and undesirable, rather than understanding that the human experience is comprised of the complex interplay of dark and light. Said differently, that everything has its role. This is also why colonialism (and racism) are not only or simply about extracting others’ resources, they are about creating a metric of civilizational worthiness, standards and metrics that are not only unattainable, but supremely destructive to both the colonized and the colonizers. They make judgement (and abhorrence) a standard attitude to difference, setting us on a path of never-ending condemnation, self-hatred and shame. As James Baldwin has pointed out in his poignant, 1962 Letter from a Region in My Mind, at the core of racism against black people is the self-hatred “white” people live by.
White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. (Baldwin 1962).
When we lambast ourselves for still being wherever we are, we are not only NOT helping; we are perpetuating default stances of White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.
So what do we do? As bell hooks also taught, the solutions we seek—both for our own healing and ending White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy are “All About Love.”
It is no coincidence that hooks herself was a Buddhist.
The Love that Will Not Die
As Zen Buddhist Reverend angel kyodo williams describes it, building on her own study of hooks, love is not primarily about romance or even affinity.
The way that I think of love most often these days is that love is space.
It is developing our own capacity for spaciousness within ourselves to allow others to be as they are — that that is love. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have hopes or wishes that things are changed or shifted, but that to come from a place of love is to be in acceptance of what is, even in the face of moving it towards something that is more whole, more just, more spacious for all of us.”
The beautiful thing about this training for being with that we are all in, is that in addition to allowing for the dark, unpleasant, etc. what we learn to hone is our capacity for love. In fact, I find it remarkable that love both becomes that which allows us to be with the difficult AND turns out to be the point of it all. As we sit and allow, we find tenderness and love for things we never thought we could, and not only does this make these discomforts tolerable, in the process we become more fully human, falling more in love with life and ourselves. So, and this is not original, but perhaps the strange silver lining of the dark, of the suffering, of everything, is that it pushes us to love more fully.
But the thing is, it takes practice. We need to grow our muscles and capacity for love. Love, as hooks stresses, is not simply a feeling. It is a practice, a verb. It must be put into action concretely and locally, and then it can change the whole world. Love’s power is that it is both universal and specific. One cannot love abstractly, but through specific experiences of love—perhaps especially “down there in the thick of things” among those things we would rather reject— one can grow one’s capacity for loving it all.
These days part of my practice looks like being with: being with the mundane quotidian things (concrete and more ephemeral) that my first impulse is to judge, condemn or hide—in myself and in others. While I don’t have a complete story to help explain my muck, one thing I do know is this year I want to commit myself to learning and practicing to love more and better. And that it starts with accepting and even loving my muck. As we go through these incredibly difficult times, I invite you to find the opportunities for growing (y)our capacity for love. While the challenges we face may seem of a massive order—climate, fascism, humanity—I am increasingly convinced that the work of awakening is through the small acts of growing our love one moment, person, event at a time—perhaps especially the ones we find hardest to love. That’s my invitation to all of us this 2022.
[1] Bodditchitta is a Buddhist concept but essentially refers to awakening, being on the spiritual path.
[2] I began this post shortly after the death of bell hooks, who died December 15, 2021.
bell hooks was an amazing writer, teacher, thinker. She died at the young age of 69 on December 15 2021. The news was devastating for so many, including me. On a personal level, she was one of my most important teachers and sources of inspiration—both in terms of content and style. Her work was at the intersection of feminist and anti-racist theory, transformative pedagogy, and spiritual/Buddhist thought—the main areas I work in. The fact that I am writing this blog is itself largely inspired by her own writing that refused so much about the academic style, without ever settling for oversimplifying or “dumbing down.” Rest in peace beloved bell hooks. Thank you for everything. You will be missed.
Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the most important teachers of engaged Buddhism— a Buddhism for social change and peace. He died at the age of 95 on January 22, 2022. He was a Vietnamese monk whose first book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, was written to help all those suffering and struggling for peace in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. After exile, he intentionally brought Buddhist teachings to the West, and his books, talks and meditations changed many lives, including my own. Rest in peace Thay. Thank you for everything. You will be missed.
