Mary will facilitate.
Dear Friends,
Following from our conversation last week, we will join together to meditate and reflect on a path to reconciliation, healing and unity. Last week, we discussed Thich Nhat Hanh’s (Thay’s) teachings on ‘Man is not our Enemy’. While cycling in West Virginia and Maryland last week, I saw many election posters still in place. Driving back to DC, I found myself curious to meet people in rural USA to learn directly from them what they have gained in the past four years. What are their hopes for the future and for the future of their children? I imagined that just like me, they want to feel safe, to feel protected as we often recite in metta/loving kindness prayers. They want to feel contented and satisfied. They want to be healthy and strong. They want their lives to unfold with ease, with love, with compassion and joy. We all want similar outcomes, yet our views on how to get there seem to differ so much.
Thay teaches in Peace is Every Step:
“Most of us want to take sides in each encounter or conflict. We distinguish right from wrong based on partial evidence or hearsay. We need indignation in order to act, but even righteous, legitimate indignation is not enough. Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people capable of loving, of not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality.”
Many of us are wondering how to begin this path of reconciliation, of unity. We struggle whether we really feel we ‘Inter-Are’ with those who hold such different views. I feel that I want to really open my heart and listen to others’ lived experience to begin to understand. What are the causes and conditions in their lives that formed their views? If I had experienced these same causes and conditions, I wonder that I might also share their views.
Some questions to reflect on for tonight’s time together:
How can we embrace the whole of reality so that we are capable of loving those in our family, our community, our country, our world who hold different views?
How can we reach out to listen with compassion in order to understand the suffering that lies beneath the views?
“What can we do when we have hurt people and now they consider us to be their enemy?...Sometimes, we do not have the intention to hurt, but because we are not mindful or skillful enough, we hurt someone. Being mindful in our daily life is important, speaking in a way that will not hurt anyone.
...When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person stop suffering, that is a sign of real love. But be careful. Sometimes you may think that you are stronger than you actually are. To test your strength, try going to the other person to listen and talk to him or her, and you will discover right away whether your loving compassion is real. You need the other person in order to test. If you just meditate on some abstract principle such as understanding or love, it may be just your imagination and not real understanding and real love.
Reconciliation does not mean to sign an agreement with duplicity and cruelty. Reconciliation opposes all forms of ambition, without taking sides. Most of us want to take sides in each encounter or conflict. We distinguish right from wrong based on partial evidence or hearsay. We need indignation in order to act, but even righteous, legitimate indignation is not enough. Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people capable of loving, of not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality.
We have to continue to practice mindfulness and reconciliation until we can see a child’s body of skin and bones in Uganda or Ethiopia as our own, until the hunger and pain in the bodies of all species are our own. Then we will have realized non-discrimination, real love. Then we can look at all beings with the eyes of compassion, and we can do the real work to help alleviate suffering.”
I look forward to being with you Monday night!
Love to all,
Mary