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This Monday will be Memorial Day and Annie will facilitate. We will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings together and the ARISE contemplation on the First training: Reverence for Life (both below).
On Memorial Day, we traditionally honor those who have died fighting for the United States in wars and conflicts. This Monday, we will use the lens of the First Mindfulness Training to honor those who have sacrificed their lives and consider how we ourselves can protect and honor the lives of all beings.
How can the Mindfulness Trainings help us understand how to prevent and heal from this week’s killing of 19 small children while they were at school, or the racist and antisemetic killings at a Buffalo grocery store, a synagogue in Philadelphia in 2018, and the Charleston AME church in 2015?
How can our practice help us transform our rage and grief over all the killing in the world and show us the way to act skillfully to prevent more killing? I don’t think any one of us has the answer but as a sangha we can reflect, grieve, and learn together.
In a dharma talk in 1997, Thich Nhat Hanh said:
When I was a novice, I could not understand why, if the world is filled with suffering, the Buddha has such a beautiful smile. Why isn't he disturbed by all the suffering? Later I discovered that the Buddha had enough understanding, calmness, and strength. That is why the suffering does not overwhelm him. He is able to smile to suffering because he knows how to take care of it and to help transform it. We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness, and strength so we can help transform the situation. The ocean of tears cannot drown us if karuna [compassion] is there. That is why the Buddha's smile is possible.
The First Mindfulness Training and the ARISE Contemplation on that training are:
The First Mindfulness Training: Reverence For Life
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.
Contemplation of the First Mindfulness Training: Acknowledging Beauty as Reverence for Life
Aware of the suffering caused by oppression and generational harm based on racial, cultural, social, and ethnic inferiority and superiority and its resultant structures of injustices and harm, I acknowledge the beauty and violence inherent in life. I vow to resist being complicit in systems and structures that continue to perpetuate violence and hatred instead of reverence of life for marginalized groups. I recognize that each person contributes to my individual and our collective awakening, and the co-creation of a world that celebrates and affirms differences and similarities. All living beings can teach me something, when I remember to pause, breathe, listen deeply with a calm and open mind and heart, and ask myself: ‘is there more’ or ‘ what else is here with me’’?’ I honor and respect all life guided by Right View and Right Energy.
These two verses can help us to recognize that we are living in times that have been and continue to create separation between people and violence toward certain people because of their race, culture, language, ethnicity, sexuality, political views, physical and developmental abilities, gender, and other ways in which we divide ourselves. If we look deeply, we may be able to see ways we can stop contributing to this separation and violence. This training and its contemplation offer some suggestions for how to prevent violence and protect life.
The suggestion is that we need to do our own internal work:
developing the insight of interbeing
cultivating openness and non-discrimination
nonattachment to views
As well as our work outside in communities:
not being complicit in harmful systems
pausing and breathing
listening mindfully
cultivating nonviolence and compassion
promoting peace education, mindful mediation, and reconciliation
Internal and external practices are both necessary and are not mutually exclusive.
Neither are joy and grief mutually exclusive. Our inability to always be able to protect life can be heartbreaking, and we can still find joy in each moment of life. Such joy can support our capacity to grieve and energize us for skillful action.
The late dharma teacher Cheri Maples, who was also a law enforcement officer, responding to a question about restorative justice, said:
Fierce compassion means knowing how to set high quality boundaries while continuing to be part of stopping violence. It’s being clear about the intention in my heart. Am I angry at this person and wanting an eye for an eye? Or do I want to protect this person from the karma of their unconscious behavior as well as the people they might hurt? That’s a very different set of values to be armed with.
And it is very difficult and there are times when I feel angry and have to sit with it. But I work on finding that balance between compassion and equanimity. Equanimity means transforming the wounded view of my own self, not being attached to that view. And then helping others do that.
When we do unskillful things, it’s often because we’re attached to a wounded self. Victims can develop a sense of entitlement that can be just as dangerous as the oppressor’s abuse of power. We also have to learn to have faith in our Buddha nature and accept our humanity. I encourage people to ask themselves, “When will I be enough? What would make me enough?”
Author Octavia Butler was asked about the answer to ending all suffering of the world, “There isn’t one,” Butler replied. “So we’re doomed?” the interviewer asked her. “No,” said Butler. “There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers – at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
On Monday, after our meditation and reading the trainings, we will have time to share our own experiences. In addition to the questions above, some things we might consider are:
How are you practicing with the heartache and anger that may arise when you hear about more killing? Do you ever feel like a victim entitled to punish others? Do you hold any dogmatic views?
How have you tried to cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and nonattachment to views? Where has that been difficult? Where is it easy?
Have you ever been complicit in any systems and structures that perpetuate violence and hatred instead of reverence of life? Have you been able to break free from those systems?
How can we as a sangha and a community embody fierce compassion and reduce hatred and killing in the world?
I look forward to being with you.
Xo
Annie.
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Here are a few additional resources that helped me prepare this write-up:
Video of Thay teaching that Mindfulness is not a Tool here.
Washington Post article by Colbert King on the Buffalo shooting here (this may require a subscription)
A letter from the President of Howard University, Wayne Frederick, on the recent shooting (below)
May 16, 2022
Dear Howard University Community,
It brings me great sadness to write to our community about another tragic mass shooting. This particular massacre, of course, hits very close to home as the shooter targeted a grocery store in a predominately Black community in Buffalo, shooting 13 people and killing 10, almost all of whom were Black.
This sort of gun violence is at once senseless and purposeful. The victims were innocent shoppers and workers who posed no threat to any person or place. And yet, their victimhood was no mere coincidence; the shooter allegedly intentionally chose a Black community to perpetrate his violence because he was motivated by the lies of white supremacy and the falsities that there is a plot to replace the white majority in American society.
At a Black church in Charleston in 2015, at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, at a Wal Mart in El Paso in 2019, and now at a grocery store in Buffalo, we see the consequences of conspiracy theory and the ramifications of renouncing truth. We cannot denounce this violence unless we equally and unequivocally condemn the falsehoods that enflame it. When untruths are given safe passage and safe harbor in our society, violence is the result.
While we have become accustomed to these recurring tragedies, we can never tolerate their regularity. No matter how often they occur, racist mass shootings are not inevitable, and we must not allow ourselves to perceive them as such.
As the present-day torch bearers of Howard University, it is our duty to champion truth, to amplify facts and to extinguish lies. Through our words and our deeds, we must uphold truth as the essential pillar upon which our society stands. Through the research we conduct and the education we provide, through the art we produce and the stories we tell, we must repeat the facts that give shape to our society while stamping out the falsehoods that undermine it.
Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA