This week has been hard to witness. As a member of a family, a community and humanity as a whole this week has been nearly unbearable to witness. Random acts of violence, heartbreaking losses and general struggle are everywhere. I know I live in a white, upper middle class "I buy my groceries at the fancy co-op" sort of bubble. I am insulated from the constant barrage of war, poverty, violence and danger that permeates so many other human lives in so many places. I am beyond fortunate to live in a beautiful home with my loving partner and our healthy, beautiful daughter whom we conceived with absolutely no effort or struggle and whom I gave birth to (relatively) effortlessly and without major complications (Yes, I have gained some perspective). I am gainfully employed and passionately pursuing my dreams to become a nurse midwife. I am able to breastfeed easily, sleep well enough, eat anything I want and know that while I am at work, being paid equal wages to my male counterparts, my beautiful daughter is safe in the arms of people who genuinely love her. I am the most fortunate person I know. This week I am wracked with my own version of "white guilt". I feel sick with guilt for having all of this. Watching the waves wash through this week I felt like I was watching people on the beach drown and I couldn't throw a rope. My heart broke over and over as malls were shot up, families were destroyed, mothers lost the babies they had waited their whole lives to hold.
It has been unbelievably difficult to stop myself from throwing rocks at the sky and demanding answers. I am angry and scared and sad. I am constantly finding myself looking for rationalization of this insanity. I am in and out of tears a dozen times a day. It is times like these I struggle with my practice of Buddhism. I struggle to remember that while we are all interconnected by the collective consciousness, there is no great puppet master in robes and a beard trying to teach us a lesson. A woman does not lose her child "because". Shit is shitty and it happens sometimes. Hearts and families are broken and it is awful. It is sometimes the catalyst that engenders change but it is not because...it simply IS. And this week the "is-ness" is overwhelming. My desire to reduce things to bite size so that I might brush them off my plate and avoid the emotions they stir in me is so strong but that is not helpful. It does no good to me or to my community. Thats not to say that laying down in the road and crying myself dry would be helpful but there is something to be gained in my raw broken heart. People deserve to be seen and to have someone bear witness to the joy as well as the unspeakable. We honor each other by "seeing" each other and if I brush it away I am not seeing it and therefore I am not truly honoring my fellow human's experience.
In Buddhism there is a practice called Tonglen. In the simplest terms you imagine breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out relief for them. It is a practice in compassion and selflessness. It can be very powerful. It levels up as you become more practiced. You begin thinking of a particular person and practice exchanging "self for other" for them. Next you take it to a larger and larger group until you are practicing for all of human kind. It gets tougher as you expand out because you have to include people you dislike, prisoners, pedophiles, murderers, IRS agents...all of it. People usually run up against a barrier where they cant truly include a group or individual and that is where you must practice. To loosen the binds to the resistance. Its hard. This week I find myself too upset to include everyone. But I also cant figure out who to exclude. The failures of the system, the mentally ill, the higher power... I'm pissed and I have nowhere to point my anger and sadness and blame. I know too well that this is just a shit sandwich and it isnt even "my" sandwich and I am powerless against the devastation around me, unable to fix any of it or to assuage my own guilt so I will sit and practice and I will include myself in an act of forgiveness for my inability and for my own good luck.
