By Marianela Medrano

With gratitude to Roshi Joan Halifax

I enter the sparsely decorated examination room, feeling my heart tied in knots. My brother follows behind; the clacking of his cane is an unmistakable mnemonic for what I would love to forget. A young doctor marches in. I detect a familiar accent and feel relieved. I had requested a Spanish-speaking physician for Oscar, whose accident had taken away partial movement, speech, and most of his vision. To my disappointment, the man passes by us without a greeting and throws questions about my brother as if he were not in the room.

Como se siente él? Oscar hears the question and answers with the only mode he knows: “Bien, bien, bien!” Each word a heavy pebble under his tongue, not big enough to stop the laughter that invariably follows anything he struggles to enunciate. The white uniform remains immune, throwing more mechanical, laconic questions for which he doesn’t seem to need answers. I settle back into my breath, feel my feet, and ground myself. I hear Joan Halifax’s wisdom: “Compassion is the intention and commitment to alleviate the suffering of others in a non-transactional way.” After navigating his emotions and possible exhaustion, I trust the young doctor will get there. I trust I can get there, too. I notice the unkempt clothes and the bags under his eyes. Double shift, I tell myself.

Today is our first visit to the trauma center, following up an MRI that revealed a brain aneurysm and the vastness of the injury that radically changed Oscar’s life. Yet the doctor encapsulates his condition in a “great, everything is fine, then.” I introject — but, how about the aneurysm? He looks at me, puzzled, and turns to the computer. After a brief moment, I hear: “Oh, not big enough to be a concern,” he walks out of the room with the same urgency he came in.

Minutes later, a nurse appears with an angelical smile and tells me we are all set. Perplexed, I attempt to settle my heart, hotness saturating my body and clouding my mind. I want to inquire, “All set? What did he do for us?” Instead, I break down. The nurse soothes me and asks if I want her to reschedule me immediately with another neurosurgeon in the practice. I nod yes. She brings us to the waiting room. Half an hour later, she returns and announces the new doctor will call me to arrange a virtual visit. We return to the car, Oscar’s cane and the doctor’s indifference rattling my nervous system. We all carry trauma in our bodies. I can feel the energy of mine traveling through nerves endings; it is a sluggish, thick energy that has been stagnant for years.

A week later, I am perched in front of my computer, full of hope. Hope is a perilous but necessary distraction. Is it an emotion? Certainly not; it involves emotions, but it is not one. It is more a mindset, a state of being. I have written a long list to share with the assigned neurosurgeon/mess cleaner. I am more in the mode of “I got this.” Unlike wishing, hope moves us to action, and I was full of it. I have written many questions about where to go next in Oscar’s healing journey. Two minutes into the conversation, my hope bubble bursts. My body feels as numbed as Oscar’s or his eyesight cataloged “legally blind.”

The hospital evangel gives me a litany of conditions that will worsen. “Listen, you must come to terms with it; your brother is operating on half his brain. There are things he will never be able to do again.” He says all in Spanish as if Oscar were not there. By training, I know how to put one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Except, right now, I am still determining which one is which. I find my way out of the situation with an almost inaudible “Gracias. Have a good day.”

One can imagine how delivering life-altering news to patients is one of physicians’ most challenging tasks. A great deal of stress might be involved during the actual conversation. I know the SPIKES protocol, which stands for: setting, perception, invitation, knowledge, emotion, strategy, and summary, is intended to alleviate suffering when delivering bad news. A skillful delivery can alter the way we move forward. I don’t want to lose faith in humanity, but I am running out of fuel. The experience brings me back to an afternoon in New York when my thirty-two-year-old niece was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer thirteen months before she took her last breath. The doctor, a pregnant woman sipping tea, showed us images of a devastating, rampant storm raking Nieves’ body, as if she were showing us a clothing catalog.

The news delivery lacked humanity and left me at a loss for words. I leaned on what I knew. I invoked the Heart Sutra. I picture Avalokiteshvara, the great bodhisattva who embodies loving-kindness and compassion. I asked the great being to wrap us in a radiant white light. It did not happen that day. I left the room, angry and resisting, my niece a bundle of sorrows. It took months for me to develop some version of a soft heart, but when it happened, compassion for our suffering melted away my resistance. It came when I heard Thich Nath Hanh say: “We are made of a nature that dies.” I have forgotten how these words re-centered me when my father died and helped me settle into his transition.

Before leaving the virtual room, the hospital evangel warns me to prepare because a traumatic brain injury shortens a person’s life. I turn off the computer and grab my Standing at the Edge copy. Joan Halifax’s voice, her tending to death and dying, and her cultivation of GRACE remind us of our capacity to build an equanimous and aware heart. What will it take for me to regain balance amid pain and uncertainty? I cannot stop the machinery of life events from turning its wheel, but I can choose how to show up to each iteration of pain.

In hindsight, circumstances on each occasion informed how the doctors responded; the three were young, closer to Oscar’s and Nieves’ ages. Did they see their humanity reflected? Could they not bear the thought of their mortality? I don’t know. I now recall my intention to be loving and compassionate, not transactional but warm-hearted. Ultimately, that is the only truth I can access. I wanted the doctors, in each circumstance, to see our pain, to feel the burning candle of my relatives’ lives. I know I am far from the non-dualistic intention Halifax gently invites us to enter, and closer to self-pity, which is self-centered. To access my integrity, I must go beyond any egocentric need. Or else, I won’t be able to tap into the source of compassion and universal love within. I am not there yet, but I know in my bones, our human suffering becomes a pathway to liberation.

I close with the commitment not to turn away but to turn around and face the reality that we are all imperfect beings striving to do the best we can. Halifax’s voice chants my favorite invitation: Grow a strong back and a soft front.

Marianela Medrano, PhD is a Dominican writer, psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher, living in the USA since 1990. She is the author of seven books, including, “Rooting” (Owlfeather Collective, 2017). “A Strong Back & a Soft Heart” first appeared on her blog October 1, 2023. Dr. Medrano recently attended the G.R.A.C.E. Training program at Upaya.

I traveled to St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia, to sit on a hard, bare bench in a small white clapboard church that was a place of gathering for prayer and song for generations of the Black people on that island.

Bessie Jones, a great singer of old songs from her culture, was someone whom I loved and respected. She was part of the group called the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Alan Lomax had introduced us and we immediately bonded. That day in ’84, I was there for her funeral. There she was, laid out in her coffin, her face serene, her hands folded at her waist, her people gathered about her coffin looking so very awake and also in grief.

Simply relax and recall who you really are.

I found myself thunderstruck by the words of the preacher, who said, “What you loved is not what is lying there in that coffin!” I have sat with those words for forty years. Maybe he meant something different than I was to come to understand. Sure, we all loved her soul, but I also got something else; Bessie was made of non-Bessie elements. Bessie Jones was not her body, not her songs, not her race, not her history. Sure, she was all that and there were non-Bessie elements.

Not too long after that, 1987, I sat under a big oak tree in Ojai, California, when Thich Nhat Hanh picked up a piece of paper. He asked: “What is this?” Some poor soul in the gathering said: “A piece of paper!” Thay sweetly looked at the young man and said: “When I see this paper, I see a tree, and the man who brought down the tree. I see the truck bringing it to the saw mill….” And so forth.

My mind turned to Bessie Jones, and I knew Thay was right; in the end, we are empty of a separate self-identity.

Years later, my good friend Kaz Tanahashi asked to meet with me. He had sat a Zen sesshin and had a breakthrough: instead of the word emptiness, in the “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” trope that we hear chanted so often, he realized that emptiness really means boundlessness, for in fact we are made up of boundless interconnected components, and as well, space or openness is without boundary. Kaz would also suggest that these interconnected valences pointed to a state of mind.

I have chanted the Heart Sutra at the bedside of many dying people. Every time I came to the word emptiness, I tightened up a little. So, I adopted Kaz’s approach. Thus, I urge you to consider what I have shared in these stories. There are many ways to interpret so-called emptiness, and in the end, it is up to you to actually and directly experience boundlessness or so-called emptiness. It is not a big deal. You can do this. Simply relax and recall who you really are.

This story I am sharing now might serve us in understanding why conscientiousness, care, and intention are so important for our survival and for our character: “Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered the first sign of civilization in a culture to be. The student expected Mead to talk about fish hooks or clay pots or grinding stones, but Mead replied that it was a femur that had been broken then healed. In the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die: you cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt food. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is proof that someone has taken time to stay with the person who fell, bind up the wound, carry the person to safety and tend them through recovery. ‘Helping someone through difficulty is where civilization starts’ said Mead.”

I believe that this is what Margaret Mead meant when she said: ‘Helping someone through difficulty is where civilization starts’ and this is why the GRACE training is so important. It reflects the power of our intention to meet suffering with genuine care and compassion. It also reflects conscientiousness, being aware of suffering, feeling concern about the presence of suffering, and having the intention to respond to suffering in a way that is aligned with our values.

This is what compassion is: the intention and commitment to alleviate the suffering of others in a non-transactional way.

Through studies in neuroscience and social psychology, we have learned that compassion is a powerful means for transforming the personal and institutional challenges that so many of us face. The British clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert has written that: “What turns basic caring behavior into compassion is that humans have evolved a whole range of new competencies and types of consciousness and awareness that allow us to have insight and foresight, systemic thinking, an objective sense of self, and conscious intentionality. No lion can wake up and decide to go circuit training to get fit, because it can’t anticipate how its behavior will have an impact on tomorrow. We can. We can make decisions about overriding or inhibiting a motive or emotion or accentuating them. Given this, one way to think of compassion is that compassion is when we utilize our new brain cognitive competencies in the service of caring and supporting others.”

These new brain competencies enhance our capacity for being intentional as we meet suffering with a response that is directed toward alleviating suffering, if at all possible. We can be deliberate and intentional about our actions; we can make a conscious decision about nourishing altruistic intention; we can in fact choose to act conscientiously and compassionately, and we can nourish those capacities within us that make it possible for us to meet suffering in an unconditional, spontaneous, and a non-transactional way.

GRACE is about building the capacities internally to cultivate stability and conscientiousness in the midst of radical uncertainty and to realize that we are not the masters of suffering; we are not the masters of death. But we can be deliberate about our intention to unconditionally alleviate the suffering of others, no matter the outcome.

I have come to understand that this kind of work is a calling for us, and that is why we are here now: to not turn away from the challenges associated with suffering, but to meet suffering with compassion, with the intention to truly benefit the welfare of others. We are also gathered here to explore the profound importance of why intention is at the very heart of the practice of GRACE.

I often use the somatic metaphor of strong back, soft front to illustrate the interdependence of equanimity and compassion. For the purposes of our meeting today, I want to use this somatic metaphor in a somewhat different way. Strong back is exemplified by our capacity for attentional balance and so-called wise attention, that is attention that is flavored with insight into the nature of reality. Soft front reflects our unselfish intention to genuinely benefit others.

The first phase of GRACE is the cultivation of attentional balance giving rise to wise attention, allowing us to perceive clearly the circumstances of the present moment.

The second phase of GRACE, recalling our intention, involves the natural arising or the deliberate cultivation of an intention that is prosocial, altruistic, and non-transactional, arising from the ground of wise attention. Wise attention supports an intention that is free of self-interest. This involves conscientiousness, sensitivity to what is present, and the capacity to perceive present circumstances clearly.

On the other hand, our personal preferences, self-centeredness, and distractability distort our perception of reality, and this influences our values, motivations, intentions, and behaviors.

From the Buddhist perspective, there are three types of intention: intention that is self-interested, egoistic, and transactional; intention that is altruistic and oriented toward genuinely benefitting others; and nondualistic intention that is unconditional and nondual with no distinction between self and other and no attachment to outcome.

From the Buddhist perspective, intention is a mental factor that is directional and deliberate. Our intention keeps us moving in the direction we want to go. Our motivation, however, might not be fully conscious. I can offer an example: in relation to caregiving, if our work is to care for the dying and our intention is to bring our best to the bedside, but we are busy or exhausted, and we feel we just cannot handle the work, our intention can support us in showing up in any case. However, our preconscious motivation might be self-interested. We might be afraid that we won’t be paid or be reprimanded or feel guilty if we do not show up in a good way at the bedside.

So, it is important to consider that our good intention can be driven by an unconscious, ego-based motivation. Part of our work is to surface our motivations, and whether they are healthy or ego-based, so our motivations are congruent with our intentions.

It also is important to recognize that the healthy intention to benefit others is a resource that supports our sense of integrity and can serve us in sustaining our commitment to the work of meeting suffering.

Being conscious of and conscientious about our intentions relates to our character: that is our ability to connect to our deepest values; to connect to who we really are; and to engage in actions that are principled and compassionate.

To summarize, “Recalling Intention” in the practice of GRACE is an active and conscious practice. It builds trust in oneself and others and builds character and enhances morale. It is morally elevating and is a powerful resource for us.

I want to begin this talk with great thanks for the wonderful friends in Zen 2.0. and also to thank my teachers Thich Nhat Hanh and Roshi Bernie Glassman. Thay and Bernie were Zen people who were dedicated to the practice of socially engaged Buddhism. They are both gone now, but their approach to Buddhism has touched so many of us.

As it was, the way they expressed the dharma fit well with my own life as a social and environmental activist and as a scholar and academic. Whether being arrested as a civil rights and peace activist in the sixties, or an environmental activist in the 2000’s, whether sitting on the selection site of Auschwitz concentration camp, feeding the unsheltered in Santa Fe, working with men on death row, or giving medical care in the high Himalayas, I always saw my own path as a contemplative dedicated to social and environmental responsibility.

As I will briefly share, I think that one of the greatest dharma doors in Buddhism is social and environmental engagement. I am aware that not everyone agrees. But in these few moments we have together, I want to share two things: a brief story about environmental engagement and an even briefer account of Buddhist history as a socially engaged path and why I think this approach to Buddhism is so important at this time.

We know that this gathering has been inspired by Bruce Lee’s admonition: “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”

Lee’s writings talk about fluidity, being nimble, permeable, adaptable, responsive, and emergent. This is what Buddha called: an appropriate response or how we live non-separately from our world, completely immersed in all beings and things; and from my own work, this is what compassion is: fundamentally adaptive and context dependent.

What Lee might be suggesting is that the heart/mind that is not rigid but rather one that is radically inclusive, like water is inclusive of whatever finds its way into it, this is the life of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, this is the life of water, the life of compassion and wisdom.

So I want to share this brief story about water, hopefully reflecting the theme of this gathering. The story is about being like water….and also a story about finding the cracks where water seeps in. This is our practice, the very heart of Zen.

I told this story to our Zen 2.0 friends when I met them this past spring. It is about emptiness and fullness in social and environmental engagement, in this case by indigenous women in my country. It is a story about water and being like water, seeping through the cracks of our world. It is about being a bodhisattva as we respond selflessly and spontaneously to the conditions of this world. This story was first shared with me by my student Sensei Kozan. I am grateful for learning about this remarkable, humble, and persistent woman, this water walker, this indigenous bodhisattva.

Josephine Mandamin, an Anishinaabe grandmother, born in 1942, a survivor of the Canadian Indian residential school system, was a founding member of the water protectors’ movement in North America. During her 77 years, she walked about 25,000 miles around the shorelines of all the Great Lakes and other waterways of North America, carrying a single bucket of water, to bring awareness to the need to protect the waters of our earth from pollution.

In the year 2000, during a Sun Dance Ceremony at Pipestone, Minnesota, Grand Chief Eddie Benton-Banaise told her and others of a dream in which water would cost as much as gold by the year 2030. He asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

I ask all those who are here: What are we doing about the earth and her waters and the climate which is touching all life on this earth, and as well, will transform the lives of those who will come after us? We have to look deeply and find the cracks in our lives and in the systems that feed our lives, and find our way into those cracks to thoroughly break open the way forward. This I learned from my teachers Thay and Bernie. This I learned also from my close indigenous friends and colleagues. Be like water….find your way into the cracks.

Because of this prophecy and her extensive water knowledge, Josephine organized a group of women of all ages to address the terrible pollution of the Great Lakes and as well, the waters of various Indigenous reserves. As a “Grandmother” of her people, this was a significant role for her; the term “Grandmother” is one of great veneration by her people. Her activism was inspired by her Ojibwe worldview, which sees water as a living being. As a woman and elder, as a “lifegiver” and “water-keeper,” she knew that she had a sacred obligation to pass on her water knowledge to this and future generations. For the Anishinaabe, water is associated with Mother Earth, and it is the responsibility of grandmothers to lead women in protecting water.

After the initial walk around immense Lake Superior in 2003, spring became the time for the walks to begin, as it symbolizes re-growth and renewal of the earth. Josephine’s water walking was a sacred act that has influenced indigenous peoples all over the world. One woman with her bucket, humbly carrying water and walking with her sisters, her daughters, her friends, all of them seeing that they were not separate from the waters of life nor were they separate from the future.

Back to Bruce Lee: “The oneness of all life is a truth that can be fully realized only when false notions of a separate self, whose destiny can be considered apart from the whole, are forever annihilated.”

Be like water; be selfless; see that we all share a common life and a common destiny.

Lion’s Roar - May 31, 2022

As I witness all that is happening today—armed conflict in the heart of Europe, global pandemic, rising authoritarianism, impending climate catastrophe, and all of life’s other sufferings and injustices—I am acutely aware, as you probably are, that our world is at risk.

We might ask: How can we meet this reality of suffering and violence? What is the task ahead of us to meet confusion, delusion, and violence in our time, in our country, in our lives? How do we realize peace transformation?

Buddhism guides us to realize the most radical form of inclusivity — that all beings can be free of suffering and delusion, and we are not separate from any of them.

Vaclav Havel once said that morality means taking responsibility—not only for our own life, but for the life of the world. From a Buddhist perspective, that means understanding that we are not separate from all beings and things, and acting accordingly. It means we cannot give in to the tendency to turn the world and its beings into objects we call “other.”

“Buddhism has since its very beginning guided its practitioners to realize the most radical form of inclusivity—the realization that all beings, in all realms, no matter how depraved and deluded, can be free of suffering and delusion, and that we are not separate from any of them.”

So the teachings of the Buddha tell us that there is no “other.” The basic vows we take as Buddhists remind us that there is no “other.” Yet we live in a world peopled by those who are subject to the deepest forms of alienation from their own natural wisdom, a world where whole communities see “others” who should be done away with, liquidated, eliminated, raped, ravaged, cut down, and gunned down.

When there is “other,” there is an Auschwitz, a caste of people we will not touch, a ravaged and raped woman, a clear-cut forest, an abused and abandoned child, a man behind bars, a village of old women whose men have all died in war, a fearful young conscript from Russia with a gun in his hand, Ukrainian civilians killed by bombs and rockets from the sky. Without “others” there are none of these things.

Peace transformation is realizing—and living—nonalienation from all beings on our earth. This is the realization of bodhi­sattvas as they ride on the waves of birth and death, working compassionately to relieve the suffering of all beings.

If we see we are not separate from others, then we not only share their awakening, we also share their suffering. I am not separate from the suffering of Ukrainians, but also I am not separate from the suffering of those who have attacked Ukraine. In the experience of nonseparation, I open, bear witness, and hold as much as I can with a strong back and soft front.

It is not so easy to realize this truth of interdependence, or “interbeing” as Thich Nhat Hanh called it. Many of us have not allowed ourselves to look deep inside to see and touch who we really are. Yet Buddhists and contemplatives of many traditions have long been guided to go within to discover the interconnectedness of all things and the peace that surpasses ideas and concepts. This peace is basic to all beings when they come home to a state of nonalienation. Because this wise peace is not complacent, nor is it restless, it nourishes courageous and compassionate action in the world.

Peace transformation is grounded in an experience of connection and radical intimacy with the world. It is about the realization that awakening is not an individual experience. It is liberation in our intimate relatedness with and through all beings.

Awakening, then, is ultimately social. Buddhists serve and awaken in and through relationships based in a deeply shared life, one that is dedicated to nonaggression and benefitting every being and thing on our planet.

We can nurture peace by transforming our own lives. At the same time, we must reach out courageously to where the suffering is most acute, sending our voice, taking a stand, and making peace by strengthening values, views, and behaviors that are based in the great treasures of compassion and wisdom. We must work actively for nonviolence toward all, and for deep and true dialogue that respects differences and plurality. And we must take our own responsibility. We have to ask: what is our part, and our country’s part, in feeding the demons of hatred and aggression?

As Buddhists, we share an aspiration to awaken from our own confusion, greed, and anger in order to free others from suffering. The bodhisattva vows at the heart of the Mahayana tradition are a powerful expression of what I call “wise hope,” of hope against all the odds. This is the kind of hope that is victorious over fear and hopelessness. For how else could we chant the impossible aspiration:

Creations are numberless,

I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible,

I vow to transform them.

Reality is boundless,

I vow to perceive it.

The awakened way is unsurpassable,

I vow to embody it.

Now, more than at any other time in our lives, may we realize these vows in word and deed.

May 21, 2022

All of us in this space recognize the prophetic quality of Margaret’s writing as we, in this country face further denial of women’s rights. I want us to offer a hand to Margaret for making this so in our face. [applause] We have so much to thank Margaret for, but specifically this day I have two things I’d like us to reflect on. One is the fires in our state. The forest, the creatures, the villages, under siege. Bill deBuys and myself were given the ‘ready’ signal to ready ourselves, to move out of the valley, the watershed, that we share, further north in New Mexico.

We know that the same quality of greed, of hatred and delusion is what’s priming the climate catastrophe. And we are seeing the results of it now.

And the war in Ukraine is part of that terrible equation of greed, hatred, and delusion. I want to thank Margaret, for standing in solidarity, along with others, in relation to what it means to protect a democracy, to stand in freedom, in a country that is now living its worst nightmare.

We all are painfully aware that the Russian Federation has carried out a horrendous full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And we watch in horror, we watch with a sense of incredible broken heartedness, what is happening to that country, and we also know that we cannot be deterred by fear or futility.

Margaret, we know that you and many others stand united in support of writers, in support of journalists, of poets, of artists, and really of all the people Ukraine, who find themselves under siege. Every single one of these individuals have a right to peace, have a right to free assembly, have a right to democracy.

We know that there can be no free Europe without a free Ukraine.

To this end, I offer these words, and I offer these words from a perspective of wise hope, which is also what my good friend Christiana Figueres calls ‘Stubborn Optimism.’

We have to bring a very deep sense of courage and commitment into our lives at this time to meet a world under siege, so I offer these words:

May suffering arising from hatred and from ignorance, may it be remedied.

May those in the grip of fear be released to the safety of understanding and to compassion.

May those lost in confusion find a refuge in wisdom.

May those who are unsheltered find a safe harbor in their country of Ukraine and also in our state here. As those who are fleeing fires are seeking refuge.

May those suffering from grief and those suffer from the anguish of war, may they find peace.

May those who care for the wounded and those who care for the sick find support as they serve others.

May those who have died in the ravages of war be liberated from confusion.

I hope we can allow the sensibility of courage, of strength, and also a kind of determination—determination that is colored also by a sense of great love—to enter our lives, and that we share this in how we live, and how we lead our world. Thank you!

May 14, 2022

Edge States include five internal and interpersonal qualities without which one cannot serve healthily. If these resources deteriorate, they can manifest as toxic landscapes that cause harm. Edge States include altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement:

• 1 Altruism can turn into pathological altruism. Selfless actions in service to others are essential to the well-being of society and the natural world. But sometimes, seemingly altruistic acts harm “the altruist,” harm those whom one is endeavoring to serve, or harm the institutions one serves in or the country or institution they are endeavoring to serve.

• 2 Empathy can slide into empathic distress. When one expands their subjectivity to include others, the suffering can be overwhelming. Yet empathy enhances our understanding of others and can deepen a sense of genuine concern. If one identifies too intensely with the suffering of another, one may carry too much of the load of suffering and experience vicarious trauma.

• 3 Integrity points to having strong moral principles. But when one engages in or witnesses acts that violate one’s sense of integrity, justice, or beneficence, moral suffering can be the outcome. Moral suffering is the anguish we experience in response to an encounter with moral adversity that violates our sense of integrity and conscientiousness. Moral suffering includes moral distress, moral injury, moral outrage, and moral apathy.

• 4 Respect is a way one holds beings and things in high regard. Respect can disappear into the swamp of disrespect, when one goes against the grain of our values and principles of civility and disparages or bullies others or even ourselves. In health care, one can experience both horizontal hostility and vertical violence.

• 5 Engagement in one’s work can give a sense of purpose and meaning to one’s life, particularly if the work serves others. But overwork, a poisonous workplace, and the experience of the lack of efficacy can lead to burnout, which can cause physical and psychological collapse.

Through neuroscience and social psychology, we have learned that compassion is a powerful means for transforming the toxic aspects of edge states. The British clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert has written that: “What turns basic caring behavior into compassion is that humans have evolved a whole range of new competencies and types of consciousness and awareness that allow us to have insight and foresight, systemic thinking, an objective sense of self, and conscious intentionality. No lion can wake up and decide to go circuit training to get fit, because it can’t anticipate how its behavior will have an impact on tomorrow. We can. We can make decisions about overriding or inhibiting a motive or emotion or accentuating them. Given this, one way to think of compassion is that compassion is when we utilize our new brain cognitive competencies in the service of caring and supporting others.” These new brain competencies enhance resilience and are essential for us.

From my own work in the field of human suffering, I have looked at how compassion serves, not only to benefit others but also to benefit those who are compassionate, and as well, those who observe compassionate behavior.

Here is a working definition of compassion: Compassion is the capacity to attend to the experience of others; to feel concern for others; to sense what will serve others; and potentially to be able to be of service to and benefit others.

It is important to understand that compassion is composed of non-compassion elements: These elements include: Grounded and balanced attention or presence; an intention that is unselfish and caring; the ability to attune to self and other; the capacity to discern what might serve in alleviating suffering; and then moving into compassionate action through engagement, followed by ending the interaction in a reflective or affirming way. From the emergence of compassion, the toxic expression of edge states can be transformed.

March 19, 2022

Thank you so much for sharing with me your heartbrokenness. I think we both know that it is so important to recognize whatever we are experiencing; we have to acknowledge it, as you are doing, and then work with the despair, learn from it, and not be overwhelmed by it.

Like you, I long to see a positive end to this terrible war. I tremble when sensing into the suffering of the people of Ukraine and also the young Russian soldiers, many of whom have no idea what they have been sent into.

Each of us has to shine light into our own corner, be it a small corner or a large one. We cannot be driven mad by the suffering. We have to do whatever we can to transform our fear and sadness over our lack of agency. And we have to do whatever we can to sow the seeds of peace, in our lives and in our world.

John Paul Lederach’s way is Zelenskyy’s way… human to human. Whatever the outcome of this war, whether he survives it or not (and may he survive), he has become a role model of warmth, courage, and strength. He has spoken humanly to the world. He has asked the world to defend his country. I ask myself every morning: what would it be like to be in his shoes? I cannot imagine. And still he shows up in the midst of the horrors of war being experienced by Ukrainian people, and in Ukrainian cities, fields, and forests.

What is happening in Ukraine is not so different than what happened in Afghanistan… wanton war, horrendous suffering. Many of us know well the futility of war. More will. And our global friend Zelenskyy does too. His work has been to humanize the face of Ukraine, and for me, he has brought war close to our hearts, and as well, the strength of Ukrainian people. We must not turn away from how terrible it feels to witness such violence, and worse to be in its very midst.

And our job is to keep our hearts strong, raise our voices in the name of peace, and know what our part is in the military industrial complex, including our patterns of consumption that drive the military machine. We must address our own violence in the midst.

And now, I sit, breathe, and turn toward love and wisdom. I cannot move Putin, but I can shine some light into my small corner, and perhaps others might join me in their way…

“Zelenskyy” artwork by Lu Henriquez. Lu is selling prints of this work. The proceeds will benefit Ukraine. Please contact Lu at Designame@aol.com for more information.

March 7, 2022

In her book The Sovereignty of Good (1970), Iris Murdoch defined humility as a “selfless respect for reality.” She writes that “our picture of ourselves has become too grand.” This I discovered from sitting at the bedsides of dying people, volunteering in the prison system, and protesting war and environmental devastation. Engaging in the world in this spirit showed me how serious the costs of suffering can be for all, and how important it is for us to have a selfless respect for reality.

Thinking about our current global situation, I recall the work of Kazimierz Dąbrowski, the Polish psychiatrist and psychologist who proposed a theory of personality development called positive disintegration. This is a transformational approach to psychological growth based on the idea that crises are important for our personal maturation. Dabrowski’s concept is similar to a tenet of systems theory: living systems that break down can reorganize at a higher and more robust level—if they learn from the break-down experience.

Working as an anthropologist in Mali and Mexico, I also observed positive disintegration as a core dynamic in “rites of passage.” These are ceremonies of initiation that mark important life transitions, and are intended to deepen and strengthen the process of maturation.

Years later, I was to hear the Vietnamese teacher Thích Nhât Hạnh echo this wisdom as he spoke of the suffering he experienced while being in the midst of the war in Vietnam and then later on as a refugee. he would say: “No mud, no lotus.”

The pandemic, the ravages of the climate catastrophe felt in so many quarters, and the terrible social, racial, and political churn we are witnessing, have given us a vivid chance to look at how we live as individuals and also as a society. It is essential that we acknowledge we share a common planet with all beings. As humans we have a responsibility to take care of our common home and each other.

Many of us have also discovered that our practice is being intimate with exactly where we are and where the world is, tough though this can be. We have to be in it and let ourselves be worked by it. We have to not turn away from suffering but turn toward it with wise hope supporting us.

Rebecca Solnit has written: “the unknown need not be turned into the known through false divination, or the projection of grim political or ideological narratives; it’s a celebration of darkness. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness.”

Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’ in a letter he wrote to his brothers George and Tom in 1817. Inspired by Shakespeare’s work, he describes it as “being in uncertainties and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Negative capability pertains to the ability to live within the penetralium of unknown.

This is what we are asked to do now: Be with Not Knowing, Bear Witness, and then engage in Compassionate Action. A deep bow to my teachers Roshis Bernie Glassman and Jishu Angyo Holmes, who lived the Three Tenets and shared them as a powerful path of practice.

February 28, 2022

As we witness what is happening in Ukraine in real time, today, probably like you, I am acutely aware that the world is at risk; and hopefully we also realize that we are not separate from the world. We might ask: How might we meet this reality of suffering and violence, seeing that we are part of it? What is our experience as we bear witness to Ukraine’s satirist turned global figure, President Zelensky, as he stands in the streets of Ukraine’s capitol in a flak jacket with others? Or the young Russian soldier holding a gun? What about the old woman holding her hand out filled with sunflower seeds as she scolds the Russians soldier, or the young Ukrainian man kneeling before the Russian tank, examples of non-violent, civilian resistance? What is the task at hand and ahead of us to meet confusion, delusion, and violence in our time, in our country, in our lives? And how do we realize peace transformation in the midst? And this in the midst of our human driven climate catastrophe…

The renowned Czech humanist Vaclav Havel once said that morality means taking responsibility, not only of your life, but for the life of the world. From a Buddhist perspective, it means seeing the roots of violence in our country and in ourselves, and finally understanding that we are not separate from all beings and things and must act accordingly or further violence will spread as the Coronavirus has spread.

Buddhism has since its very beginning guided its practitioners to realize the most radical form of inclusivity, the realization that all beings in all realms, no matter how depraved and deluded, can be free of suffering and delusion, and to also see that we are not separate from any other being, whether Putin or Hitler, or His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Malala.

It is not necessarily so easy to realize this. Many of us have not allowed ourselves to look deeper than our personality and our opinions to see and touch who we really are. Yet, Buddhists and contemplatives of many traditions have long been guided to go within to discover not only the interconnectedness of all things, including the natural world, but also the peace that surpasses understanding, knowing, ideas, conceptions, and opinions, the peace that is basic to all beings when they have come home to a state of non-alienation, and also the peace that nourishes courageous and liberating action in the world, knowing that this peace is not complacent, nor is it restless.

Out of this wise peace arises compassionate action. If we see that we are not separate from others, then we not only share their awakening, we also share their suffering. This morning, as I write these words, I am not separate from the fear and courage of Ukrainians who are taking a stand in the streets of their cities, but also I am not separate from the suffering of those who are attacking Ukraine.

In this experience of non-separation, right now, I also notice that I am neither restless nor complacent. I am open, open to discover, bear witness, and hold as much as I can with a strong back and soft front.

Peace transformation is about realizing and living non-alienation from all beings on our earth, and living this realization as the Bodhisattva does, riding on the waves of birth and death. Peace transformation and what I have learned from the work of John Paul Lederach is grounded in the experience of connection and radical intimacy with the world. It is about the most basic realization that awakening is not an individual experience, rather it is the liberation of intimacy in our relatedness with and through all beings.

Awakening then is ultimately social, and Buddhism, Buddhists, and buddhas serve and awaken with and through relationships that are based in the lived experience of a deeply shared life, a life that is dedicated to nonviolence and benefiting every being and thing on our planet.

Thus, we as human beings who love and feel compassion cannot hide from the presence of the pervasiveness of suffering and alienation as we bear witness to what is happening in Ukraine at this very time. We cannot turn our backs on the tendency to turn the world and its beings into objects which we call “other.”

When there is an “other,” there is an Auschwitz, a caste of people we will not touch, a ravaged and raped woman, a clear-cut forest, an abused and abandoned child, a man behind bars medicated out of his mind and heart, a rundown village of old women whose men have all died in war, a young man from Russia with fear and hate in his eyes and a gun in his hand prowling down a street in Kyiv.

The basic vows that we take as Buddhists remind us that there is no “other.” The most fundamental practices that all of the schools of Buddhism engage in point to the fact that there is no “other.” The teachings of the Buddha tell us that there is no “other.” Yet we live in a world peopled by those who are subject to the deepest forms of alienation from their own natural wisdom, a world where whole communities see “others” who should be done away with, liquidated, eliminated, raped, ravaged, cut down, and gunned down.

Today, more than any other time in human history, we are living in a kind of familiarity and immediacy that can destroy or liberate. Our weapons can find their targets within minutes, our diseases can spread like a wildfire in a dry forest, and our delusions can quickly contaminate the minds of millions. As activist and sociologist George Lakey reminds us: violence cannot keep us safe.

At the same time, in the same instant, we must reach through courageously to where the suffering is most acute, sending our voice, taking a stand, and making peace by strengthening values, views and behaviors that are based in the great treasures of compassion and wisdom.

We can nurture peace by transforming our own lives. And, at the same time, we must work actively for nonviolence toward all and deep and true dialogue with respect for and appreciation of differences and plurality. And we must take responsibility. We have to ask what is our part and our country’s part in feeding the demon of hatred and violence?

We all live under each other’s skin, and it is now more than ever functionally intolerable to turn away from what is happening in Ukraine and in many other parts of our world, whether Ukraine, Afghanistan, or the streets of Chicago. As Buddhists, we share a common aspiration to awaken from our own confusion, from greed, and from anger in order to free others from suffering. The Bodhisattva Vows at the heart of the Mahayana tradition are, if nothing else, a powerful expression of what I have called “wise hope” and hope against all odds. This kind of hope is a species of hope that is victorious over fear and time. What else could be the case as we chant: Creations are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it. The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

May we realize these vows now in word and in deed…..

January 23, 2022

What is intimacy? In classical Buddhist texts, intimacy can be a synonym for wisdom.

When you are intimate, you have forgotten yourself; this is the no-trace of Eihei Dogen; the “not knowing” of Bodhidharma. From this perspective, intimacy can mean non-dual wisdom or wisdom beyond wisdom itself.

This is our practice…. And why we practice… to realize the three fold transparency or three valences of intimacy: becoming intimate with your own heart and mind; being intimate or not separate from things as they are; being transparent to the world – allowing undefended intimacy as the world meets us.

For a moment, let’s reflect on what Eihei Dogen says about intimacy. This is from Dogen Zenji’s Enlightenment Unfolds, translated by Kaz Tanahashi:

“When you know yourself, you know intimate action. Thus, Buddha ancestors can thoroughly actualize this intimate heart and intimate language. “Intimate” means close and inseparable. There is no gap. Intimacy embraces Buddha ancestors. It embraces you. It embraces the self. It embraces action. It embraces generations. It embraces merit. It embraces intimacy.”

This time of practice is exactly that… the practice of intimacy, the practice of entrustment, of caring for things as they are, of belonging, of sitting with not knowing, of folding ourselves into the field of the sangha and place in this shared practice. This practice is about relationality, mutuality, presencing, intimacy, and entrustment.

So please pause… expand… include… relax… accept… let go… this chair or cushion, this room, this space, this building, this valley or city or mountain or town… we entrust ourselves to exactly where we are in this very moment…

We might ask: How does entrustment happen? I believe that entrustment begins to open through the medium of attention. May our attention be offered to where we are… Here and now….

This practice of entrustment or intimacy involves the recognition that we are braided with the very streams of life that support us; we are braided with each other; braided with the context of our lived experience; braided with our values and vows. And, as such, our practice is both radically embodied and as well de-centered.

Our practice can also make it possible for us to drop into the host mind of awareness, and, hopefully not be toyed with by the objects of consciousness, which are guests in the stream of our awareness.

This practice of intimacy allows us to experience the self as not localized and always emerging and including, by expanding beyond its constructed boundaries. It also allows us to express our mutuality, trust, and intimacy through the craft of the practice, and to express our sufficiency, our completeness with this ‘nothing extra’ approach.

Recently, a Buddhist scholar made the point that awakening in Zen is irreducibly social—it can never be merely “mine” or “yours,” but is only realized as “ours.”

Intimacy, being one with all things, Roshi Bernie’s one body practice, this is the essence of our practice realization…. Not separate from anything or any being, not separate from this moment. Also not clinging to this moment!