I’ve been spending time with a close friend, a deep practitioner who recently had surgery. He’s in a lot of physical pain as he recovers. Pain is hard to bear. On top of that, we tend to judge ourselves for the way we manage it. Even the Buddha had backaches as he grew older; there were times when he couldn’t teach. He had to lie down because it hurt too much.
Pain asks to be held with compassion rather than judgment. We can get through it, but not by comparing ourselves to a dharma fantasy of Buddha-like transcendence and elegant equanimity. Sometimes it’s just too hard. To acknowledge when it feels unworkable, to ask for help and offer a humble bow of surrender – these can be sane and healthy responses to strong pain.
In the same way, we’re also carrying our country’s collective pain. We’re witnessing children being separated from parents and being placed in awful facilities, unprotected from fear and pain. No matter where you stand on immigration and asylum issues, basic human rights accorded by international law do matter. Protecting children matters. Love matters.
In the face of wild emotional heartache or physical misery, we often feel helpless, lonely, despairing. But this reaction leads to distress, or depression, even suicide, as Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain make tragically clear. Our practice calls for compassion for the pain of all beings everywhere (which includes ourselves). What is a compassionate, enlightened response to pain? To take refuge in loving awareness, in friendship, in wisdom and self-compassion teachings – speaking our truth in community, raising our voices on behalf of what we care about. Turning towards each other, sharing what’s true for us awakens the great heart of compassion and frees us to respond wisely to the struggles of our world.
Love, Trudy