How Our Spiritual Practice Can Support Us in these Difficult Times
by Hugh Byrne
Sixty years ago at the March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the ‘fierce urgency of now,’ expressing the immediate and undeniable need for fundamental change to address the centuries-old history of oppression of Black Americans in the United States.
This image and metaphor—the fierce urgency of now—resonates powerfully today as we face unprecedented challenges that call into question the future of our planet in the face of change in the earth’s climate that is more extreme than anything experienced in thousands of years as well as the future of democracy in America and worldwide.
Here in the United States, we are facing a crisis of truth—with millions identifying with false narratives about elections, scientific facts, and with many being willing to use violence to achieve their goals. We are also experiencing a deep separation and alienation between people and groups based on political identities and conflicting views of reality. And globally, we are seeing an advance of authoritarian ideas and movements.
We can feel this urgency as we are called to respond to attempts to restrict voting rights of minorities and poor and working-class people; limitations imposed on millions of women by restrictions on reproductive rights; the targeting and pushing back of the rights of LGBTQ people and community; the continuing plague of senseless and preventable gun deaths; and, more generally, the attempt to return the country to an idealized vision of how things were 50 or 100 years ago.
The Call to Respond and the Obstacles
In the face of this urgency and the sheer number of crises calling for our attention, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. There are so many urgent needs and we have our own lives – our families, health, finances, work, limited time, deadlines – to take care of.
One habitual response is to check out, shut down and just focus on what’s immediately calling for attention. Another common reaction is to engage but to turn the focus outward into complaining, blaming, anger, hatred, against ‘them’—the people who we see as responsible for causing the harm.
Both of these kinds of responses—shutting down and projecting blame out—don’t lead to our own happiness and well-being, or that of others. When we shut down, we suffer because what we resist persists—the crises, the urgency, the suffering, continue, but we feel disconnected and possibly guilty for what we believe we should be doing. And when we externalize the ‘blame’, we create separation—into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and we disconnect from ourselves and the fundamental truth of our humanity and oneness with others and all of life—and we suffer.
These times call for our compassion, our care, and our engagement. Fundamentally, I believe, they call on us to keep our hearts open to the suffering of the world and to all beings—including those who are causing harm and those with whom we disagree and separate ourselves from.
And these times call for our engagement, particularly as spiritual practitioners, who can play a valuable role in helping bring the insights and compassion of the dharma into the world of engagement.
How Our Practice Supports Us
What is, I believe, inspiring for us as spiritual practitioners, is that the Buddha’s teachings and practices provide a reliable and trustworthy refuge for us in these challenging times. They are a support both in opening to, metabolizing, and processing all that the world is asking us to hold and respond to in these times; and in engaging wisely and compassionately in the world to help find solutions that benefit all, rather than zero-sum—you win, I lose—approaches that have been so common and perpetuated conflict throughout history.
I’ll highlight three areas of the teachings that can provide particular aid in dealing with the challenges of our times:
- the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha’s central teaching on suffering and ending suffering.
- the Buddha’s heart practices.
- the power of intention and the archetype of the Bodhisattva, someone committed to the awakening and freedom of all beings.
Four Noble Truths
When the Buddha was asked to state his teachings simply, he said, ‘I teach one thing, suffering and its end.’ His central teaching, the four noble truths, provides a key to freedom in our own lives and to engaging in the world with joy and peace whatever the conditions.
In any situation where we experience suffering, the first noble truth—unpleasantness, difficulty, annoyance, angst, things not going the way we want them to—we can ask ourselves, What is my role in and my relationship to this suffering? The Buddha taught that where there is suffering there is clinging. We are holding on or clinging to how we want things to be. This is the essence of the second noble truth: the cause of suffering is craving/clinging.
When we see our unskillful relationship with our experience, we can let go of holding and experience freedom—the third noble truth: letting go of clinging leads to freedom. The fourth noble truth, the path of training—the noble eightfold path—helps us cultivate the skills to abandon harmful states and cultivate wholesome and beneficial ones.
The more we cultivate the path of letting go of clinging to anything as ‘I’ or ‘mine,’ the more our mind and heart open to the suffering of the world and point us towards wise and compassionate action to help alleviate suffering—and provide us with skillful means to respond as we act in the world.
Buddha’s Heart Practices
The Buddha’s heart practices, particularly the four qualities known as the brahma viharas, divine abodes or ‘our best home,’ invite us to befriend all beings and all experiences, holding everyone in our heart with compassion.
When we cultivate the four qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we strengthen our capacity to care for the suffering of the world and all beings and act to alleviate that suffering.
When we cultivate these heart practices—and others, like gratitude, generosity, and forgiveness—we train our heart to see everyone as a suffering being, as just like us, only different because of different conditions and different choices, and deserving of our kindness and compassion. When this understanding goes deep, we can engage with difficult people and challenging situations with an open and compassionate heart.
Intention and the inspiration of the Bodhisattva
I want to finish by talking about the importance of intention in bringing our practice into the world. It’s been said that we live our lives on the tip of intention. Intention is our compass guiding us towards what is most important to us.
In Buddhist teachings, intentions are what create our karma. Everything hangs on intention. So, connecting with what we care about most deeply is what can keep us focused, connected, and bearing witness to the suffering of the world.
The Bodhisattva
In Buddhism there is a powerful archetype for this compassionate intention: the Bodhisattva, a being (sattva) of awakening (bodhi) or awakening being, someone who is committed to healing the suffering of the world.
While the bodhisattva is a Buddhist archetype, we can see among us in our own time and in many traditions, bodhisattvas, who are committed to doing all in their power to alleviate suffering. We have clear examples in His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Thich Nhat Hanh, but also in
- Nelson Mandela in his 7 x 9 foot prison cell on Robbin Island, who turned his anger into compassion and forgiveness to help create the conditions for a peaceful transition to majority rule in South Africa.
- Rosa Parks, sitting on the bus, refusing to give up her seat in order to gain freedom and equality.
- Greta Thunberg, who went on strike at age fifteen outside the Swedish parliament and galvanized a movement to confront the climate catastrophe facing us all.
- Malala Yousafzai, who advocated for education of women and girls, was shot by Taliban gunmen, and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and campaign and has continued to campaign for the right to education.
Jack Kornfield speaks of three qualities of a bodhisattva:
- they face the truth, turn towards the difficulties, and shine the light of understanding on them.
- they work to find peace within themselves—by engaging in a training or practices to let go of painful or afflictive states; and develop positive ones.
- they envision actions and a path of liberation for themselves, their community and the world—and work towards those ends.
Jack says, ‘Envisioning has enormous power. With our vision and imagination we can help create the future. Envisioning sets our direction, marshals our resources, makes the unmanifest possible.’
These bodhisattvas—both ancient and in our own times—who had all the human difficulties and obstacles we have—remind us and inspire us that we can live a beautiful life and act with courage and compassion, no matter how big or small the stage we are acting on.
Hugh Byrne works to apply the wisdom and compassion of Buddhist teachings to social, political, economic and environmental concerns. He has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1990 and has taught since 2000. He is presenting a public talk and meditation at Unity on the Plaza in Kansas City on October 2, 2022.
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