A Time for Bodhisattvas

Joan Halifax, Zen teacher

Rebecca Solnit

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love. The Wobblies used to say don’t mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don’t have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning.

You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset and check your equipment for going onward. A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.

Rhonda Magee

The sun also rises. May we begin again tomorrow making the world a bit better.

Originally published on Facebook.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Zen teacher

One of the largest rituals this country engages in is casting votes, to make our marks, to say something. We may cast a vote, not only for oneself, but, for those who are ill or incarcerated, for those who are illiterate, for those who have lost interest. We do this knowing that the outcome of voting is actually something we cannot really see in an instant. We cannot see the results today or tomorrow. Because the outcome of the ritual is not only about who won and who loss. It is about our coming together every four years; our desires expressed, a chance to return love and honor to those who fought for the participation of all in this ritual. And yet, this ritual induces false security for some and doubt and fear for others.

Our fear that things will get worse, tends to lead to things getting worse. When driven by fear we fall to those who prey on our terror, rage, pain, loneliness, and need for salvation. Our collective fear today is whether or not anyone can live as who they are in this country or in the world, despite being right, middle, or left on the political continuum or off the linear political path all together. Our fear is whether or not our own strategy will eventually work even though it has failed many times. 

A week before this election, I spotted a large Silverado truck and a huge blue flag with red stars mounted in the back. The flag said, “Kamala sucks.” I had my eye on the truck but lost track of it as I headed to a doctor’s appointment. I wasn’t feeling very well. Although hatred is not a human right, it is a human flaw. Soon the driver was alongside me honking his horn. He started towards my car and made a great effort to forced me off the road with his truck. It must have been the thrill of his day because it’s very difficult to find a black woman alone driving anywhere in New Mexico. He thought he had scored in a game in which he was as invisible as me. He may have been telling me that I suck too. But this life that I am living is in the hands of something that wants me here, something more powerful than him. My life is also in the hands of my ancestors. This he did not know. He did not know his ancestors were also with him.

Our shared suffering is less than one degree from each other. Our shared liberation must be the same. No matter who won this 2024 presidential election, twenty-four years into a new millennium, there is something that we all must do more than ever. We must keep faith in those around us. We must relish and cherish the relationships of family and friends no matter their human flaws. It doesn’t mean we have to suffer other’s suffering but the way to our liberation is to forge, with our heat, all that is broken in this country into a kind of freedom we never imagined we had the power to shape. I say this because it is only us that we have and only us who will need to stand at the doors to protect our free communities, free spaces, free loved ones, and more—not as protectors of people only but protectors of what has always been sacred and that is life itself. We must value all life even in the middle of all life not being valued. 

Are we ready and capable of dismantling the distorted perceptions we have of each other that are now strangling us, personally and collectively? No matter what gender, what skin tone—and there are more than two genders and two tones—we must ask what is it that causes us to do or fear not doing what we know shouldn’t be done? How will we lift the noose from around our own necks so we can do the same for another?

If possible we will live in the difficult and in the more difficult and in the difficult after that not because we are becoming stronger but because we know that freedom is tied to what we create out of what sits at our feet. Freedom is to not long for what a president, alone, could never give us. Can we feel the freedom we already have despite things causing us to feel otherwise?

Can we change the ritual? Look into someone’s frightened or confused face today and say, “I got you. I got you.” Saying it out loud is one way but saying it in your heart silently is also a way to access innate empathy, recognize the world’s grief, for the sake of everyone’s wellbeing. Can this be our sacred campaign forever? 

Lisa Ernst, Insight Meditation teacher

Taking Time to Pause with What’s Here

There is much well meaning advice going around about how to deal with this moment. Encouragement to not be afraid, to keep going and to stay away from despair. “Pick yourself back up immediately and press on.” But when we lose a loved one, most of us know we need time to grieve, to let our heart feel what it feels. For many of us, this is no different. Take your time, bring some compassion to your own heart, allow the sadness or fear as a felt sense and not a mistake. The spiritual principles and practices of boundless compassion, kindness and non-separation are still with us, but sometimes we need to stop, put it all down and just honor what’s in our hearts before going forward.

Originally published on Facebook.

Norman Fischer, Zen teacher

An invitation to pay close attention to your life your breath your daily tasks and relationships, not to be baited into confusion and despair. You are alive in a world that’s everywhere alive, pay attention to this. And to kindness. And watch the government and society in which you live just as carefully, listening for the rhythm underneath the jagged melody. Build counter-movements and strengthen counter-movements that already exist. Every day. Day after day. There have been many cruel and misguided governments. They last as long as they last. People carry on, help one another out. I feel special sympathy for the many groups, trans people, gay people, people of color, disabled people, women, for whom this presidency and government feels like a personal attack. Special help and support for them.

Originally published on Facebook.