Maintaining Sanity in a Crazy World

 

Sometimes, often in fact, the world seems like it just keeps getting worse and worse.  Someone once characterized the world as a house on fire—chaos, destruction, exploitation, bigotry, stupidity, ignorance, cruelty, violence…  When Thich Nhat Hanh was asked what the hardest part of his practice was, he replied “Not falling into despair.”  The question each of us is faced with is: “How do we live in this world and maintain our sanity?”

Dropping our mental resistance to the realities of our present moment is one important element.   And so is getting in touch with our unrealistic expectations:  “We shouldn’t have to deal with this, this is not like America, I never thought I would see something like this.”  Instead, we can recognize that “It’s just our turn”--other people in other countries and in the past had to deal with similar or worse things.  Why should we be an exception?  Doing this is the work that the universe has presented us with to do.  We need to accept this as though we had asked for it and then do the things we can do to address what needs to be done without complaint.

In the Five Remembrances the first remembrance reminds us that each of us “is of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old.”  Other remembrances say the same thing of ill-health and of death.  Making our peace with these facts is the work that we have been given, it is work that we can do and help others to do, and life can still contain joy. If we reject the work, complain about it, say these things shouldn’t be happening, then we will suffer.  In addition, much of the energy that could have been put into taking constructive action will be lost to complaining and depression. Perhaps an additional remembrance to add to the list might be “Humans are of a nature to lapse into ignorance and hurt each other.”  Dealing with this is our work.

Thai Buddhist monk and meditation teacher Ajahn Chah has a story that is useful to us here. 

“You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns… But when the wind knocks it off the shelf… and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’”

Most commonly, this passage has been cited to illustrate the teaching that everything is impermanent, so each moment with things we care about is precious.  However, there is a second lesson here.  The story also tells us that we will suffer less if we keep in mind that it is in the nature of glass goblets to break, and we should not expect them to last. If we do this, we will be better able to calmly accept without complaint the reality of the inevitable breakage when it happens.  This will enable us to then focus our energies on doing the work of cleaning up and replacing the goblet with something else to drink out of. 

This teaching applies directly to the mess we are in today with our failed institutions of government and the conflict and divisiveness in our world.  It is in the nature of institutions to break.  When we accept this reality fully, we can skip the complaining and focus our energies on cleaning up the mess and replacing the institutions and leaders with something better.

During the early years of my teaching, I had a strong tendency to see the students who were doing poorly in class as stupid, ignorant, and lazy.  I complained a lot about them to other people.  “I shouldn’t have to work with students like this.  This isn’t how things are supposed to be.  These students don’t belong in college.”  And then a teaching colleague of mine, Jim Martin, said to me “The students we have are the students who are here.”  Jim was right.  I needed to stop complaining about things and start looking for ways I could help.  If I’m a teacher, then it is my job to find a way to teach them something that helps them on their way in life.  I actually became much kinder and had more affection for students, even the ones who were struggling or not engaged with what we were doing.  And I liked my job a lot more!

Likewise, if I am a citizen of a country in chaos, the people that make up the citizenry are the people who are there.  The people backing a dictator are a significant slice of the people who are here.  They are not going away.  We are going to have to live here with one another, both now and in the future. We’re going to have to be friends and peacefully disagree at the same time.

  How can I compassionately work with them to help solve our problems without squandering my energy on judging, blaming, or complaining about them?       

The people who are supporting the madness are our friends, coworkers, family members, and neighbors—we need to see their shared humanity and the fact that we all want the same things: safety, meaningful work to do, to love and be loved, happiness, freedom from suffering, and so on.   I could have been born into the same household and neighborhood as the person I am finding fault with and see the world the same way he does.

We will need to be there for our former “enemies” when things change. When the inevitable implosion and collapse of corrupt institutions and leadership happens, we will need to come together and unite with our previous “enemies” and work to repair things. 

We must avoid the anger and resentment brought on after World War I by insisting that the losers pay for war damages.  And before that there was the backlash created by doing nothing to help the South build a non-slave economy and replace vast numbers of burned out structures after the American Civil War. 

Instead, we need to be like the family of Amy Biehl.  Amy Biehl was a white American graduate student who came to assist South Africa during its transition to democracy as a Fulbright scholar in 1993.  She was murdered by four black people because she was white and white people were all seen as oppressors. In 1998, all four men were pardoned by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission when it was determined that their actions had been politically motivated.

Biehl’s family supported the release of the men. Her father shook their hands, stating, “The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue… we are here to reconcile a human life [that] was taken without an opportunity for dialogue.  When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.” In 1994, Biehl’s parents founded the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust to help discourage further violence. Two of the men who had been convicted of her murder worked for the foundation.

It is worth saying here that none of this means that we should not do everything we peacefully can to reverse the horrible things that are continuing to happen in our present world. We must still vote, join protest marches, write to elected officials, use the boycott, educate people, create or join or donate to organizations committed to positive change… and learn ways to have meaningful dialogue with our neighbors who disagree with us.  We must do this repeatedly and do it even if we see no immediate results from our efforts.  And we must do it with joy and love in our hearts for the people who oppose us. A crucial first step is to accept the reality of our present situation as if we had asked for it

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            If you have questions, comments, or ideas for new Blog topics please contact Dale at ahimsaacres@gmail.com.