Be an Oasis

 

  The world we live in contains a great deal of suffering:  starvation, illness, poverty, homelessness, persecution, bigotry, war, injustice, exploitation, and much more.  In connection with this, I have heard the question arise, “There is so much suffering in the world and I have life so easy.  How can it possibly be ok for me to be happy when so many others are suffering terribly?”  And because there will always be suffering somewhere in the world, how could it ever be ok to be happy? 

I used to operate on the unconscious assumption that if I was with someone who was unhappy, I needed to be unhappy, too, in order to be sensitive and supportive.  It would be wrong for me to be happy when they are not.  It would just make them even more unhappy.  Later I learned that this was just trying to force myself to have the “appropriate” emotions and I was never able to actually pull this off.  At some point later on, it occurred to me that my becoming unhappy didn’t actually help someone else’s unhappiness in the slightest.  

But it’s actually worse even than that.  If I become depressed and miserable in an attempt to be supportive of someone else who is miserable, that just saps me of the will, clear vision, and energy to respond in a way that actually is useful.

In general, we feel awkward being in the presence of suffering or misery, and try to avoid it.  Mainly, we do this because we do not know how to respond.  For a long time, I thought that I needed to be able to come up with something wise and insightful to say, or to do something that actually helped fix the problem (which in many cases was unfixable).  And I had no idea whatsoever what that wise and insightful response on my part might be.  At least I had enough sense not to tell someone it’s going to be ok when there is no way I can possibly know this.  Eventually, I saw that thinking I had to come up with some wonderful thing to do or say was just putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform, and this gave me anxiety. 

As it turns out, I had some very wise Buddhist teachers who eventually helped me see that I didn’t need to do or say anything wise or insightful.   All that was needed was to be present with the person and listen to them if they had something they wanted to say.  Now this was actually something I could do—just be with the person.  My being at peace and content might actually help to generate some peace in the person who is suffering.  I know I find it calming to be in the presence of a peaceful and caring person.

I learned that I can always ask “How are you feeling?” and then simply listen attentively and without agenda or judgement.  If I’m asked for advice I can share some of my past experiences that might be relevant, but resist the temptation to tell someone what to do.  Better to ask them questions to help them see things with more clarity so that they can come up with their own solutions. 

Later on, I learned that sometimes I can try to help someone learn to just be there with their unhappy feelings and make peace with them.  And you don’t have to an experienced meditation teacher to do this.  Simply ask the unhappy person to sit in silence with you and breathe for a while, and then maybe ask “Where do you feel the emotion in your body,” “What is the thought stream that accompanies the emotion?”  “Notice how it changes and that it is not who you are, it’s just a visitor that has taken up residence in you for a while.”  With a little help, someone who is suffering can learn to just be there alongside the emotion, disengage from the negative mental stories, and become a bit calmer. 

Thich Nhat Hanh has said that the best gift we can offer the world is the best version of ourselves:  present, at peace, and receptive.   Each of us can be an oasis of kindness, peace, and happiness in a troubled landscape and thereby be of great benefit to people.

People learn from being in the presence of a person who is behaving differently.  At all times, people are affected by witnessing the way a person engage life, seeing their manner of existing in the world.  In Buddhism this is called substance teaching (see earlier blog https://ahimsaacres.blogspot.com/2024/03/substance-teaching.html ), which is in contrast with what is called image teaching which teaches by using words, concepts, and explanations.  Substance teaching occurs through being in the presence of someone who is engaging life in a wiser and better way.

Being in the presence of your happiness can actually help someone who is suffering.  If I can be happy and at peace, and especially, if I have very little of the things that are supposed to make for happiness, it can inspire others to believe that it is possible for them to be happy too, and give them hope, regardless of their circumstances.

There’s a true story I read once about a young American woman, a college student, who was riding on a bus in Bangladesh during a time of great famine.  The bus was caught by a monsoon downpour in a rural area and forced off the road by flooding.  She didn’t know what to do when she discovered the bus shared some high ground out of the water with literally hundreds of people from surrounding villages.  Most of them were dying from lack of food and medical care, and she felt overwhelmed. 

At some point a native man came up to her and smiled, and she said to him “What are you smiling about, this is a horrible disaster!”  His reply was, “My smile is all I have to give.” He invited her to come with him and they spent many hours smiling and singing soothing songs to people who were dying in order to provide some comfort to them.  This woman’s life was forever changed by seeing this man’s response to overwhelming suffering.

No matter how dire our circumstances, there is always something we can do.  These two ordinary people made themselves an oasis of kindness in scene of overwhelming suffering. This a response that is doable for all of us.  We can be an oasis of kindness for anyone having difficulty who is in our presence.

 

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