Over these last few weeks, we’ve been rocked in many ways – most notably in Nepal and Baltimore. The first was a natural disaster, the second a human-made tragedy, centuries in the making.

Our first impulse is often a beautiful one – we want to respond, we want to help. But how to do so in a skillful way?

One of the values at the very heart of my work is the belief that personal liberation is directly linked to the wellbeing of others. One of the diseases of our time is the illusion that we are separate from one another. We get the idea that we exist in our own little bubbles and we don’t see how we continually condition one another, for better or worse, and how the culture we live in conditions us.

In my own experience, every time I have acted from a place of feeling separate and believing that I have something to ‘lose,’ I have suffered. And I cause suffering, even if I don’t intend it. Every time. When I have been able to live and act from a place of remembering our unbreakable connection in the web of life – something that my zazen practice is so wonderful at making possible – I experience deep happiness.

Nepal and Baltimore are opportunities for us to break out of those bubbles, to support one another and to remember the truth of our interdependence. It’s relatively simple in the case of Nepal. We see people who have been hit with a natural disaster of tremendous magnitude. They are in dire need of immediate assistance to save lives and will need long-term support to re-build lives. Skillful help in this case may mean giving money to organizations that have longstanding relationships in the region and know how to intervene in effective ways. (See the Resource List below for suggestions on how to help Nepal.)

With Baltimore, the human-made nature of the situation raises the level of complexity. A skillful response in this case requires us to be willing to learn about the dynamics of systemic oppression and to see how even if we, as individuals, have good intentions and do not hold obviously racist beliefs, there is a way in which we are still implicated in this system. And it takes all of us to unravel it.

The uprising in Baltimore is, of course, not just about the death of Freddie Gray and not just about Baltimore. It has its roots in many years of inequity and violence perpetrated against people of color.

It’s been extraordinary to watch what’s happened in Baltimore these past weeks. After Freddie Gray’s death in a police van on April 12, there was righteous anger and yes, at times that anger boiled over into rage and broken windows and other acts of vandalism.

But there was a much greater wave of powerful nonviolent direct action, with people of all colors showing up together to call for justice. Some of city’s leaders offered statements that showed a deep understanding of the full context of the situation as well as the compassion that emerges from that understanding… like this one from John Angelos, the COO of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team:

“… the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society. MLK, Gandhi, Mandela and all great opposition leaders throughout history have always preached this precept. Further, it is critical that in any democracy, investigation must be completed and due process must be honored before any government or police members are judged responsible.

 

That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

 

The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the importance of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.

This past week, in the wake of the prosecutor’s decision to charge the six officers and hold them accountable for Gray’s death, that anger broke like a fever and transformed into relief and joy. People were literally dancing in the streets in Baltimore. This is what it feels like to know that the right thing is finally being done, that justice is being served equally.

While it is absolutely true that we are interconnected, it is equally true that we have very different experiences of being in the world. Social institutions like the economy and the criminal justice system are structured to support or exploit us, depending on our membership in various groups (gender, race, economic class, age, and more). Skillfulness comes from recognizing and honoring these differences. Skillfulness comes from recognizing that have no idea what it is like to be in another person’s shoes, rather than proclaiming we know exactly what they are going through (and therefore how they should act).

For those of us who are white, this means practicing with what it means to witness another’s anger related to racism. The very nature of racism often renders it invisible to white people, but it is extremely painful for people of color on many levels – including emotional, physical, and financial.

This is the “paradox of empathy,” as Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury explains it: “…an erosion of empathy [is] more than a failure to appreciate the intensity of another’s experience. It could just as easily be the overeager appropriation of another’s experience and the denial of its difference and its contingency.” In other words, to quote Edith Stein, “The empathic position is one in which we know that we are not the other.”

It occurs to me that collective healing from social diseases such as racism is really the same process as what our personal relationships need go through in order to be whole. Healing happens when we can honestly share the full spectrum of our emotional truths with each other, including (and especially) the more difficult ones such as anger. And this requires humility, courageous conversations, accountability, forgiveness, and above all, love. That is how we move through to a deeper level of intimacy and respect for one other.

RESOURCE LIST

I want to share some resources for responding to both Nepal and Baltimore. Please let me know if you have other ways to respond – let’s create a circle of beneficent karma.

Nepal:

· Upaya Zen Center and Roshi Joan Halifax have been doing work in Nepal since 1980. Upaya has set up a special relief fund to support the Nepalese people. As Roshi Joan writes, “The road to recovery in Nepal will be very long and difficult. Upaya is committed to our many friends there. We have a firm responsibility to provide what we can and to help for as long as is needed.”

· Pema Chodron writes, “Please join me and many others in doing regular tonglen practice for those that have lost their lives, those that have lost loved ones, those that are injured, those that are having to live in discomfort and fear to survive and also to those that are there to help.” You can watch this video of Pema offering instruction on tonglen practice.

Baltimore:

· Over the last two weeks, hundreds of Baltimore residents–many of whom were taking part in nonviolent direct actions–have been arrested and detained, with bails often being set at very high amounts. Your contribution to this fund will help ensure they have access to proper legal representation.

· If you are white, one of the most important things you can do right now is take time to learn more about how racism works. Here are some excellent resources:

• “White Awake” is an open source curriculum that utilizes mindfulness in the development of white racial awareness.
• Franchesca Ramsey has a great short video on 5 Tips For Being an Ally.
• If you’re up for an intellectual tour de force, check out this article, “White America’s Racial Illiteracy” by Dr. Robin DiAngelo.

___________

I’d love to stay in touch with you through my mailing list! When you sign up, you’ll receive my monthly e-letter with reflections on life and liberation, as well as “9 Keys to a Liberated Life.”