How meditation helps us meet the suffering of the world
From time to time I prepare a talk for an online meditation session, and then receive an email which makes me put it to one side.
Yesterday was one of those days. I received an email from a young woman saying she’s struggling with the amount of suffering in the world at the moment, and asking about how she could meet these feelings. So today, I’d like to say a few things about peace, and about meeting our feelings.
‘To be a peacemaker,’ says the American peace activist Fr John Dear, ‘means, first of all, becoming a person of contemplative prayer and active nonviolence. When the nonviolent Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, he invites us to be as nonviolent as him and like him, to spend intimate time each day with the God of peace that we might be disarmed to go forth into the world of war and spread God’s peace through universal love and nonviolent action.’ (1)
Arrested and imprisoned over 80 times for nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Fr John lives peace – and bears the consequences.
Many of us may feel anxious, angry, overwhelmed by what we are seeing and hearing in the world right now. These are very human responses. When the news feels so saturated with violence and conflict, with the noise of voices glorifying unrestrained power and greed, we need to hear voices of peace that we can learn from.
Let me remind you of some words by two great teachers, one Christian, one Buddhist, who became beacons of peace for others.
Wisdom from Thomas Merton
‘Man is like an alcoholic who knows that drink will destroy him, but who always has a reason for drinking,’ says the Christian monk Thomas Merton. ‘So with war. And the best, most obvious, most incontrovertible reason for war is of course “peace.” The motive for which men are led to fight today is that war is necessary to destroy those who threaten our peace! It should be clear from this that war is, in fact, totally irrational, and that it proceeds to its violent ritual with the chanting of perfect nonsense.’ (2)
‘Peace’, he says, ‘demands the most heroic labour and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.’ (3)
How do we go about this? How can we meet our strong feelings, our emotions?
During the Vietnam War, the great Buddhist teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh would walk slowly and silently through villages devastated by violence, offering his calm presence. One day someone asked him, ‘How can you be peaceful when there is so much suffering around you?’ And he replied, ‘Because if I lose my peace, I can’t help anyone.’
Wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh
In his book, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about how to take care of our strong emotions with meditation:
‘When we are caught up in a strong emotion like fear or anger, we should not stay on the level of the intellect, of our thoughts. Strong emotions are like a storm, and to stand in the middle of a storm is very dangerous. Yet that’s what most of us do when we get upset; we stay out in the storm of our feelings, and they overwhelm us.’
‘We need to ground ourselves, by bringing our attention downward.
‘When you look at a tree during a storm, you see that its branches and leaves are swaying back and forth violently in the strong wind. You have the impression that the tree will not be able to withstand the storm. You are like that when you’re gripped by a strong emotion. Like the tree, you feel vulnerable. You can break at any time.
‘But if you direct your attention down to the trunk of the tree, you see things differently. You see that the tree is solid and deeply rooted in the ground. If you focus your attention on the trunk of the tree, you realize that because the tree is firmly rooted in the soil, it cannot be blown away.’ (4)
Bring your attention down from all that is moving within you and focus on what is still and stable and peaceful. In Christian terms, bring your attention down from the busy activity of the mind to the stillness and peace of the heart. Enter your ‘inner room’ and take refuge there (Matthew 6:6). You will discover that you can withstand the storm and will not be blown away, that you can walk across the waves of strong feelings and emotion (Matthew 14:22-32).
To commit to daily meditation is a radical act. To meditate is to refuse to be governed by the voices of hate and anger in the world, and to align ourselves with peace.
‘If I lose my peace, I can’t help anyone,’ said Thich Nhat Hanh. However small, however imperceptible the effects might seem to us, when we take care of the peace within us, we are also taking care of the world.
Becoming ‘trees of peace’
‘The gentleness of strong people makes them trees of peace,’ wrote the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement. ‘We have massacred the trees under the illusion that they are useful for nothing. And now we realise that without trees the earth is no longer fruitful. This age needs people like trees, filled with a silent peace, rooted at the same time in solid ground and in the open sky.’ (5)
Jesus taught how violence, cruelty and injustice come from within us, (Mark 7:20-21), and that there is work to be done to become aware of the seeds within us that give rise to this. We need to become aware of these seeds and learn to stop feeding them. We need to become aware of the seeds of peace within us, tend to them, help them grow into a life of peace.
If we want to help bring more peace into the world, the work always begins right here, right now. Each of us can contribute to peace in the world through tending to the seeds of peace within ourselves. Each time we meditate, we consent to entering this peace – to living this peace.
‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’
If I may, I would like to read some brief reflections on Jesus’ teaching, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Matthew 5:9):
Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the radiance of divine love
Blessed are those whose presence is an open hand, held out from an open heart, a quiet bridge to our common home.
Blessed are those who bring the gift of silence to the noise of anger and conflict.
Blessed are those who have surrendered the need for control, who allow the Spirit of peace to breathe through them without resistance, and so become the breath of peace for others.
Blessed are those who can listen patiently in the absence of easy answers, who can wait patiently in the darkness of not-knowing.
Blessed are those who gently silence the accusing and judgemental voices by means of their silence.
Blessed are those whose tears of self-acceptance have transformed their fear and anger into the energy of reconciliation.
Blessed are those who have allowed their suffering to become a womb of compassion for others, whose pain has given birth to unconditional love.
Blessed are those whose openness provides a space for all voices on the shared journey of becoming who we are.
Blessed are those who have become so self-forgetful that they no longer have anything to defend, who have lost themselves in God and become like windows of light. (6)
This blog is based on one of the teachings given in a recent online meditation group gathering. You are warmly welcome to join one of our future gatherings.