Weekly Soul: Week 46 - Love and Understanding (Craigie)
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie:
-46-
Understanding
and love are not two things, but just one. When you understand, you cannot help
but love. You cannot get angry. To develop understanding, you have to practice
looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand,
you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the
suffering of people.
Thich Nhat Hanh
As a young African-American boy growing up
in predominantly white Boston suburb, Daryl Davis knew little of racism. As he
moved along into his middle school years, though, incidents began to come up
that showed him the dark reality of racial discrimination even in his
comfortable northern community. His experiences prompted a life-long question,
“How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”
As an adult, Davis became a professional
musician, performing boogie woogie and rock-and-roll piano around the United
States and internationally. His musical life provided an unforeseen opportunity
to begin to address his question.
In a break during a set in Baltimore, a
white man approached him, saying that he had never heard a black man “play like
Jerry Lee Lewis” and offering to buy him a drink. They sat down together,
talking about music, and the white man observed that this was the first time
he’d had a real conversation with a black man. “Why,” Davis asked? Because the
white man was the grand dragon of the Maryland Ku Klux Klan!
This set in motion a remarkable odyssey
for Davis into the world of the KKK. From the Maryland man, he obtained contact
information for Roger Kelly, then the Imperial Wizard, the national leader, of
the KKK, and set up a meeting with him. Unaware that Davis was black, Kelly
arrived with an armed bodyguard, and he and Davis began an awkward and
tentative conversation. Initially, it was largely one-sided, with Davis asking
Kelly about his beliefs and experiences and listening attentively to the
answers. Gradually, in this and later meetings, it became more two-sided, with
Kelly asking Davis about his experiences, as well. They met, at first, at
neutral sites. Then, Davis invited Kelly to his home. Eventually, Kelly invited
Davis to his home. At Kelly’s invitation, Davis attended KKK rallies, abhorring
the values they represented but respectfully curious about what would make
people choose such a path. Both Kelly and Davis being prominent in their own
rights, CNN sent a crew to investigate. Why would a black man go to a KKK rally?
As you may expect, this made for head-shaking national news.
Kelly and Davis came to respect each
other. They considered each other to be friends. Coming to know Davis, Kelly’s
views about African-Americans softened, and he ultimately chose to leave the
Klan, giving Davis his KKK robe as a token of respect and gratitude.
To date, over 200 people have left the KKK
because of Davis’ influence, and he has assembled a warehouse worth of Klan
robes as a testament to their changed lives. A substantial relief of suffering,
indeed! Along with his musical gigs, Davis now speaks widely about
understanding and transformation.
The work of civility is fueled by
compassion. Compassion often grows as we take some tentative steps to
understand other people. Who is this person? What is it like to be them? What
life experiences have brought them to where they are? Where is there a back
story of suffering? Understanding, often, softens our hearts about the people
we find difficult.
I remember supervising a resident
physician in our primary care practice who was caring for a middle-aged
diabetic woman. She would come in month after month, grossly overweight, her
blood sugars far out of control. She didn’t exercise. She had a terrible diet. Medically,
nothing changed. The resident would roll his eyes when he saw her listed on his
schedule.
We talked about exploring the back story
of this person’s life. Who is she? What is it like to live her life? It turned
out that she was absolutely devoted to caring for two little grandchildren who
had been largely abandoned by their parents. As she spoke about this, you could
see a very different spirit in her eyes. The resident’s heart—as mine—softened,
and he was able to form a more positive, collaborative relationship with his
patient going forward.
The challenge with people we find
difficult is that it is easy and tempting to rest in the story that’s on the
surface: the annoying behavior, the outlandish public positions. The temptation
is to see people as adversaries—sometimes, as enemies—who are fundamentally and
irrevocably flawed. But other people are the way they are for reasons, and
looking for the back story of those reasons can make for a step toward
civility. “When you are calm, when you are lucid,” Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to
say, “you will see that the other person is a victim of confusion, of hate, of
violence transmitted by society, by parents, by friends, by the environment.” When
you see that, your heart softens.
Organizational consultant Margaret
Wheatley says it well, quoting the proverb that “You can’t hate anyone whose
story you know.”
Reflection
- My phrase that you have now
read several times is “soften your heart.” Roger Kelly’s view of Daryl
Davis was softened as was Davis’ view of Kelly and as was the resident’s
view of his diabetic patient. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of love. Eyes of
compassion help you to understand other people, and understanding nurtures
love. What do you think about this?
- Thich Nhat Hanh also
pronounces a remarkable end point. Civility is fine. Respectful dialogue
is fine. Not returning hate for hate is fine. All of these end points
surely move us toward a more peaceful and grace-filled world. But his end
point is different: the relief of someone else’s suffering. This, he
suggests, is both an honorable way to live your life and a perspective
that frees you from the anguish of needing interpersonal outcomes that
work in your own self-interest. Can you imagine yourself approaching
difficult people with the hope to relieve their suffering? Have you done
this?
- Can you really not hate anyone
whose story you know?
- In the week to come, choose
someone whom you find difficult. With eyes of compassion, look for the
back story. What can you find out about the larger picture of this
person’s life? What experiences may they have had that brought them to
where they are? Where, perhaps, is there suffering? Might this exploration
change in some way how you feel about them?
Author
Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926) is a Vietnamese
monk, scholar, peace activist, and, well… enlightened soul. Often referred to
in Vietnam as Thầy, (“teacher,” “master”), he was born in the central
region of what was then French Indochina and followed a path of Buddhist
education from an early age. He was ordained as a monk in 1951 and was largely
devoted in the 1950s in the movement to nurture Vietnamese Buddhism and in the
outreach to develop rural infrastructure such as schools and health clinics.
As the Vietnam War approached, Nhat Hanh
charted a course that combined personal spiritual discipline with service to
people who were being displaced by the fighting. He described this as “Engaged
Buddhism,” the bringing-together of inner transformation and social activism.
In the 1960s, Nhat Hanh traveled between
his native Vietnam and the United States, teaching at Princeton and Columbia,
founding Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon, and speaking on behalf of
non-violent peace initiatives. In a 1966 trip to the United States, he met
Martin Luther King, Jr. and urged him to publicly declare opposition to the
war. Growing out of this relationship, King delivered his sermon, Beyond
Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, at the Riverside Church in New York City.
Later that year, King publicly announced that he had nominated Nhat Hanh for
the Nobel Peace Prize. Such a public pronouncement was contrary to the protocol
of Nobel prizes, and no peace prize was awarded that year.
Nhat Hanh continued his activism as chair
of the Vietnamese Buddhist peace delegation to the Paris peace talks. As a
result of his peace initiatives, both North and South Vietnam denied him
permission to return to his home country, ultimately resulting in an exile of
39 years.
In the years since the war, Nhat Hanh has
had an active life of teaching and writing. He has published over 100 books,
the majority of them in English. In 1982, he founded Plum Village in southwest
France, a community that has become the largest Buddhist monastery in the West
and has hosted tens of thousands of seekers after the art of mindful and
peaceful living. He has also established monasteries in the United States,
Europe and around the world, and spoken widely to governmental and
non-governmental organizations about ending the cycles of violence, war, and
global warming.
When we in the United States think of Nhat
Hanh, what often comes to mind is his emphasis on mindfulness. Contrary to the
narrow way in which mindfulness is sometimes understood, it is important to
underscore Nhat Hanh’s perspective that mindfulness is not fundamentally a tool
or technique that would be used to procure something else, be it health,
serenity or material success. Rather, his view is that mindfulness extends to
the whole of one’s life, in peaceful and harmonious relationships with oneself,
with others, and with the natural world.
The Thich Nhat Hanh quotation comes from Being
Peace (Parallax, 2005). Margaret Wheatley’s reference to the proverb about
hate comes from her book, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to
Restore Hope to the Future (Berrett-Koehler, 2009).
Book Description:
Keywords:
meditation; reflection; inspiration; miracles; aliveness; purpose; laughter; joy; presence; mindfulness; activism; acceptance; gratitude; forgiveness; creativity; civility; hope; affirmation; wholeness; well-being; mental health; personal growth; transformation; inner peace; personal reflection; joy; joyful living; inspirational quotes; inspirational commentary
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