A time for anger and fear????

I was walking in Paris on a lovely Sunday morning. This was several years ago. It was my last day in Europe and would be heading home later in the day. So, up early, coffee and croissant consumed, I wandered off aimlessly. I found myself approaching a large number of police standing around and sitting on buses. There was nothing urgent about their presence. As I wandered along a long street, I suddenly noticed groups protesting at both ends. One was pro-Paleistenian and the other pro-Israel.  They suddenly charged at each other and I found myself taking refuge in a doorway while they ran at each other. It was all over in about 2 minutes as the police suddenly stood between the groups. No violence but lots of yelling and placard waving.

I thought about that moment as I recently attended the women's march here in Calgary a couple of weeks ago. Chanting, singling, speeches and walking -- including walking past a few people with signs support Donald Trump's presidency. No violence, no yelling at the Trump supporters.

This has caused me to reflect upon the culture of dissent, violence, fear mongering and stigmatization that has become part of the daily discourse. Politics has become so much about fearing the "other" who is different in some way. More and more we are being told to fear people. In my travels, while I do pay attention to risks that exist (including here in Calgary).  The politics of hate, whether from the alt-right or the alt-left are designed to create division rather than seek for what brings us together. They are also requiring conformity to a specific ideology.

Clearly, I would be more left leaning in my views but I have met people from more right leaning who are needed contributors to our society. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

Meditation is a moment to connect ourselves to the universality of human emotion and needs - respect, love, belonging, caring, surviving.  It is the place of humanity in connection rather than separation. Yes, there are some very harmful people (I have met many) but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Yes, there are countries where a lot of atrocities occur but in them are people seeking the same human needs as the rest of us. Meditation is truly a way to connect to the place of the peaceful warrior.

Inside

Tears block my external vision
I can only sit within self
It's the only vision available
I see what I need
I reach past the scars and scabs
of past trauma

The marks of past hurts stare back
Anger has widened the injuries
Fear has deepened them
Without soothing they bleed
Oozing the source of despair

Then I am held
The love comes to me
The moment of mattering arises
Touch heals
Connection, oh how I need you
This moment where my existence
Is real and safe

I find the space inside
The one I know where truth exists
Here I can receive compassion
Reach out to another
Close the journey into pain
and out to love

There I am held, safe

© Peter Choate, 2017

Trump and meditation

The title of this post may immediately seem a contradiction. As I was meditating this morning, though, it is evident that more of this connection is needed. We are seeing growing passions, pro and con, following the American election. In some sense, we are seeing a nation divided.

An editorial on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) this morning talks of similar divides in Europe. We have seen Brexit and there are elections coming up in Germany, Austria, France and a referendum in Italy. There is much foment about.

Being politically aware and engaged is a good thing. It is also the source of much emotional upset within self and within and between groups. Without meditation and contemplation, we increasingly become impulsively driven by the disagreements and divisions. We begin to lose our way to reasoned intervention failing instead to the kinds of behaviours that lead to further division.

There is no question we need to protect all peoples regardless of race, gender, sexual identity, health status, economic position. Here is Canada, we face a particularly powerful moment as we, as a collective nation, must address our own history of violent, oppressive racism. The results of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission call us to action to repair and redress the history. Canadians must be careful to not call out other nations if ignoring or failing to act on its own challenges.

Meditation grounds us. It affords us the opportunity to see peace within and to find our place in the broader discussion of society. What seemed such a good idea, after meditation and reflection, may not seem so. Rather, the way may be clearer as we just sit with our emotions and allow pathways to evolve.

Society is in desperate need of meditation based reflection, thought and conversation. We are awash in rhetoric, anger, revenge and impulsivity. Ask what personal price you will pay if anger, revenge, hatred or despair become your internal dialogue. Politics today is inviting this. Engaging it is not without real payment required. How can you engage in a way that adds without destroying? How can you engage without internal harm? Where are the points of action that will make true change possible even if at a very local level? How will you treat the person who today is afraid of their place in society? Finding answers from within to those sorts of questions may be where your true power lies. Falling for the political rhetoric may instead bring internal crazy making.

I sit
I am
I be

I see my place
Here and
Everywhere

I am a force
But not alone
And not silent

I add to the direction
Of safety and welcome
Bringing together

Division hurts
Divide destroys
Understanding is hard

Listening
Thinking
Including

© Peter Choate, 2016

A lesson in fragility and compassion

I walked into the village. It was a small one in rural India that consisted of maybe a dozen blocks. I suspected there were a few hundred people living here. Although, to be honest, I couldn't really tell where one village ended and another began. There seemed something of a no man's land between villages that belong to, well, I'm not sure. The borders were invisible.

I would suggest to someone that they lived in one village but they would look at me, do the famous Indian head bob, and tell me no, they lived in the other village.

Life in the villages had a rhythm, or so it seemed to me. As I travelled along the tar road between villages, I could count on certain people being in certain places. The transient images were such things as the goat herder moving her charges along. Even the cows had a pattern. I would anticipate meeting them at certain spots depending upon the time of day.

In the village, the lady who sold me gas in a water bottled attended her duties, while the chai merchant across the street waited for my arrival. I no longer placed an order, he just made it. He would bring me the chai along with raw sugar called jaggery.

Elsewhere would be the lady who sold fish, although I never did learn where the fish came from as she seemed to lack any form of transport and we were a few kilometres from the ocean. No matter, as each day she was there with a small collection of fresh fish.

As part of the daily landscape were the dogs, mostly strays. Many suffered meagre existences and were infected with mange, which is a parasitic skin disorder. It is highly treatable but often is not as the dogs really belong to nobody in many cases. During one of my trips to India, a veterinarian was staying at the guest house. He quietly treated a few dogs but there are so many.

The dogs were mostly friendly. There were several that would join me on my morning walks for specific parts of the journey. One would reach the end of his territory and another would take up the pace.

There are very few cats, although I did make friends with one who would share a piece of pizza with me.

To be in India seems to demand that you reflect on big ideas - the meaning of life, the role of spirit, your place in the universe - those kinds of questions. I think it must be a requirement of the visa needed to enter the country.  Or so it seems.

So I was in that mindset when I was forced to look at fragility and compassion. On this day, I was in the chai shop when a dog was run over. There was no hope really as there was no veterinary care to be had. As the dog scampered away the owner of the chai stall got a bucket and washed away the blood. I looked across the street where the dog had gone to see one of the disabled ladies who hung around the street. There, I saw the dog collapsed beside her. She was gently stroking the dying dog. He would die there.

The pace of the village did not change. Only that truly gentle exchange between the lady and the dog but it was a one act play mostly unobserved. It was the women comforting an old friend in the solitude of her own private moment on the side of the road. I wondered who would show her that compassion. Indeed, who can any of us count on? Have you asked?

This story came back to me when I was listening to a podcast where Eli Wiesel was being interviewed. He was speaking of forgiveness. I heard him indicate that forgiveness belongs to the aggrieved. They must decide to offer it. So it is with compassion. Both compassion and forgiveness belong to the giver. They are gifts to be given.

Can we offer compassion to those who have caused us pain? Even if forgiveness is not to be offered can we do compassion? Can we give understanding from within our own pain? To do so is about the love we are able to offer ourselves. We step away from the toxicity of anger soothing the internal voice with compassion for the perpetrator of our harm. 

I look into my pain

You caused it

It was you who thrust the sword

Pierced me

It was you who shattered 

My self, My Ego, My being

I so wanted relatliation

To have you feel the pain

That I had felt

I so wanted revenge 

I pondered it, I planned it, I imagined it

But then I looked into your eyes

And saw your soul

Laid bare in your vulnerability 

So empty, So betrayed, So barren, So desperate 

I could no longer feel the anger

For I saw your hurt

From ravages long ago in a childhood

So hurtful, so absent of love, so lonely

I then saw your fragility

How your violence covered your emptiness

And kept hidden your fear of

Being found, Being known, Being your true self

All that was left was compassion

For you had never known love

How could there be anger when you sat 

Bloodied, forlorn and ignored 

© Peter Choate, 2016

Living with Fear

Many religious / spiritual writers are speaking about the presence of fear in our society. There are many examples with the news each day bringing us new stories. But the real relationship with fear for many of us is not the media but the internal relationship with ourselves.

In an interview, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert noted that she should live life with curiosity, not fear. I was fascinated by her comment as so many of us wander through life with fear as the dominant emotion. It comes in many different presentations:

• I'm not really competent at what I do and people will find out
• I'm not pretty enough and people will know that
• I'm not smart enough and I'll look stupid
• I'm not fit enough and the person next to me will lift heavier
• My job isn't good enough and people will put me down
• I'm too fat; too thin; too short; too tall
• I'm really a fake and someone will find out anytime

Fear is driven into us very early in life. It starts with childhood competition. It's not enough to be a good friend, have fun and just enjoy play. Rather, children are introduced to being better than very early on. The problem with that, if the inbred fear that there will always be someone better than you. For many children, there always is someone better but then comes the fear of how many people will be better and how can I be better than someone else. The education writer Alfie Kohn has shown that this is the seed of bullying, fear, failure.

In meditation, we  can begin to feel our own fear and observe it. It is a companion that many of us walk with but try to ignore or even deny its existence. When we just observe it, we can see how our decisions are driven by fear. By narrowing fear down to this moment, we have only the need to decide what to do with the fear now. Or as the Buddhist writer Pema Chodron notes, we can avoid Biting the Hook.

Oh fear, how do I come to know you

Wherever I go, there you are

I cannot escape you

But why should I care

Your are there when I decide

I wish you to go

But you insist that we together will reside

I tell you I wish it were not so

Oh fear, I see you as my enemy

You tell me I am your friend

Why can you not give me clemency

So to you I will not have to bend

© Peter Choate 2016