HEALING THE BROKEN PLACES
The child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to feel its warmth.
– African proverb
In a culture conditioned to a linear understanding of causes and conditions we assign blame to a problem, focusing our ire on the object of blame. In extreme cases, we might describe a perpetrator as inhuman, animalistic, or assign them superhuman attributes such as being “pure evil” or “monstrous.” In any case, we are protected from implicating ourselves in the problem.
When emotions run high, the fear mind takes over and latches onto simple answers. And naturally, we believe we are right. This feeling of righteousness wants retribution and dismisses the inclusion of societal and familial issues as pandering snowflakery. The Buddha spoke of Karma as the law of cause and effect. He also spoke of the interdependence of every event to all else. Despite conditioned tendencies toward black and white binaries, the Buddha saw that the causes of any event are myriad and nuanced. This would seem frustrating to the raging defensive mind latching onto rightandwrong. But a reactive mind is generally devoid of nuance or compassion. Compassion doesn’t mean kindness to those who’ve caused harm. It means understanding those who cause harm.
When we assign blame, we are forcing reality into a binary. A binary which has ourselves and our value systems as the prime arbiter. This is good and evil from the way we see it. And the angrier we become the narrower our focus. This might be a factor in why people of color are incarcerated at higher rates than whites in our predominantly white culture. When we are seeing it our way, what of those who don’t conform? But is this willed ignorance only creating time bombs? What are we missing when we push some aside? And are those shadowed voices so needing to be heard that they will grow in ire until they erupt in violence? The Buddhist teachings on compassion are unequivocal in their directives that we see beyond our parochial beliefs and begin to understand others. Are we able to step back and see those we demonize? Only recently, a court found the parents of a son accused of gun violence as culpable. Was this a groundbreaking step in widening perspective or was it just shifting the binary? Looking at the home, looking at the school, looking at the community and looking at the gun communities and legislation tied to the influence of economic pressure are all ways that violence is interconnected. So, as the Buddha taught, Karma is complicated. Then how do we manage the overwhelming preponderance of information that is karmic cause and condition?
What can we do?
Blame is not doing. Nor are platitudes. Nor are promises. How do we begin right here right now? We all have a child, either in our family or in our heart, who needs care and support. But are we listening? Or are we shunting the child aside as we are consumed by our busy lives? Are we in fact ashamed of the child? Are we embarrassed by the snowflakery of caring for an inner child? All too often in our society and our heart we are pushing the children away. Ignoring the most potent and important part of the village. In many indigenous cultures, villages cared for their children. This not only created homecare for stressed parents, but also allowed a wider perspective for the child to grow. This wider perspective also helped to moderate any neurosis the caregiver might pass on the child. A village based on community is self-healing and co-supportive. In this way the child can grow with freedom to become healthy versions of themselves, not reactive copies of a copy of their parents. In some cultures, criminals and those with mental illness were taken into counsel with the elders of the community. This is a healing circle. The view is that connection is healing and isolation, whether by social ostracism or mental evasion, encourages infirmity. The places we hide in our mind may be protective. But they are also places we fail to grow. They are the burning children of our hearts waiting to be heard, held, and understood.
A view of compassion may be that we have the capacity to be our own village. And maybe we can extend our view outward and see others as ourselves. We are all hurting and unheard. Maybe by awareness we can begin to see and heal the places within ourselves that are keeping us in darkness. And maybe we can learn to give expression to the wounded children that so desperately need our love. One way to illuminate the darkness is to burn the village. Another way is to touch the heart and allow that child to be accepted as they are before that happens. Perhaps the flames of anger can be softened into the warmth of compassion.
Compassion can be seen as the transformation of hatred into empathy. We don’t have to fear the flames. We can hold them and allow their rage to soften into warmth.
The picture is from photo sessions for the album WAR by U2.
Acknowledging how we are actually feeling is an important step in our fresh start. “I’m still feeling guilty”, “I’m still angry”. Felt senses often remain, like a veil over our next moment. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we sometimes wake in the morning with echoes of our night’s dreaming like a cloak around us. Sometimes we don’t remember the details of the dream, but the feeling remains. Maybe this points to something peculiar in our daily life. The story is often ephemeral, while the feelings are more tangible. This experience is the opposite of our conventional approach where we believe thoughts and ignore our feelings. We attach to our version of events while diminishing or ignoring how we feel. But our version of events relies on thoughts. And thoughts are notoriously unreliable.
I’m writing on the day set aside to commemorate the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King, which this year falls on his actual birthdate, Jan 15. To many, it marks a time to reflect on our lives and the contribution to peace, equality and understanding we may be making. It is also a day of remembrance of a fellow human who took on the superhuman task of changing the mind of the world in the face of great opposition.
Pema Chodron once said, the Buddha was someone who walked out the door, and just kept walking. HIs life stands as a testament of liberation from economic, spiritual or emotional encumberments. Many people interpret this to mean that attachments are bad, and that we should let go of everything at all cost. But while renunciation is the foot of meditation, once we have loosened our grip on things, the path to liberation continues back to service to our world. What about our families, friends and communities? And what of the Buddha’s own family? Were they actually smiling
But it is important to remember the doctrine of Basic Goodness. If we are able to see the goodness in anything, we can develop the ability to understand it. Attachment is the same energy, in essence, as mindfulness. The word for mindfulness 
We have funny glasses and lipstick stains and a raging headache. Even I, who have been clean and sober for several years, are working off a sugar and carb rush from gorging on bad food. Why? To prove I’m happy. Sometimes my life feels like a series of emotional selfies trying to convince myself of something. And so we begin the new year already buried in the past. We have grand resolutions, so inspiring today that we’ll maybe forget them in a week. In my drinking days, I would crumble the life around me, just to see myself build it back. I had a friend who told me I was simultaneously anal expulsive and anal retentive. Clean it up and tear it down. Clean it up and tear it down. And part of this crazy cycle were the outsized resolutions I would make. Inspirations that became obligations, forgotten soon enough that would be resurrected next year. We all wish for world peace.
these experiences are very ordinary. Maybe we have glimpses of the truth beyond truth all the time. But maybe we fail to recognize these opening into the profound as we scurry from place to place to place. Our earth evolved uniquely to host conscious life, so it is quite rare and precious. It is our home and the incubator that gave birth to a consciousness that can glimpse itself and the possibility beyond itself. Perhaps, it is through human eyes that the universe sees itself. Perhaps by seeing ourselves, we can see the universe.
A slow uncovering of the wounds that bind us, is an apt description of the path of compassion. Understanding and transforming our pain is a common motivator for the path. Many of us came to the path because we were in pain. There is nothing like a broken heart to introduce us to meditation. But once that heart has mended, or once we get tired of that broken song, what is it that prompts us to continue on the path?
So how can we help anyone, when we ourselves are wounded? We talk about “opening the heart”. But what does that mean? Usually, this statement evokes feelings of empathy, communication, and kindness. But doesn’t opening the heart also release the pain that we have been protecting and the suffering we are protecting ourselves against? When we began the path our wounds were the source of antagonism and aggression. In an attempt to protect ourselves from a future projection of past violence we struck out against actual or imagined danger. However, it may be that these wounds are also the source of empathy, communication, and kindness. The “Lion’s Roar” may be that the wounds we guard in embarrassed secrecy may be our gateway to compassion. When we have worked the path of self-discovery, we get what it is to be human. And because of this, we understand what humans need. Opening the heart is simply relaxing the protective tension with which we gird ourselves. As this cocoon is protecting us from real, imagined or remembered pain, we must respect it. Opening the heart is not about aggression at all. Opening the heart is acceptance and release.
Pema Chodron speaks of suffering as having created a wound in our heart. All of us have those wounds. Pema suggests that we cover the wound to protect it, as we would a physical wound. However, with a physical wound we remove the bandaid for it to heal under the sun. But emotional wounds often remain covered, and so healing is compromised. We become embarrassed of the wounds, somehow believing we are the only ones. Because they don’t heal in the shadows, the wound becomes sensitive to touch. We are constantly bumping into the wound, and flincing through life trying to protect ourselves from the pain. This creates more suffering. Yet, the saddest part of this is how we are denying the very thing that makes us unique. No one notices perfect trees in the forest. We notice the trees that are gnarled and curled from lightning, bent by wind or darkened by fire. These trees have character. And our pain gives us character. Lightning struck trees don’t feel embarrassed about themselves. Nor do three legged dogs. Nor do blues musicians, or poets as they express their pain. Is there a form of life on earth that judges itself as much as humans do? There is a song by The Big Moon that goes “trouble doesn’t last forever. The trouble is that memories do.” 
acknowledge and hold our fears, rather than be controlled by them. The cradle of loving kindness is the gentle firmness of the body opening to the experience of fear. Rather than constricting our feelings in a body of tension, we are holding our fear with openness.
On the other hand, should we STOP and FEEL into our present experience rather than be driven by fear, we can acknowledge and hold it with open arms.
deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.
A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.
One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet. The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze. When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond. 
actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present. Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.