Hatred never ceases by hatred

 

I was just listening to a podcast  talk by Jack Kornfield, a US Buddhist teacher and former monk. In the talk Jack tells the story of working in a Cambodian refugee camp with his teacher Maha Ghosananda.  Maha Ghosananda was a Buddhist monk who became known as Cambodia's Gandhi for his work to bring peace to Cambodia after the Pol Pot holocaust that  decimated its population. 

 

I transcribed the story becuase I thought it was so profound. Here is is as Jack tells it.

 

"Mahagosanada got permission from the UNHCR to open this little Buddhist temple in the centre of the camp - which was 50,000 people in these little huts, without hardly any water or shade. And when the Khmer Rouge found out that the temple was being opened they let it be known that anyone who went to the opening would be killed when they returned to Cambodia.

 

So, it wasn't clear whether people would come at all.  But he was this incredibly good hearted and loving monk.  He was spared being killed - most of his family and monastery were killed - because he was in Thailand for the worst of it.

 

So he went around ringing this bell once the bamboo temple was made, and in the central square 25,000 people came. Half the camp showed up.  And he sat there, in this dusty camp, looking out over the faces of these people, the faces of people in trauma. There would be one uncle with 2 nieces who had survived, a grandma with 2 grandchildren.  Everone had lost family members, temples burnt, schools destroyed. 

 

And I thought, 'What is he going to say to these people who have lost so much?' And he put his hands together and just began to chant, sounds in  Cambobdian and Sankskrit that they hadn't heard for 8 years.  In this beutiful chanting tone he began to chant one verse from the Dhammapada  which says, 'Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and enternal law.' 

 

And after a while 25,000 people were singing, 'Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and enternal law.'  

 

And it was as if he was speaking a truth that was even bigger than their sorrows.  Yes, there's destruction, yes, there's killing and still, there's no end to this without love."

 

 

 

A Wise Break

Today's post is about a particular aspect of the teachings of  Buddhist meditation writer and teacher Tara Brach. 

One of the themes of Tara's teaching is that, whilst mindfulness is an essential component of meditation practice, sometimes we're not quite ready to be mindful of very difficult feelings and sensations. She teaches that it's important that we build up a field of compassion, and caring, before attempting to be fully mindful of strong emotions such as fear, terror, despair, or grief. 

I've heard her say in interviews that when meditation practice first became popular in the West about 40 years ago, people were often taught they had to just sit with whatever 'came up' in meditation - and that this would be of benefit eventually.  She said that slowly, teachers in the West realised that these instructions were actually exacerbating some people's suffering. 

In an interview with Sounds True, Tara said:

"When there has been trauma, a lot of meditations cause people to get re-traumatized. Especially in the early days, I would say in all of the Buddhist traditions, people would come and the instructions would be kind of Rumi's 'Guest House': open the doors and invite in all the demons and bring mindfulness.

If there is a lot of trauma and you open the door to it, and you don't have the resilience and the space and the stability, you are just rerunning the same trauma through -  and without anything added it is re-traumatizing.

So that was the kind of innocent but ignorant beginnings of meditation in this country. Not recognizing that some people with trauma would not benefit by directly going into mindfulness practice. And instead they needed more building affect tolerance, or building a capacity of 'be with.'"

Here's a quote from a podcast Tara gave called Awakening to the Sacred. I think this quote is particularly relevant to those of us with physical pain.

"I want to again say, that sometimes it’s too much to stay.  There’s nothing noble about strong-arming ourselves; to steal ourselves to endure.  It’s just not wise. 
 
So there’s kind of a compassion that knows, OK, be with what’s here, but that sometimes it’s just too much and we’re really thrown off balance by it.  So we take a break.
 
A wise break is just very mindfully saying ‘OK, it’s too much right now,’ and walking or having tea, or taking the Aspirin if we need it – just  in some way being with ourselves in a way that gives us relief."

I'd love to hear your insights and opinions on this topic.  When is it good to take a break?  How have you learnt to sit with pain?  It's a fascinating aspect of meditation practice!

To finish, a beautiful photograph from an Etsy store (my latest addiction!) called Something Betsy.  I found this little store yesterday and asked Betsy if I could put a few of her photos into my blog posts. She has a group of photos called the 'Pathways Series' - which I thought was very appropriate for a meditation blog!

Here's one taken in Alaska, called 'Where We Were.'