Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {6}
Medicine: Metta / The Divine Abodes
Table of Contents
~ Preface
2. Indigenous Knowledge: Bhavana
3. Contact: Aim /Attack / Harass
4. Mobility: Bases / Fluidity / Agility
5. Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
6. Medicine: Metta / Divine Abodes
7. Retreat: Encirclement / Escape
8. Diversion: Distraction / Misdirection
9. General Strike: Invisibility / Cessation
10. The Guerrilla Band: Camaraderie / Community
11. Independence: Responsibility/ Self-Retreat
12. Intelligence: Education / Reporting
13. The Revolutionary Spirit: Discipline / Determination / Faith
14. Protracted War: Land Reform / Regular Army / International Support
15. {Afterword} Mindfulness: A Balm or a Bomb for Babylon?
~ CHAPTER 6~
Medicine: Metta / The Divine Abodes
One of the grave problems that confronts the guerrilla fighter is exposure to the accidents of his life, especially to wounds and sicknesses, which are very frequent in guerrilla warfare. The doctor performs a function of extraordinary importance in the guerrilla band, not only in saving lives, in which many times his scientific intervention does not count because of the limited resources available to him; but also in the task of reinforcing the patient morally and making him feel that there is a person near him who is dedicated with all his force to minimizing his pains. He gives the wounded or sick the security of knowing that a person will remain at his side until he is cured or has passed danger.
~Ernesto “Che” Guevara
In a guerrilla campaign, the rebel movement must do its best to acquire advanced medical supplies and at the same time to develop bush-medicine skills to address injuries incurred while out in the field of combat. Fighters are in need of immediate emergency medicine and also the time and space to recuperate after battle. Understanding the need for a guerrilla movement to treat its wounded, the enemy will seek to destroy these facilities and undermine these capabilities as best they can. Because of this, the insurgent forces must learn to camouflage these spaces and create innovative means for treating wounds in the field.
The wounds of war are more than just physical. The mental/emotional pain that arises from violent conflict are difficult to heal for combatants themselves and also the many communities effected by the violence. Unhealed trauma is the source of ongoing and debilitating suffering that has unforeseeable consequences for a society, often for generations. Healing in places of past and ongoing conflict is possible but is difficult and requires powerful commitments to love, patience, courage, and creativity.
The guerrilla yogi is likewise burdened by many layers of woundedness. Life itself is a conflict zone from which we have incurred countless injuries, and it is rare that we have received proper care or treatment for many of them. Our psychic injuries go back generations as we have inherited the burden of unhealed trauma from our lineages who didn’t have the spiritual medicine, or the material conditions under which to apply it, sufficient to the task. The yogi takes this truth as baseline and then is willing to begin the process of healing-through-understanding, an approach that investigates the wounds, increases our sensitivity to old and new injuries, thus doing the work that will prevent our injuries from harming others down the stream of action from us: whether the people we meet the next day or in the generations that follow.
Love is medicine in its own right. It is a mechanism by which we are healed and it is also a salve by which the heart becomes more open and responsive to the medicine of insight. The relationship between love and wisdom is just as important as the relationship between mindfulness and concentration, and likewise requires patience and determination. Just as the forces of the autocratic state will seek out to destroy the medical facilities of the guerrilla fighters, the empire of delusion knows the risk that love plays in the coherence of its dominance. Love is vital and in our struggle to develop it we encounter — indeed, invite — the powerful forces of ignorance that will seek to destroy and undermine it.
The approach to wounds, to trauma, and to healing in the Buddhist sense may not offer the same approach or outcome as many other modalities, but it is vitally important for the guerrilla yogi to understand the function of love, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity — what are known as the divine abodes (brahma vihara) — in relationship to injury and to ultimate liberation.
When the body is wounded, red blood cells swarm to the area, causing heat, swelling, itching and discomfort — inflammation — as the body’s own systems try to mend it. It is often the sensations of this inflammation that we experience as the primary symptoms of the injury. While inflammation is part of the natural healing mechanism of the body, it can be profoundly unpleasant. And chronic inflammation — an “itis” based on persistent injury, infection, or immune disorder — can lead to severe health problems that lead to more profound and debilitating illnesses over time. For this reason, medical interventions commonly try to reduce inflammation — to alleviate the painful symptoms as well as calibrate the healing response of the body.
For the guerrilla yogi, the process is similar. When the mind (citta) is aggrieved, wounded by dukkha, it also experiences a kind of inflammation: heat, swelling, irritation, or discomfort. While natural, it can also lead to a chronic state of mental inflammation — citta-itis if you will — neurosis that undermines our wellbeing by chronically distorting our view of experience. Alongside wisdom (pañña), the four divine abodes (brahma vihara) of lovingkindness (metta), compassion (karuna), appreciative joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha) are the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory bush medicines that we have. Over the course of their long campaign, a guerrilla yogi should of course try to learn standard practices for metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha. But because of the irregular nature of their endeavor, it is imperative that they also learn life-saving techniques for love while injured in the midst of combat — bush metta, as it were.
In the guerrilla army in general, and at bases in particular, there must be a high standard of medical equipment. Besides the services of the doctors, medicines must be procured. Although guerrillas can depend on the enemy for some portion of their medical supplies, they must, in general, depend upon contributions. If Western medicines are not available, local medicines must be made to suffice.
~Mao Zedong
Dukkha is the word that the Buddha used to describe the unsatisfactory nature of existence. It is translated commonly as “suffering,” “pain,” “hardship,” or “stress” and the Buddha broke it down into three distinct categories: dukkha dukkha, anicca dukkha, and sankara dukkha. Dukkha dukkha is being joined with the unpleasant: something painful happens. Anicca dukkha is the hardship that comes from impermanence, from being separated from that which is pleasant. Sankhara dukkha is the dukkha of “formations” and is the most refined and yet basic of these. It can be described as the exhaustion and weariness that come from the constant bombardment of experiences in body and mind, the relentlessness of impingement on the sense-doors. When the mind is sensitized at this level, even the lightest, most pleasant sensation feels oppressive. Whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, each moment of formation is painful because the barrage is overwhelming to the untrained mind.
All of our wounds can be placed within these three frames of dukkha as well as the experience of “not getting what we want.” If met with a perfectly balanced love-and-wisdom-infused mind, a moment of physical pain will still be unpleasant but it will not harm the mind, just as a moment of loss will not harm the mind. But each moment of experience not met with perfect mindfulness wounds the mind, creating agitation that calls for repair. It may sound hyperbolic to say that we are wounded by each moment of fleeting fabrication, of sense experience, but it is true.
Knowing that each discrete moment of experience is like a bullet to the heart, the guerrilla yogi must commit to being a kind of companion to themselves without fail. The sooner and more fully we are able to heal our psychic wounds with our own mastery of love, the less we will be dependent upon external sources — wholesome and unwholesome — on which we cannot always depend or which can get us into deeper difficulties. No one else’s love will ever penetrate as deeply or be as dependable as our own can be if we practice. While we ultimately aspire to bring these brahma vihara capacities of unconditional care and peace equally to all beings in all directions, we must start wisely — appropriate to the strategy of the guerrilla yogi — with the easiest, and only expand when we feel confident in our ability to achieve success in a more challenging environment.
The Brahma Vihara
Lovingkindness (metta) is the baseline of heart-centered practice. It is a feeling of kindness, goodwill, well-wishing, and care toward other beings or ourselves. It is a connection with the worthiness of all beings to be cared for — simply because of their existence. Compassion (karuna) can be thought of as a very similar feeling, but oriented toward the pain in the world. It is the sensation of caring about someone’s suffering, their hardship, or our own. It is a pleasant feeling entirely distinct from grief or remorse. Appreciative Joy (mudita) is this loving quality of heart directed instead toward the joy in the world: for our own happiness or the happiness of others. Equanimity (upekkha) is of a very different quality: it is peace of mind, balance, evenness, stability of mind: a profound acceptance of things as they are. While it may seem like a contradictory emotion to the other three, upekkha is purifying and balancing for them and is purified and balanced by them. Without equanimity love will be distorted, subtly motivated by preference, by a desire to control, by grasping. They are a coherent set of medical treatments designed to encourage and balance the capacity for love and wisdom in the mind.
Traditionally, the brahma vihara are taught as concentration practices. Using this approach, a yogi imagines a person and repeats certain phrases intended to evoke that emotion in relationship to the person and then strengthen that connection to the degree of deep absorption (jhāna). Here is one version of common phrases:
Metta/Lovingkindness
May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm
May you abide in happiness
May you be healthy and strong of body and mind
May you know the deepest peace
Karuna/Compassion
May you be free from suffering
Mudita/Sympathetic Joy — Appreciation
May your happiness and success never end
Upekkha/Equanimity
You are the owner of your actions.
Your happiness and sorrow are dependent upon your actions, not on my wishes for you.
Or, alternatively:
Things are as they are
Typically, a yogi starts these practices with themselves before moving onto to a “benefactor” and then sequentially on to an “easy” person, a “neutral” person, an “enemy” and then “all beings.” This method was derived over centuries of dedicated practitioners experimenting and coming up with formulas that developed the mind in a systematic way.
We are profoundly indebted for the ancient teachers who systematized the standard method. And while it provides a powerful way to practice, the prescription of the tradition can feel stale and dry, forced and inhuman. For most people it takes a long time to find a connection to our metta practice that works consistently but if approached carefully, even those of us that struggle with intense feelings of self-hatred or worthlessness can often find an object of lovingkindness outside of ourselves.
It is also important to know that this is not the way the Buddha himself designed the practice of metta. The Buddha himself tended to express an inclusive radiating of metta in all directions,
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
~ The Buddha, Karaniya Metta Sutta
This wordless radiating or abiding is an important approach to try. It can simply be tried as expressed, “outwards and unbounded,” though it also can be broken down into a shifting focus on various categories of beings in various directions — classically, north, south, east, west, northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest above, and below. Inspired by the Buddha’s own words, it is important for the guerrilla yogi to trying a range of tools — traditional or not — to help them get a felt sense of the experience of metta and slowly develop a deeper, more accessible, stable connection with it.
Much of what holds us back in our practice of metta is our tendency to compare our experience of it to an idea of what we think love should feel like. Often we confuse genuine metta with romantic love or attached or conditional love just as we may confuse karuna with grief or pity, mudita with over-exuberance, or upekkha with indifference — what are called their “near enemies.” But if we accept the possibility that we might not really know what true unconditional love feels like our practice becomes not so much about cultivating metta but about exploring the range of emotions in the spectrum of care, sensitizing to them, fine-tuning our taste for the purity of metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha and learning to find our way back through increasingly difficult emotional terrain. In essence, we must practice like guerrillas. This means starting out by scouting, learning the terrain, exploring with skeptical mind that which we encounter as “love” and beginning small raids of lovingkindness at easy targets before we try to take on an army of hatred.
The brahma vihara are like an oasis in the desert that guerrilla yogi must come to know through and through. Using the acronym SABER (a sword, of course, and “to know,” in Spanish)— we can train to:
1) Scout-out, sniff-out, sensitize to love amid all the other scents in the air;
2) Acquire a taste for them and appreciate their nourishing qualities;
3) Build trusted pathways to them through more and more distant and difficult terrain;
4) Explore the range of defining sensations and obstacles we encounter to clearing these paths;
5) Reside in the abode, relish the experience, rest in the base, restore our faith, and rejuvenate ourselves as we learn to soak in them for longer and longer periods of time.
One guerrilla approach is to practice brahma vihara for the objects at the six-sense doors. We can begin by attuning the attention to receiving sounds coming and going at the ear-door. As we receive them fully, we move away from investigation (dhamma vicaya) and start to notice any tenderness toward these sounds, any sense of caring or gentleness that might be subtly arising on its own. Can we feel a sense of kind-heartedness toward sound objects? If we do — even slightly — we let ourselves get a sense of that flavor of mind and the goodness of it, the sweet flavor of this gentleness. If not, we might try to attune to any idea we have of what we think we are hearing and its worthiness of being cared for, and offer metta to it. If that works, get a sense of that tender feeling — toward the people or animals or other objects at play — and let it sink in. Sometimes we might attune to the area of the heart-center and see if we notice any softening. If we do, feel the goodness of that and let it permeate.
Sometimes it can be of benefit to see if we can receive the sounds themselves as a kind of metta, as a gift that we feel appreciation for. What are the sensations in the mind/heart that arise when we do that? If there is a sense of gratitude, of softening of the heart, go with it. If that means we incline more toward mudita, appreciation, so be it. If the sounds are unpleasant or overwhelming, maybe the quality of compassion. Karuna, is more naturally available. Can we attune to a sense of caring for the strain of hearing on our ears? If we feel any warmth toward the hardship and exhaustive work of the ear itself, let that caring sink into the mind, sink into the ear. That is compassion for a physical sensation. Fine. The guerrilla yogi goes where there is an opening.
If none of this sending or receiving of metta works, perhaps we can try to simply abide in a heart space of metta, of tenderness, of kindness, of care as the sounds arise and pass through that space on their own.
As we feel ready, we can let the attention move into seeing. Even with the eyes closed there are colors, light, dark, motion. Can we send, receive, or abide in metta, karuna, or mudita with visual impressions? How about smelling or tasting? Anywhere we even get the faintest scent of a softening of the heart, we should let ourselves be nourished by that good feeling: in the body and in the heart/mind.
At some point, we can begin to open up to bodily sensations in the same way. Explore sending, receiving, or abiding with metta, karuna, or mudita depending on what naturally links the heart with these emotional sensations. You can move the attention slowly through the body from head to toe, or simply try to attune to the flavor of caring that meets whatever sensation is naturally arising in the body. We may notice more unpleasant sensations and so tilting toward compassion may be more natural. We may notice pleasant sensations in which appreciative joy may be inspired. We can appreciate the burdens of the body, the beauty, all of the hard work that it has done to protect us, the mistreatment it has suffered from others and from our selves. Whatever we do, we must take the time to nourish ourselves with even the faintest scent of kindness, appreciation, or compassion in the heart.
Finally, try to include the mind/heart itself in our field of tender-heartedness: receiving thoughts or knowing with tenderness, appreciation, care. Any time that we actually feel a sense of what might be considered kindness, tenderness, compassion, etc toward the mind, its beauty, its struggles, we can let ourself feel it, get a taste for it, let it permeate our body and mind as much as possible. If we are able to stay connected to the heart feeling for a few moments, there is no need to go back to the original sense-target. Just hang out in kindness. When it dissipates, find the connection again through whatever approach to whichever sense door seemed to be working.
Some people find it more natural to send, others receive, and others, abide. See what might work most naturally for you during any given sitting period. This may very well change over years. We can learn to practice all of the brahma vihara without having to conjure an external being in our minds. The activity of the six-senses is enough. This approach has the additional benefit of helping us integrate with the aliveness of our vipassana practice. It is also a way to trick ourselves into doing metta for “ourselves” — a common obstacle. Take time to explore a relationship to sound that is inclining toward care rather than investigation (which would be our normal vipassana practice). Play around and learn to feel the difference. As we build through all our sense experience, we start to see that nothing need be a distraction and nothing need be outside of our ability to care.
Sometimes all method seems impossible and yet a light general feeling of caring for the beings in front of you, to your right, behind, to your left, above, below, etc helps keep the metta buoyant. Sometimes just tuning into kindness without any object at all works best. When nothing works, let it go. Our mind can simply be like a sail that is open and receptive when the winds of metta begin to blow on their own. You don’t even need to make it happen but can learn to catch the breeze when it begins to rise.
When all this caring feels exhausting and forced, there is an opportunity to settle into equanimity, upekkha. Reminding ourselves things are as they are and letting that dark coolness settle into the heart and mind, we can explore this relief, this letting go, this surrender with all of the six sense experiences as well. Whatever arises in the fields of sound, smell, taste, visual impressions, physical sensations, and mind, we attune to the OKness of it, the lack of resistance or of clinging to it, the lack of ripples it creates and feel the powerful peace at the heart of this relationship to reality. Anytime we feel the peace of upekkha, allowing it to nourish and calm our agitated minds and body.
Just like with insight practice, the guerrilla yogi considers the appropriate spheres, timing, intensity of our engagement with the brahma vihara. No matter what method we use, the brahma vihara practices are purifying and will tend to bring up their opposites: hatred, cruelty, jealousy, overwhelm. If we feel up for this struggle, great, but we don’t need to do it in a way that deepens our sense of self-hatred, hopelessness, or despair.
While the classical methods of brahma vihara practice involve conjuring a mental impression of another being in the mind and fixing this mental quality onto that impression, with the six sense-door brahma vihara we train in a more integrated and versatile approach. Because this method is so similar to our vipassana practice, over time we can learn to interweave the two practices as necessary. While we may still practice vipassana or metta in independent ways, and derive the clear benefits of that, we can also learn to skillfully integrate them into a seamless approach. This may feel like having a general sense of tender-heartedness as we observe the breath in detail. Sometimes it is simply being willing to ride a wave of appreciation that naturally arises in response to an experience and use the buoyancy of that to strengthen the power of our mindfulness. It can also be used as a more precise and malleable tool to use when deeper challenges arise as a way of helping the mind open to relationship with more painful experiences. This versatility will become invaluable as we begin to engage more dynamic experiences in our practice.
We won’t immediately find ourselves abiding in metta all (or even most) of the time. But with determined practice we learn to find our way back to it more and more easily. It slowly becomes a home base, a place of safety and rest for the mind, a natural place of refuge from which we build our campaigns with all objects.
Do what works to get you connected to the brahma vihara. Stabilize it. Over and over. Let the goodness of that feeling of love nourish you and strengthen you. It doesn’t matter where you find it. If you really knew how thirsty you were, you would never turn down the quenching water of love.
Upon the water-cleansed and fragrant ledge I undressed my soiled body, and stepped into the little basin, to taste at last a freshness moving air and water against my tired skin. It was deliciously cool. I lay there quietly, letting the clear, dark red water run over me in a ribald stream, and rub the travel-dirt away. While I was so happy, a grey-bearded, ragged man, with a hewn face of great power and weariness, came slowly along the path till opposite the spring…He heard me and leaned forward, peering with rheumy eyes at this white thing splashing in the hollow beyond the veil of sun-mist. After a long stare he seemed content, and closed his eyes, groaning, ‘The love is from God; and of God; and towards God.’
~ T.E. Lawrence
PURIFICATION OF MOTIVATION
We must integrate brahma vihara into our vipassana practice wherever we can. As long as we keep bringing love in, little by little, our internal system will learn to trust it, learn to trust the tenderness of mind that it brings because it will recognize that only a mind that is softened and prepared by love can actually receive experience in a direct and full way. Over time it can become a primary factor of our motivation to fight but there is no use rushing the process. For many it can take time.
In the patriarchal unfolding of the Dhamma, many lineages have relegated love to the sidelines. But metta is not merely an added benefit to practice, nor is it simply a balm for our wounds: It is an essential ingredient and one of the greatest outcomes. It is almost impossible to imagine a successful liberation strategy without it. In our attempt to cultivate wisdom, love is an essential amendment to the soil. A mind overextended in its commitment to wisdom can become too acidic, subtly suffused with aversion, attacking objects as they arise. A mind cultivated with tenderness leads to the flourishing of tenderness as its fruit.
Love that is not balanced by wisdom can be equally toxic so we must always consider the pH of the mind, and inquire internally about the primary motivation of our practice: Is this a mind that is clear and pliable? Is it tender and strong? Is it receptive to insight? If not, can we, without forcing, invite the mind to soften and see what happens? Balancing the attention with metta is often our first step at purification of motivation of our practice — where we see the powerful tendency to destroy rather than understand, to kill rather than to liberate, that can undermine our practice at its very foundation.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The traditional soldier may fight out of a sense of patriotism and dedication, but they are just as likely to compelled to fight because of social conditions: poverty, alienation, lack of education, family pressure, forced conscription. Even their sense of patriotism may tend to be rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. But the guerrilla fighter, who voluntarily commits their life to a cause and joins the ranks of a liberation struggle against all odds and intends to make the world more just, more equitable, more free — this person is much more likely to be driven by qualities of love, of hope, of moral conviction. It is this way with the guerrilla yogi and we must never lose sight of this principle inspiration.
The path of freedom can feel so much like a war that we can come to believe that aversion must be its primary motivation. We intend to destroy the things we hate. But in this practice it is our hatred of the enemy that gives them strength and it is only when we find our way to love them — because we fully understand them — that we are freed.
If our whole spiritual quest is fueled by aversion, by animosity and bitterness, we will never win and we will never achieve success. If we are trying to get enlightened out of self-hatred, it will be a miserable process that, over time, will be so dispiriting as to pull us off the path. It is not a sustainable source of energy for the long haul and it cannot be the baseline motivator. T.E. Lawrence expressed it beautifully when he said,
Efforts to make our men hate the enemy usually made them hate the fighting.
~ T.E. Lawrence
Lawrence’s fighters recognized that their primary motivation was an aspiration for freedom, something they didn’t ultimately want to kill — or die — for, because “only a living man could enjoy its fruits.” We must think ourselves worthy of these fruits and love ourselves enough to go through immense suffering, clear-eyed and caring, in order to get there.
Metta is a powerful weapon against Mara and must still be used wisely if it is to keep us on the appropriate course — balanced by the wisdom of upekkha. We will be tempted to use love as a way to control — internally and externally. We may find ourselves “breathing into” an area of the body to help loosen the tension like some other practices suggest. We may bring an imagined warm light or love to an area of the body in the same way. These things can work on occasion, but they will not work forever and they will not help the mind be able to process and manage the inevitable pain of life. They will not make the mind stronger. In our practice we will be tempted to use love to try to avoid, remove, or suppress physical pain, but we should be extremely cautious to avoid this. It will lead to a contaminated practice. If you are honest, you will not be able to avoid this tendency at times. But it is through this honesty that we come to purify our motivation, which is at least 90% of the practice.
There is a time and appropriate place for the alleviation of intense physical sensation, when we cannot be mindful of it. In these moments we should simply adjust the posture — motivated by caring tenderness. If we use mental tricks to get rid of pain we will start to confuse vipassana with other modalities that ultimately lack the integrity of our process of liberation. If we are going to soften the pain because we cannot be with it in a skillful way, we should know that we are doing that — turning down the intensity to make the sensations manageable for the mind. The worst thing we can do is convince ourselves that we are being kind to the pain when we are really just trying to get rid of it. In those intense situations, it may be skillful instead to send karuna to the body and the mind: to the mind that is afraid of the pain, that feels overwhelmed by it, the heart that feels hopeless in the face of it. That is entirely different because compassion can meet the emotion face to face and care for it, softening the mind enough, perhaps, to recognize that the physical pain is much less challenging than the emotional pain, and it is there that we can apply our healing balm.
There is a fine line to walk between wanting to heal the body because we care about it and getting derailed because we are terrified of sickness and death. As spiritual seekers we can get a sense of our aspirations for physical health that can be wholesome but can also verge on the unwholesome. We can be inspired to be more healthy, to take care of our bodies with more earnestness. We may try to eat healthier food, eat in more moderate portions, get more exercise. We may benefit from the precepts supporting their restraint from alcohol or other intoxicants. Yogis may have remorse about their physical behavior in the past and are inspired to change in the future. These can be beautiful and essential endeavors, stages of our healing that are profound. But all of these actions can start to build stress rather than love. Because of our deep conditioning, they can be motivated by control, self-hatred, shame much more easily than by kindness and compassion. And we must always stay vigilant to the deeper motivation of any action and try to find the path back to whatever place of caring that birthed it.
As we sensitize to the dynamics of the body and the mind, we begin to notice challenges: physical discomfort in one place or another that we try to fix. We begin to notice the subtle sensations of body and have a sense that we can improve our bodies, our posture, our physiques and soon we can easily make a project out of it that distracts us from our deeper purpose: liberating the mind. We must tend to the body, care for the body, love the body — but not lose sight of the wisdom side of our practice: that all conditioned things are subject to change when those conditions change. All beings will die. We must accept that the body is ultimately hopeless, all the tinkering and adjusting in the world is not going to save it from its inevitable downfall. If it is shame or craving or aversion that is motivating our “care” for the body, it is not worth the mental price we pay.
In this society, people regularly confuse care with worry or with anger. How often do we get the message, explicitly or subliminally, “If we are not angry (or worried) it means we don’t care.” This is a dramatic, troubling, confusion of notions. This perspective is a common defense against the practice of equanimity where people are afraid that with too much peace, they will stop caring. But care and worry are entirely different and donʻt necessarily have anything to do with one another. We may understandably be angry or worried because something we care about — like climate change — has been threatened or harmed. But anger and worry are not the same emotions as love or compassion and it is extremely important to recognize this while still exploring their profound and subtle relationships. It is often helpful to trace back worry or anger to its root cause — care that feels too vulnerable to feel directly. It is the vulnerability of dukkha that leads us to worry or get angry or greedy or deluded — as defenses. We feel the pain of loss, a sense of powerlessness that is too hard to bear, and so the heart keeps us feeling strong through anger. It is not crazy or immoral, but it is not the same thing. If we don’t see this difference we cannot expect to understand and ultimately transform these dynamics.
We know how different it feels to care about someone versus worry about them. When we care about them it is an honest connection and we feel that connection — even if it is in regards to something painful. When we are worried about them, it is usually fear of our own emotional world: our fear our future loss, future shame, etc. It is a contraction away from the other person because it is not actually interested in them. Their own heart knows this, as does their body, and it is never worth trying to trick it.
Without the balancing force of equanimity, we cannot really love cleanly. Love without equanimity is still going to be controlling, still clinging to conditions on some level. Only when the heart can accept the basic truths of reality — impermanence, undependability, essencelessness — does it have the ability to love cleanly, without stickiness or sentimentality. Only when the mind can love fully and connect with the worthiness of all phenomena to be cared for can it bear these truths and encounter a peace that is not indifference. There is an inter-purifying dynamic between love and wisdom and we should not let the paradox be an obstacle. They can only do their difficult work on the heart if we jump in and acknowledge that we need to love and to let go — and that we can do neither honestly without the other.
Be honest about the emotion that arises and track your way back to the care as best you can in order to get to the heart of what is so painful. What course of action you land on will be what it is, but you will have the confidence that the mind will be protected by wisdom and love instead of toxic contraction.
Mental pain is generally much harder to be with and care for than physical pain, but we often confuse the two and cannot see the real cause of our anguish. Metta or karuna for the wanting or not wanting of a physical experience is always appropriate — but it wont make the wanting go away. Only wisdom, understanding, insight can do that. We must have compassion for the mind that is in turmoil but this is a method to help soften the resistance to feeling the pain, not as a means to get rid of it. Care for dukkha is entirely different than trying to use metta to change reality. When we pull back our mind’s projection and see that our real dukkha is not about the object of wanting or aversion, it is about pain of wanting and aversion in our own hearts, we come face to face with a kind of primordial dukkha, a wanting at the center of our being, and see clearly why we choose to avoid it. Metta, Karuna, Mudita, and Upekkha can help us attend to the pain in the heart from a healthier place. As always, we must be careful about the ways we can use the tools of freedom to deepen our bondage. The guerrilla yogi must be more sensitive to this than others.
We have many examples of times throughout history where people have undermined their most sacred principles in their efforts to defend them. Guerrilla wars and wars of liberation are notorious for this. The individual spiritual quest is no different. We take this struggle for liberation seriously. We may consider it to be the deepest aspect of our life’s calling. In that seriousness, and in the desperation for freedom, it can sometimes be compelling to engage in practices motivated by forces that actually betray our path.
I don’t want victory if it is goes accompanied with dishonor
~ Antonio Maceo
Freddie Oversteegan was a Dutch teenager in the resistance movement during WWII who hunted down, seduced, and killed Nazis. She was given permission to fight by her mother who gave her only one rule: “Always stay human” which guided her actions through a range of physically dangerous morally treacherous behavior, including killing. When she killed someone,“It was tragic and very difficult and we cried about it afterwards,” said her sister Truus, who also joined the resistance efforts. “We did not feel it suited us — it never suits anybody, unless they are real criminals … One loses everything. It poisons the beautiful things in life.” In one interview Ms. Oversteegen reflected,
“I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall. And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.”
We cannot afford to lose our humanity in the struggle for freedom. Indeed, this spiritual struggle is one that requires us to go through our humanity, in all its beauty and danger, with greater and greater love, compassion, joy, and peace. If we learn to accept that each one of us has the raw material and capacity to become either a saint or a dictator, we come to understand the challenge of humanity at large, and are more profoundly humbled and inspired by the possibility of our liberation.
Until the death of King Kamehameha of Hawai`i 1819, the ancient kapu system had governed behavior in the social and religious order of Hawai`i for centuries. It provided a framework of sacred restrictions that defined most interactions between royalty and commoners, regulated fishing practices and, among other things, denied women permission to eat bananas, coconuts, pork, and many kinds of fish, and forbade women and men to eat together.
Before he died, Kamehameha bestowed his political authority to his son, Liholiho, and his spiritual power, in the form of his great feathered war god, Kukailimoku, to his nephew, Kekuaokalani. Shortly after his father’s death, Liholiho, under pressure from his wife and step-mother, sat down with them for a meal, thus breaking the kapu and abruptly ending the ancient religious system across the islands. Within days, he ordered the temples across the islands burned and out of the blue, the old religious and social order was gone.
The old ways were nearly obliterated but a new way had not yet been established. Many rightfully feared that the deepest influences of the new era were of foreign origin and would ultimately threaten Hawaiian society and its alignment with the spiritual powers much greater than the human. (Indeed, twenty years later, the Great Mahele would begin to transform legal land rights from the ancient feudal ahupua`a system to a modern one of private ownership, a move supposedly designed to ensure land ownership by native Hawaiians but ultimately functioned to sever most of their titles to land as the vast majority of it was sold into foreign ownership.) It was a fundamentally important link in a chain of events that led from Hawai`i’s historical isolation and sovereignty to it’s eventual overthrow and annexation by the United States, that also tracked the arc from cultural coherence to, until recently, near-extinction. Casting away the old restraints led to a sudden sense of liberty for many. It also left the deeply spiritual society without a coherent internal spiritual structure, only months before the arrival of the first Christian missionaries.
As chief defender of the old religion, and someone with fair succession title to the crown, Kekuaokalani, Kamehamehaʻs spiritual heir, mounted a campaign to overthrow Liholiho. Because of their incompatible visions for the future of their nation, friends and relatives took arms against one another in Kuamo`o, south of Kona on Hawai`i Island. Over an entire day of ferocious fighting on fields of jagged lava, and under the heavy strain of the unrelenting sun, the rebels — outnumbered and outgunned — were defeated. When Kekuaokalani finally fell, his wife Manono, who had herself fought vigorously all day, called for a stop to the fighting and pled for mercy for the rebels. The leader of Liholiho’s troops and Manono’s own half-brother, Kalanimoku, rejected her request and pushed forward with their annihilation. Collecting her mind with an awareness of the inconceivable weight of the moment, Manono cried out to her people, all of the fighters on both sides, “Malama ko aloha!” protect your love, before falling to the ground — killed by a bullet to her temple.
I consider it to be, in its context, one of the most profound things anyone has ever said. How powerful a call this was to her people to remind them in the wake of this bloody battle, in the midst of a nation in turmoil whose future was in in shadows, of their shared responsibility and commitment to their deepest spiritual values? How do we protect our aloha in the fight for those things we believe so deeply in? How do we ensure that we don’t betray our essential principles, our most fundamental spiritual virtues in our effort to defend them?
Click here for Chapter 5 (Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation)
I hope you have enjoyed what you have read so far!
