A Report from Israel, Zohar Lavie and Nathan Glyde
In today’s world we are constantly exposed to news and images of suffering and violence. From war and famine to the destruction of the planet, we have a lot to take in and process as human beings wishing to live a complete and full life. At SanghaSeva we come in touch with this time and again. For ourselves, we have found this a fruitful and eye-opening process. How do we deal with the suffering we encounter, and how do the mechanisms we use affect our ability to be of use in alleviating the pain around us? What stops us from taking action as individuals and as a whole?
For the past six years, we have spent much of our time combining dharma and service work, and this has been a rich and fertile ground to explore these issues. We would like to share some of our thoughts and insights.
When hearing about a difficult situation somewhere, such as war, injustice, suffering and violence, some of our common reactions are pain, anger and perplexity. There is not a problem with these reactions in themselves, they are our natural emotional responses. We don’t want suffering like this to take place around us, in the world we share. One way we deal with these emotions is to feel overwhelmed. We feel responsible, that we need to find a solution, that we need to fix. This can easily lead to depression or numbness. Deep ecology teacher Joanna Macy points out that much of the seeming apathy and lack of positive action in our world today is a result of overwhelm. The pain is too strong, and our faith in ourselves too weak to allow us to do anything but shut down and ignore. If we find ourselves feeling apathetic or numb or helpless in the face of suffering, this is our wake up call. The first step for us to take is to reconnect to that which is suppressed, in an environment that can support and hold us. We need to take time out, create some space, cultivate compassion for everyone involved, including ourselves, and recognise and allow our need to feel hope. From there we can start making small steps, letting go of knowing or controlling the whole process. Just one step at a time, just the next right thing can bring hope and rejuvenation to our wounded hearts.
Another way we deal with these emotions is to look for a way out, because they are too uncomfortable to be with. We identify the source of these emotions as the difficult outer situation, and so we focus our energy in finding solutions to the situation, not only because it is wrong in itself, but also to get rid of our own difficulty in facing it. We move very quickly through the pain to the judgment onto the view and the solution. We rush to become someone who has answers. We look for who is responsible, and if we can find someone to blame, all the better. If we find ourselves blaming and judging, this is our wake up call. When we confuse wanting to support truth and justice, with an unwillingness to be with the difficult - we are closing down. Our unwillingness to spend enough time with really feeling overwhelmed or helpless, means we don’t have the time to find the ability to be with these feelings, and later to understand them.
By doing this we additionally create a separation between us and the world. We get caught up in an “Us and Them” dynamic. This dispersal of our energies leaves us unable to participate in positive action. It adds to the kind of separation and negativity which started the whole cycle in the first place.
Another way of being with difficult situations and our own reactions to them can be to stay open and investigate what is going on in ourselves. By making full contact with our own inner life we can learn about ourselves and others, and become more open and possibly useful to others as well. This doesn’t mean we should ignore injustice or violence or the destruction of our planet. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can to alleviate suffering and what causes it to the best of our understanding and ability. What it means is that we should act from a wider perspective, and with a constant caring, looking and investigation at what is really motivating us and moving us, and how these different forces within us support or get in the way of our true compassion, our true ability to help, to be of use.
It can help to use the power of imagination, imagine ourselves living in the situation we encounter. Gandhi said that we cannot help someone until we know what it is like to be in their shoes. Can we find parallels between the situation and our own lives? When we look at situations more closely we can see that everything ‘out there’, in any political or life situation, is mirrored also ‘in here’, in our own conditionings and habits. In fact, it is often the reflection of ourselves that we see in the ‘other’ that scares us and makes us shut down.
For example, if we look at two nations who are constantly at war, where the violence is escalating, it seems totally clear from the outside that violence is just leading to more violence. We can see that it is wrong, and senseless. But if we turn our looking inwards do we not see equally ‘wrong’ habits and patterns that we follow even though they lead us away from peace or joy?
When we explore empathy with another’s situation we equally uncover more about ourselves. This new clarity can generate more passion to work on ourselves, as well as more empathy and understanding for others.
This double effect nourishes and opens our hearts. When we can be open and peaceful with ourselves we actually bring change to the world. We become the kind of being that helps transform suffering, sometimes in small ways that go unnoticed and sometimes we hit the headlines.
An American friend who works as a consultant to NGOs and charities around the world shared an experience of crossing the checkpoint between Israel and Gaza. She was in a line of NGO workers, standing in the hot sun. She was late to the course she was leading due to the security checks by Israeli soldiers taking longer than usual. Yet she could see the queues for Gazan residents were a lot longer and were moving a lot slower. She could feel herself getting frustrated and angry with the whole system around her, a system of humiliation and degradation in which the Palestinians around her had to live day after day, subjected to unfair and unjust procedures as well as aggression and abuse from the soldiers.
When she looked around at the queues and the booths and the soldiers with their guns she suddenly sensed the fear that was at the root of it all. She felt that whoever created such a situation must be overwhelmed by fear. This understanding allowed her heart to open. She looked around and felt empathy for the Palestinians and the intense hardship they suffered, and also for the young Israeli soldiers who were so strained with anxiety. Her heart was big enough for both. And she said that this allowed her to just be with that experience of waiting to go into Gaza, so that when she finally joined the Palestinian friends waiting for her, she could be there fully with them and for them. By staying open she could do what she was there to do, she could help people in Gaza.
Allowing ourselves to be with things as they are doesn’t mean letting go of a deep sense of what is right or just, or ceasing to aspire for peace in the world. But when we want to make a difference we have to see as wide as we can, so we can attend to what is calling our attention in the world and within our hearts. For this to work we have to be willing to be honest with ourselves and willing to go beyond our comfort zone, and really feel what we are running away from. Not easy.
I recently read a true story of a young woman who lost her whole family in a concentration camp during World War two. She survived because when it was her turn to enter the gas chamber, it was too full. She said that what kept her alive during the next months in the concentration camp, was the commitment to live to tell of the horrors that she and others were subjected to. But when the moment of liberation came, she looked at the faces of those that had freed her, and she felt that to tell them her whole story would be to continue the cycle of hate and negativity. In her words, she realised that within each of us there is a potential Hitler, and she didn’t want to trigger a Hitler in any one. She wished to nurture the Love that is within each of us. And her life’s work became this awakening of Love in everyone she met, as well as working with the Hitler inside herself. She said that if she could touch one single human life and turn it away from negativity, from hate, from revenge, from bitterness into a life of service and love and care, then her life may be worthwhile and she deserved to survive.
Peace and understanding are two words that often go together. Understanding in the deepest sense leads to Peace in the deepest sense. Deep understanding sees the unity of all life, it also sees the futility of cycles of violence that feed more violence, and it sees the way to Peace. It also sees “There is no way to Peace; Peace is the way.” I heard a testimony of a unique transformation that arose during the long conflict between Israel and Palestine. “In 2001, on my last night as a Major in the Israeli army, serving in the occupied territories, I demolished a house in El Chader village. Later on during the same day, we initiated a curfew over the village of Husan and I could see Arab girls, at the same age as my daughter, in the village which in fact became a jail. I was speaking to my wife on the telephone while looking at these young Palestinian girls on the embankment which blocked in the village. She was troubled, telling me that no one can bring our daughter Tamar home from the kindergarten. The memory of my daughter and the reality of the simple daily problems had shaken me. I was brought up thinking that everyone is out to get us. Seeing the Palestinian girls on the embankment in the village which I had closed off it hit me profoundly that these girls are no different than my own daughter. It was then that I decided that I will no longer take part in this situation, no matter what price I would have to pay.”
This exceptional shift motivated Chen Alon, the Israeli Major who gave the testimony above, to found Combatants for Peace, a Palestinian-Israeli peace organisation with Suliman al-Chatib, a Palestinian freedom fighter. They have since been joined by hundreds of ‘combatants’ from both sides.
We need just a moment of inner peace to be able to see or hear a new way of understanding, and we need just enough courage to be willing to live it.
The Dhammapada wisely says “Hatred does not cease with hatred, but by non-hatred alone does hatres cease. This is an endless law (Dhamma sanantano).” I wish for all of us to have the courage and honesty to learn from everything that is around and within us. To align our lives with what matters most and to keep opening our hearts.
Transformation is possible in our lives and in this world. We have a soft responsibility to do everything we can to make ourselves available to it. And we share the responsibility to support each other, to open to both the familiar and the unfamiliar, the known and the unknown. Change is possible, it happens all the time.
Zohar Lavie grew up in Israel.
Nathan Glyde is from the UK. They lead active meditation retreats through SanghaSeva.
During October Zohar and Nathan will lead the ‘Being Peace’ work retreat in Palestine and Israel; cultivating communication and understanding between all sides.
