They Make Excellent Poets

(by David Price)

To expound and propagate concepts is simple, to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

We as Buddhists believe that benefiting others is an act of kindness, and the first thing that comes to our mind, as an act of kindness, is giving alms to the poor. That’s not the only way, there are many ways to be kind. Taking care of the environment and nature is also a very important act of kindness that can benefit many humans and animals alike in the future.

~17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

The mystic, by definition, seeks an essential, living awareness of the ultimate reality. While he or she may be a student of theology, ritual, and tradition, the mystic understands them not as absolutes but as signposts pointing the way to direct experience of the Eternal. A mystic, in other words, seeks personal validation of the truths proclaimed by religion and philosophy. Determined to walk the path and not simply read about it, mystics test and question with each step. As a result, mystics make poor dogmatists. But they make excellent poets.

~ Ivan M. Granger

I feel painfully the suffering of others: of the weakest, or more precisely the “most offended.” But I feel it because it weighs on me: so to speak, it bothers me, it hurts me. So, in a sense, it’s not an action for others: it’s an action for me. Because some other people’s sufferings are unbearable to me.

— Peter Ingrao

I don’t think we can say that empathy is self serving. That’s too easy, to criticize ourselves because it’s painful for some of us to see others suffer. There’s a sensibility that could be called mystic, or poetic maybe, that works to become genuine and truly connected to the values of connection. Empathy and compassion are the nervous system of connection. If you are untouched by the suffering around you you’re lost in disconnection.

We can become so disconnected that we’re unhinged and dangerous to living beings in our vicinity. We actually lose touch with ourselves. A lack of empathy is pathological, but it’s strangely common in our society. We can’t help but notice political factions arising based entirely on rage and grievance. There are people who won’t care about you because you speak the wrong language or wear the wrong clothes.

It’s very inconvenient for our religious avatars to talk about the importance of love. It goes against the grain for anyone to point out how we don’t in fact love. We possess, we struggle, we profit materially occasionally, and we gather in little tribes with boundaries. Our sense of connection grows out of personal survival imperatives.

But if we’re going to walk a real path and not just read about it, we will spend a lot of our early years testing and trying to answer questions about what gives meaning to our lives and what doesn’t. I’m pretty sure we can’t have a connected, meaningful life without compassion. I’m pretty sure love is a basic ingredient of a real life.

The question we might ask ourselves is how well do we love, and is our love liberating for our “loved ones.”

Musique, culture et infos

Some people feel that the suffering of others is “unbearable.” I think we need more such people, that for the status quo to change we need more empathy, not less. We need a politics of empathy, we need a lifelong education full of empathy. We need a full-blown education of the heart from the beginning to the end of our lives.

It sounds impractical, doesn’t it? With conflicts boiling over in various hotspots around the globe, it looks not just impractical but impossible. I think we have to start at home, with ourselves. We first need to know what kinds of actors we are in this drama. Correcting others is a losing game if we don’t know ourselves.

Discovering that we actually don’t really care about the world outside our little purview is a dose of truth that might start some inner defrosting. We may notice that underneath our concepts and beliefs there’s a frozen potential to feel deeply enough that we might even change the world.