Not making things worse
The past month has been so tough, for so many reasons. It feels like there are fires burning everywhere. If you’re like me, the temptation is always to withdraw into the safe shell of home, family and entertainment and to focus on what’s good for me and mine. But that translates into turning my back on people in need, and that’s an age old problem.
I think all religions and many philosophers ask us to decide: do you live just for your own sake, or for the sake of all. In Yoga and Buddhism the answer was one that changed over geography and time. The early Buddhists focused on personal liberation, but as the teaching of interconnectedness became more central, a new type of Buddhism, named the Mahayana (the “greater vehicle”), shifted the focus from self-liberation to the liberation of all beings. And if we zoom out from our individual lives to the multitude of systems that we are immersed in, we can begin to see that our happiness is tied to and enmeshed in the happiness of all.
Do we stand against people who are hurting others, or threatening others, or spreading lies and misinformation, or do we keep our mouths shut and our noses clean. As one of my teachers pointed out, not doing anything is also an action. The concept of karma means that our actions determine our future and the futures of those we care about.
In this age of social media and misinformation, we’ve created a new capacity for delusional thinking and conspiracy theories that I couldn’t have imagined twenty years ago. And although my first impulse is always to try to fight back with facts, what is extremely clear from all of the research is that once these beliefs take hold, facts are useless against them. The definition of delusion is a false, fixed belief that conflicts with reality. A person in the grasp of a delusion can’t let go of their convictions even if there are mountains of evidence to the contrary.
In my neighborhood we have a family that have insisted that Covid is a hoax since the beginning of the pandemic. They drove around with Covid=hoax signs on their cars all summer, and now they have “No more lockdown” signs on their lawn. Meanwhile, I have friends who have been keeping me apprised of the number of people on ventilators in the local hospitals, other friends who work in long term care, and others who need to go to hospital regularly for treatments. My pre-yoga life was spent in healthcare, and I value the opinions of scientists and epidemiologists. So my blood boils every time I have to pass those signs, which is frequently.
Last year I listened to an interview with a reformed neo-Nazi and white supremacist. He explained that the only thing that got through to him was being forced to interact with black people who refused to hate him back. In the face of their compassion, he was forced to reconsider the truth of what he’d been told.
The energy of anger, hatred and conspiracy theories can be motivating. It can provide a sense of purpose and belonging. It also shores up our sense of being an individual, which is highly prized in our culture. And blaming others for our misfortunes absolves us of taking responsibility for our actions, or for our ignorance, or our inability to impact systemic problems. We all complain, for example, about how big corporations have put so many good Mom and Pop stores out of business, and then we hop in our cars and drive to Walmart. We put those stores out of business because of the choices we collectively made.
We’re all attached to pleasure and averse to pain. It’s wired in to us. But we also have the capacity to see beyond our own lives, to have empathy for other people, and other species. We also take for granted that democracies can withstand attacks from within, when historically we’ve seen time and time again how quickly they can fall. If this past month has shown us anything is that we need to wake up.
The goal of yoga, and buddhism, and most health-oriented activities is to decrease our suffering. When the Buddha explained his enlightenment experience he said:
This Dhamma [path/experience/reality] that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to be experienced by the wise.
But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment…[which makes] conditionality and dependent co-arising hard to see. (From the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, translated by Thanissaro Bhikku)
My teacher Michael used to translate that second statement in more contemporary terms: “But people love their views, are excited by their views, enjoy their views—and this makes our interconnectedness hard to see.”
Now I will be the first to admit that I have many views that I love. I wouldn’t be teaching yoga if I felt that it didn’t have wisdom to offer. But what the Buddha is saying is that the path out of suffering means seeing beyond what we’re personally attached to, beyond the lens of our individual experience. He is not saying that all truths are relative. That kind of thinking is part of what got us into this mess in the first place.
Although conspiracy theories might be insane by the standards of logic or evidence, the suffering they are emanating from is real. Globalization has impacted our economy in ways that have increased the disparity between the haves and the have nots, technology and automation have eliminated countless jobs, and the climate emergency is wreaking havoc with many of our traditional means of supporting ourselves. So while the conspiracy theories may be baseless, the fear and anger that propel them are not. And fear and anger that’s targeted and blaming someone (the media, the politicians, feminists, immigrants) is psychologically easier to manage than an overwhelming and pervasive anxiety that has no clear source and no easy resolution.
According to the articles and books I’ve been reading, I’m told the best thing is to try to find the points of agreement, of common humanity. To be kind even when you feel like lashing out. In my case it’s been a practice in not engaging, not vandalizing the covid=hoax signs, and not starting arguments. I’m trying to remember that the lockdowns have caused a great deal of suffering and that suffering has disproportionately affected the young, the poor, and some segments of the economy more than others. Holding my tongue has been a practice, and I’ve been leaning heavily on my yoga tool kit (asana, breathing, meditating…all the things). I’m not sure that I can make things any better, but I’m doing my best not to make things worse.
