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Happy Hour: Holding Space for Grief and Pain of Racial Injustice

Introduction

Good morning everyone and welcome to happy hour. It's good to see you. Yeah, more people are joining us. So, folks joining us this morning both on Zoom, welcome. A very warm welcome as well as on YouTube. Welcome.

I'll just say a couple of words and get started on the guided meditation this morning without much ado. The theme of the meditation this morning is—you know, happy hour is practicing the Brahmavihāras^[1], loving-kindness, compassion, etc. And this morning it seems most appropriate to practice compassion together. Compassion for a broken world. A broken humanity. Compassion for the heaviness in our hearts as to what's happening. And also compassion for all our brothers and sisters, all our siblings in the world who are met with cruelty, whose plea for compassion is met with cruelty.

We are going to practice holding all of the pain in the world. I know it sounds enormous, and my hope in leading this compassion meditation is for it not to seem overwhelming, but for us to be able to sit with the pain and to hold witness—to hold witness but not to turn away. It's so easy to turn away because it seems so enormous, so overwhelming, so painful, so much. And yet our practice allows us to sit with, to be with challenges, pain, and suffering in the world, whether it's ours or others'. That's the strength of this practice, what it affords us: to appreciate that all of humanity is an ocean. We're all drops of water in the ocean. We're not so different. The illusion of separateness—the illusion that we are separate, that there is otherness in the world—is really the cause of all the pain that we cause one another.

So with that, the invitation today is for cultivating compassion, sitting with compassion, not turning away but making space in our hearts to sit with it.

Reflections and Q&A

Thank you all for showing up this morning and practicing together. Practicing compassion for a broken humanity. Holding witness, not turning away, cultivating our own heart in its strength in being in this world. So if you'd like to share any reflections, you can raise your hand. I will unmute you. Or if you want to type it in the chat, I will read them out loud. What's arising for you from this meditation this morning? How are you right now?

I'm going to let you unmute yourself, Susan.

Susan: Hi. Thank you. Good morning. Really nice to be with everybody. And Nikki, I'm really grateful that you brought in the reality of what happens every day in this country. It's really appropriate for me to have that in my practice because I know for myself it's impacting me all day, every day. I really especially like using Tonglen on that and would love more of that instruction for us. But again, thank you for just naming what's really going on.

Nikki: Thank you, Susan. Joe, I will unmute you.

Joe: Basically it was finding out that I didn't have to take on the suffering of the world. I could just let it pass in and out. That's all I had to do. I didn't have to actually take it on myself.

Nikki: Yeah. When the practice works, it feels like you're holding witness and the caring heart is recycling the pain and sorrow and holding it with care. Taking it on sometimes can feel like too much when people feel like they're taking on the suffering of the world and can make the practice very challenging. So, I'm glad that it worked for you the way it did. That's when it works well.

I have a reflection from Sheila in the chat, wishing that people may be well will not change anything. I appreciate that perspective, and it's not about ending at the wish with the practice. What we do is that we try to change our perspective. We try to change our perspective into one of caring, holding witness, not turning away. And from that changed perspective, intentions arise and actions arise. This is the idea of the unfolding of the practice. One leads to another. And the hope is not that you just end at wishing well, and that's all well and good, but that you're actually cultivating a wise perspective in the world to take action. That's the idea of bringing up the intention, the wish, the perspective. And I agree, just wishing things to be different won't make them different. I don't think that's pessimism. I think that's realism, Sheila. So, thank you for that perspective.

Lots of reflections coming in. They're going too fast for me to read, I'm afraid. Oh yeah, it's from Charlie that he's feeling wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing that Charlie, being in the mountains. And there is anger and frustration and disappointment. And with confidence that George Floyd's death will lead to a more just future in America, just as the death of MLK. I've actually already heard from a friend whose family has not been progressive, but they've been so horrified by the injustice, by this killing, that they're actually coming around for the first time to have a conversation with him about race and racism. So there are rays of hope.

Richard says he is dealing with numbness and grief. He says, "The image of breathing through the chest gave me a sense of openheartedness beyond the self to open my heart to all those feelings." Thank you Richard for that reflection.

And from David: "May the oppressors be free from hatred. May they be free from fear. May they be free from anger. May they be filled with wisdom and love." Exactly. Absolutely. We all get hurt by bias and racism—everyone. Those who perpetrate it, whose hearts are filled with hatred and pain, and of course those who are hurt.

So many reflections. I'm going to pause, and at this time we switch to allowing an opportunity for the community to have a brief conversation in small groups of three, to hold each other with compassion and care. I'm going to create the breakout rooms now.

[Breakout rooms commence and conclude]

Welcome back everyone. We have a few minutes. I would love to ask you how the first part of the practice was for you, the guided meditation. If you like to share, you can unmute yourself and speak, or raise your hand. Or if you like to share reflections about the second part of the meditation, please do.

Charlie: Hi, thank you. This will be kind of a mixed media share. Thank you for sharing my chats before. I was able to share verbally with my dyad partner, and I thank that person so much for patiently listening. I inadvertently took up much of the six minutes, probably five and a half of the six minutes, but I felt very listened to and honored. So, thank you for that. Like I chatted, I am in a beautiful country out of the city of Albuquerque where I live, on the edge of a golf course that is not heavily being used, surrounded by birdsong and family. So I feel wonderful. I went for a run this morning. I sat earlier this morning. But then I am also holding anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment, and survivor's guilt. I know that George Floyd's death—I don't have the word for it because I don't feel like it needed to happen to have a more just America, but I guess a consequence of his death is that I've noted that people are having more conversations about race relations, deeper than I've seen before. The response by the power brokers—the mayor, the officer was immediately fired. When there were calls for his arrest, he was arrested. There wasn't any of this—you know, in the POC community that I operate in, we call it "whitesplaining," kind of trying to explain away the officer's behavior. So to me, though George Floyd didn't ask to be a martyr, which is sad, he is a martyr like MLK, like Trayvon, like Ahmaud Arbery^[4], like the millions of unnamed souls that are my ancestors that have died really so that I can live a comfortable existence. And that's where the survivor's guilt comes up. But I do think of the quote, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." So that's all that I have.

Nikki: Thank you so much Charlie for beautifully and eloquently sharing reflections this morning. Really appreciate you being here this morning, practicing and sharing really deeply. Thank you. I'm letting both your optimism, your wisdom, and your pain blend all of that. And I just learned a new word! You know, I'm POC, but I hadn't heard the word "whitesplaining." I've heard "mansplaining," but "whitesplaining" is new for me. I love it. Thank you.

Trudy, I hear you are unmuted.

Trudy: Yes. The word that just came to me when you were speaking about the death of George Floyd was redemptive. Possibly there is a redemption for all of us in what has happened: for the perpetrator, for the victim, and for those of us... I should speak for myself. For me, it's another opportunity to look to see my own need to remove the scales from my eyes, so to speak, and see people for who they are rather than what I paint them to be. So, I hope that will stick.

Nikki: And Trudy, if I remember, you've been working in social justice for decades.

Trudy: Yes, I was in Selma in the march there. And in some sense, 55 years later, there's no change, but there is change. Seeing little pieces of the past just fall away, even though they're tiny, that's where I need to look rather than at the explosion that we're experiencing right now.

Nikki: Thank you, Trudy. Thank you for your wise words. And it's a privilege to have you with us this morning. Thank you. Any other last-minute reflections? Susan, I see your hand.

Susan: Thanks. I was trying to type it all, but that's ridiculous. At Insight Santa Cruz, we have a group called Waking Up to White Privilege. It just occurs to me that that would be a duplicatable group. People could join us in Santa Cruz or on Zoom until it's in person. But if anybody has interest in starting up your own Waking Up to White Privilege group—it's dharma-based, so it's really about collective liberation—it's really beneficial to work with others in that way, other white people. Thank you.

Nikki: Thank you, Susan. Thank you. Any other last-minute reflections? Yes, Catherine.

Catherine: Yes. I guess I just wanted to share that with COVID-19, it's so disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities. I'm working in San Francisco with the COVID-19 response and just seeing what it's like here. It just really makes me feel sad that once again it's all affecting people who are Black and brown. So, yeah.

Nikki: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that in. Especially at the time of COVID-19, it seems. Compassion for our broken humanity, broken world. It's like this right now. It's like this right now. And not turning away and meeting it every day. Meeting both the sorrows and the joys. Meeting them every day and doing our part. Doing our part, as little as that may seem. Even as turning our hearts this morning might seem like a small offering to the world, it is an offering. It is an offering to hold witness and to hold with care and compassion and declare that we care. It matters.

So it's 8:00 a.m. Thank you all for your practice this morning, for showing up together, holding witness, practicing compassion in the style of Tonglen for the pain and suffering in the world, which is our own pain and suffering. We're not separate. The illusion of separateness—only if we could see we're really all one. It's like the waterfall, as Suzuki Roshi^[5] said. The waterfall—if you see the waterfall itself, it seems like they're individual droplets in freefall. We are the individual droplets. We feel separate while we're in freefall. But before the drop, we're all one. And after the drop, we're all one. In this short span of our lifetime in this world, we feel we're individual droplets.

Anyway, thank you all for your practice. Beautiful practice this morning. May all beings be free from pain, sorrow, and suffering, including ourselves. May all beings be free.

[Music and bell]

Thank you. Take good care of your hearts.