Dharmette: Meditation in the Time of COVID-19

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Dharmette: Meditation in the Time of COVID-19. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 25, 2020. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Dharmette: Meditation in the Time of COVID-19

I am very aware of how many challenges so many people in our society have now around the globe. There are people who wander around the streets around here in Redwood City; they go for walks, they're running—a few people here and there. It's pretty quiet, and it seems like a very nice, peaceful time out in the streets. Yet, there are plenty of people for whom it is not so peaceful. There are all the challenges that come with being sheltered in place: not having work, not even having a place to live, perhaps being sick, or being concerned about being sick.

I've been concerned about loved ones—people in New York, people in Los Angeles, people here in the Bay Area, people in Spain, Italy, Japan, and Thailand. These are extraordinary times we're living in. Those of us who meditate can call upon our meditation as a support. But the question all of us can ask is: what kind of support do we want meditation to provide us?

It is useful to become clear about what that support is. Is it simply a support to not be distressed, to be a little bit calm and more peaceful? That is valuable; we need people who can be calm. But is it to be calm and removed, or is it to be calm and able to somehow be present and offer support? Is it a time for us to meditate so that we have greater compassion and care for others?

I am in awe of doctors, nurses, the medical profession, and what they have to do now. I am in awe of what they are gearing up to do, or are already fully involved in doing. Some of them have responsibilities at home; they have children, they have their own parents to take care of. Now they are caring for people who have the coronavirus, not knowing if they will become sick themselves, and wondering where this is going to go.

So, to share this experience of the pandemic with our society, to feel like we are in it with everyone else—we are sharing the experience. How is it that meditation can support and help us, and how do we share it? If we share it only with our fear, only with our challenges, only with our distress, then perhaps we're not really sharing it with everyone. If we're only aware of our own challenges and difficulties right now, maybe meditation can give us a space to understand that we are really sharing these difficulties with millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, billions of people. It is a shared human experience.

What does that do to us when we open up and see it as a shared experience? That what is happening to others is, in some ways, happening to us, and what is happening to us is shared by others? Even in the isolation of being sheltered in place, what if this is not the time to just be taking care of oneself? What if this is not the time to only be thinking about myself? How can we think wisely and usefully for others? How can we be informed in ways that make us a better person for the world around us? How can we care for people far away? How can we empathize and sympathize with their plight and the challenges they are in?

This is a time for lots of love, for lots of compassion. If any of us have been cultivating compassion and love, this is the time for it. This is the time to tap into our capacity. To sit and meditate is perhaps a way of tapping into our capacity for care, our capacity for compassion, and our capacity to hold the suffering of others. It is a way to be a compassionate companion—to accompany the world, to accompany others, just as they accompany us in our challenges in this time and place.

I think it's really important that meditation, at this time in our society, be understood as something that supports and connects us to others. It has a role and place in how we, as individuals, meet the situation we find ourselves in. It ensures that we don't close in or push out the world around us, trying to just hunker down and take care of "me, myself, and I." If meditation is just helping us do that, maybe we're not living up to the full potential of what Buddhist meditation is about.

Maybe we want to find a way to meditate so that we have the capacity to breathe easily, openly, and kindly as we read the news, as we talk to friends and family members, and as we go through our own challenges with food, family, and whoever we are living with. It goes on and on—our health, our lives. We need to pause, just like the whole globe is pausing. To pause in order to reflect deeply.

I am really fond of the word "contemplative." Different people have different associations with it, but for me, a contemplative is someone who is living their life from the depths of their heart. They are reflecting deeply. They are connected to something that's spiritual, to what's sacred. They are connected to the depths of awareness, presence, and compassion. A contemplative is trying to live from a different set of values that come from being deeply connected to the inner life and the outer life. What a time to be a contemplative! What a time to be a contemplative within the world, as a part of the world.

That is what has been on my mind today: how many people are suffering and challenged. Some people say there is a tsunami coming in some places in the world, that the number of people getting the coronavirus is going to increase dramatically in the next few weeks, and that we don't know what kind of challenges our society will have. But I hope that meditation makes us better prepared for that. I hope that meditation is really addressing how we are in relationship to all this—that our meditation is relevant to what the world is going through. May we become contemplatives in heart, body, and mind, who, in some small way, are not islands in the world, but rather rafts for people who are in the world. Somehow, our calm, our care, and our support make a difference for the welfare and happiness of others.

That is certainly my heartfelt wish at this time. I hope that in whatever ways we've sat and meditated today, and perhaps any benefit from these teachings, might be for the welfare and happiness of everyone on this globe these days. Just as this virus has gone out and touched just about everybody on this globe one way or the other, may it be that our care, our love, our shared humanity, and our shared concern and support for each other are also spread out. So we'll remember this time of the COVID-19 virus as a time where everyone came together, supported each other, and helped everyone go through this. May our meditation help us to make that so. Thank you.