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Discovering Peace in Challenging Times

So again, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night. I appreciate very much the connection through this video to so many people all over. Thank you for logging on. You're here with me at IMC, the Insight Meditation Center, where I sit alone in a big, empty, vaulted room. I spend my days for the most part either at home with my family or here at IMC. They are about two to three minutes apart.

It's a pretty quiet life that I'm living. But it's also a very strange life. It's very strange to be sheltered in place, having very little contact with people, taking some strolls down the street, and giving everyone a wide berth. Knowing that just two or three blocks from my house is a hospital that is short on protective gear for the medical staff. They're asking for more protective gear, more masks. It's hard to imagine that there's a hospital without enough protective gear for the very people who are the lifesavers, and to sit quietly at home and not be able to do too much. We're trying to figure out what can be done from home.

So, how to be peaceful? Is it appropriate to be sheltered at home and be peaceful? Is it appropriate to be home with the challenges of home life and find our peace? How to be peaceful? Is it appropriate to be a first responder, to be involved very busily? Some people are working 24 hours at a time to respond to this current crisis, this pandemic. Is it appropriate for them to find a way to be peaceful in the middle of it?

I think this question of being peaceful is a very important spiritual question for all of us as we go through these challenging times. And maybe it's the task of Buddhist practice always, but especially now, to understand where the peace is. How to be peaceful myself in the midst of whatever circumstance I find myself? Including if circumstances require a lot of action, and maybe even very active, busy action—where is the peace?

And what are the exceptions? What are the protests we might have? Like, "Yes, that's good for you to say, but you don't realize what I'm up against, or you don't realize how important what I'm doing is, or the challenges I'm under, and it doesn't make sense to be peaceful in this situation." There can be all kinds of exceptions that we want and protests, but do those really stand up well to analysis? Is it really true that we sacrifice our peacefulness or avoid trying to find it because of the demands of whatever situations we're in? Maybe I'm not going to say that.

However, I do believe that in almost all circumstances we can find ourselves in, the more peaceful we can be, the more useful we can be. If we could find how not to be agitated. If we turned it around and, rather than saying the task is to find how to be peaceful, if we turned it around and said the task is not to be agitated. Not to be spinning out, not to be so preoccupied in fear or distress that we can't see clearly, we can't understand clearly, and the best of us can't come forward. Maybe the task at hand is to learn how not to be agitated, how not to be distressed, how not to be shut down in such a way that we're not available to support or take care of the situation.

So in my vocabulary, that's to be peaceful, to be calm. And one of the principles of Buddhism, or of a wise life I would like to say, is that the more we need wisdom, the more important it is to be calm. Wisdom thrives in calm states of mind. If we really need to understand what's going on, try to calm yourself. The more we need compassion, cultivate calm. Compassion is also something that thrives in a calm heart.

So this idea of cultivating compassion and calm and peace is not meant to be a removal, an aloofness, a disconnection from the world. It's meant to be the very thing that allows us to connect more fully and wisely and compassionately to be someone who makes a difference. And in this environment, I think everyone can make a difference.

We're living through a remarkable period of history where, in a sense, everyone now has a front row seat, or even more intimately, everyone now is a participant in creating history. Everyone is a participant in the global unfolding of our world, and people who are sheltered at home might feel that they're not participating. But absolutely, being sheltered at home is one of the most valuable things that most people can do. It's a contribution to the whole society to not be out there spreading the virus. This is what we need to do.

There's a story of these two travelers and they're traveling a long way. They're on a long journey, different journeys, but they happen to come to the same inn, the same little guest house for the night. They go to sleep, and while they're sleeping they're visited by the great nature spirit of that place. And this nature spirit says to each of them separately, "I would like to grant you two wishes, two boons."

And so in their sleep they're reflecting, and maybe because they're asleep, some of their deepest motivations are what's operating. One of them says, "Wherever I travel, wherever I go, I would like to spread goodness, spread benefit and beauty for the world. That's my first wish. And the second wish is that I don't want to know how much good I'm causing."

The second one responded to the nature spirit and said, "Oh, for me, I'm so lucky that finally I get my wishes, and I've been wanting this for a long time. I want to be really wealthy and be able to own a big castle with lots of servants. And I want everyone to know how special I am." So those were their wishes.

The next morning they woke up, came to the front of the guest house, and there were two people there, each of them with a big shoulder bag, or a backpack maybe. They said, "Oh, we have a favor to ask you." And the first person said, "I have this bag, and people up ahead where you're traveling really need this. This is a really big support for them. I can't pay you, but you would do a big favor to others if you could do this."

The second person said, "I have this bag of really important things, and if you could take this up ahead, I'll give you lots of money. You'll be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams if you can take this."

So, each of the travelers then chose according to their disposition. The one who wanted to do good and not know it picked up the bag that had no financial remuneration. The one who wanted to be wealthy and special picked up the second bag. And as they went their way, they were both content and happy that they got their wish. But what they didn't know was the bags were filled with seeds, and there was a little hole in the back of the bag.

As they walked, the seeds would drop out of the bag. For the one who was doing good in the world, these were all beautiful flowers and seeds of fruit trees and vegetables. As he went, these seeds would fall out and hit the ground. Many of them would germinate and sprout and grow and become really helpful and valuable and beautiful for the communities that he passed through. But he never knew. He never looked around. He didn't know what was happening. But he was doing a lot of good.

The second one had a bag full of very big seeds of weeds, noxious weeds, vines that grow and take over everything. And these were big seeds. So as he was going along, he didn't know that out the back of the bag these seeds were falling out. But everyone else watching him knew the seeds were falling out, and they'd get angry with him and upset with him. But he never got the message that it was his seeds. As he went along, he was dropping these noxious weed seeds. And that's what grew. He got wealthy because he was given a lot of money and he was able to build his castle, but the cost of it as he walked through the countryside was much more expensive than the value of his castle.

I tell you that story because those people who are not staying sheltered at home, some people in this country in the United States are doing it because they feel that they should be free to do whatever they want. They don't want any kind of restrictions in their life. They want to go out and party. There's been some amazing stories of people just blowing off, ignoring the idea of sheltering at home. They don't think it applies to them. It's an imposition of the government on personal freedom.

It could well be that the people who are staying involved and circulating around do not get sick. But they might not see what seeds they're dropping off behind them. They might not see that actually they've touched some object that carries the coronavirus and then they pass it on to the next person and the next object. The spread of this virus by unsuspected carriers is the very thing we're trying to prevent.

There are sad stories already of medical people who've gotten the virus and didn't know they had it, and then spread it to the patients they're caring for. There are stories of people who went traveling to a place and came back from a place where the virus was and didn't quarantine themselves, and then it spread into their communities.

So one of the big contributions we can make at this point is doing nothing. Really nothing. And it's hard for some people to live with that. It's hard to be limited. It's hard to be restricted in situations. Some of these shelter-at-home situations are not easy at all. It's hard not to want to go out and try to figure out what to do. I looked for requests for volunteers in the local soup kitchens who are feeding some of the poorer families of Redwood City. They're doing a great job making bag lunches. They don't serve lunches anymore; they serve bag lunches people pick up. And, a little bit to my surprise, they don't want any more volunteers. They have enough volunteers, and so I can't go there to help out.

So this idea of staying home—it's a contribution, but how to use it well? How to find our peace? How to practice? How to have compassion for the first responders, the people who are out on the streets helping people? I saw statistics recently that for firefighters, 80% of what firefighters do in this country—many of them urban ones—is go to medical emergencies. And how many of those medical emergencies are, you know, they don't know what they're going to come to. Some of these fire departments don't have enough protective gear if they end up supporting someone, helping someone who has the coronavirus.

So these first responders, holding them in our hearts and our care, appreciating so much how this is a societal effort, a global effort. We're all in it together. I can't think of anything that's been as clear and dramatic that puts us all in it as a community in mutual care. All of us cooperating, all of us working together, all of us one way or the other affected by this virus.

It's a time of deep soul-searching. The ethical dilemmas that medical professionals are living with, that government officials are trying to deal with, trying to find how to use limited resources to the best use for everyone involved. And because there are limited resources, what are the ethics of who gets it and not gets it? The medical resources. What are the ethics of us living our lives? I've been told that one of the contributions that people who are not sick can make is to not have an accident that requires us to go to the hospital. I've been told that in France people are not allowed to ride bicycles anymore because of the danger of falling off the bicycle and needing to go to the ER. The ER just can't handle anything more. So not only do we shelter in place, but we try to do the kind of things that have no risk of injuring ourselves, of being careful as a contribution to others.

So these are difficult times. It's hard to understand from day to day. So much uncertainty, so much waiting for many of us, so much circumstance changing dramatically in all kinds of ways. And the question is, how do we spread good seeds? Seeds that we don't even see. We don't even know how we're benefiting the world when we stay at home. We don't know what we are avoiding spreading and the harm we would have caused if we left home. So how do we feel content with this or peaceful with this? How do we find our peace?

It's my heartfelt wish that one of the things that Buddhist practitioners are doing is using their practice even more now. I like to believe that Buddhist practice was designed for times like this, and that Buddhist practitioners shouldn't be surprised that this is happening. In fact, I don't find myself surprised. I'm surprised that this particular shape has taken hold. But here's an interesting change that I have had over my lifetime of practice.

These 40 years that I've been doing this Buddhist practice, I've certainly become more peaceful, feeling more at ease in this world that I live in. I certainly feel more prepared or more capable of living a wise life than I did before. And as I've had more ease and more peace and more wisdom, kind of parallel to that growth is a growing expectation that something like this is coming. Whether it was going to be a war or some natural catastrophe or something, kind of in a relaxed way: "Yes, of course, this is to be expected." This is what happens on this world, that there are earthquakes. There are, unfortunately, wars way too often. And I'm kind of expecting this to happen to some degree, and now it's happening. I don't think it is a coincidence that the more peaceful I become, the more at ease I become, the happier I become in this life, at the same time, through Buddhist practice I become more expectant, or more of a "Of course, of course things are uncertain." Things are much more uncertain than most of us are willing to admit to ourselves. Our personal lives and health can change on a dime, can change from day to day. All kinds of things. Society can change from day to day. Our personal circumstance can change from day to day radically.

And this growing sense of the uncertainty of life that's come with Buddhist practice, and at the same time being at ease with it. It's still a task. So the task is, how do we find our ease? How do we find peace in these difficult times? And that means a lot of deep looking at ourselves, a lot of honest looking. How do we get agitated? What are the belief systems, the beliefs that we're operating under? What are the underlying assumptions we have about life and what's important and what the dangers are? What we're trying to protect? What is it that we feel inside is threatened? Is what is threatened really something that needs to be protected? Is there some freedom that we can find where the freedom itself is not threatenable by anything?

Are some of the things we're holding on to for security, some of the things we're holding on to for certainty, is it really appropriate? Can we really expect to keep those things safe and secure? What if insecurity is built into this very fabric of this universe? Buddhist practice points to a peace that's possible in the midst of insecurity.

And more than insecurity, what if things do take a terrible turn? Things get really difficult for all of us. Does that mean that the more difficult it gets, the more we give up the practice of peace? The more we give up the practice of rooting out our attachments, our clinging, the ways we close down, all the ways in which we might respond unskillfully with aversion and blame and anger, or with distress and anxiety and collapse, with desire and greed and selfishness?

This is the time to really take an honest deep look at ourselves and to feel, I would hope, confident, really confident that this practice of mindfulness, this practice of looking at ourselves, this practice of finding where the peace is, this practice of really learning to let go of where we're attached and caught... We're being asked to do this at such a deep level in our psyche, in our hearts, that hopefully we're ready, we're willing to do this now. This is the time.

Some of you have gone on a lot of retreats. Some of you wish to go on retreats. And the more challenged we are by what's happening right now in our society, in our world, the more valuable this practice is. The more distressed you are, the more upset you are, the more afraid you are, the more valuable it is to bring your mindfulness, your attention, your compassion to really connect and see what's going on. And the reason for that is the more the distress is, the more the difficulty is, the more it represents something really crucial and deep inside of you. It arises from your depths. Depths that really need us. Depths where practice is really meant for. If we live our lives comfortable and go our life comfortably from day to day and we're only using the Buddhist practice for the minor stresses of everyday life, we're really not engaged in the depths of what this practice is really about. In the core of our being, in the very places where we're most attached to life and being alive, attached to identity and being someone, attached to security, attached to comfort, attached to our relationships, our status, all kinds of things.

The more challenged we are, the more this practice is meant for us. And the simplest way of holding that as a question for ourselves that we can carry with us through the day is the question, "Where is the peace now? How can I be peaceful with this?"

It might take a while to discover that, but just to ask that question might help you to begin noticing the small places of peace, the small little movements that are possible. Then even asking that question is a stepping away from being caught up and entangled. To ask that question clearly with sincerity is pulling ourselves out of being stuck in the mud of our lives. Out of the mud is born the lotus^[1]. Out of the messiness and challenge of our life is born something that's precious and valuable in our hearts.

And to ask that question, "How can I be peaceful right now?" can be the beginning of that coming out of the mud, pulling the head out of the sand, beginning to look around and feel. Even in that question is the beginning of some peace, of some freedom, of some calm, something. And then to build on that, use your mindfulness and look around and see. Sometimes you'll be able to identify where the calm is, where there's greater peace, and relax into it and open to it. It's not so far away.

And sometimes it seems far away. But what is it that I bring to it? What do I bring to the situation that contributes to my agitation, that makes it more difficult than it needs to be? Maybe it's hard to ask that question and answer that question in the midst of challenging personal situations at home or elsewhere. But perhaps there are moments here and there. Maybe when you go to the bathroom, or maybe when you first wake up in the morning, where you can do some reflection, some looking: "What am I contributing to my agitation? What am I caught up in? What am I resisting? What am I not accepting? What am I doing here?"

I don't offer you the practice question of "How can I be peaceful in this circumstance?" as a way of passively accepting the situation and conforming with it, going along with it. That's not what I mean. I hope that what we can do in becoming peaceful is to be available to do the right response to what's needed at the time. And what that response is, we'll have to find out from day to day, from hour to hour. We're living in a radically different world than we lived in just a few months ago.

And I hope that all of us will engage in what's happening in this world at this time so that we'll come out of it on the other side and have become better people both as individuals and collectively. May this question, "How can I be peaceful with this circumstance?" be a question that supports you to become the best possible person you can be. For now and for all times. So that we as a people, as a global family, can really feel that we're here to support each other, to benefit each other, to care for each other, and to really feel our mutual care, compassion, love, and support.

We're all in it together. I hope we all support each other. May this Buddhist practice help all beings. May all beings be safe.

Announcements

Thank you very much for listening to my reflections. There are maybe a couple of things that I'd like to say. One is for this wider online community that we have. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to offer a 9-day consecutive introduction to mindfulness meditation series, one hour a day in California from 9:30 to 10:30, Monday through Friday this week, and Monday through Thursday the following week. I thought of it because there's a lot of people who are at home and who maybe would normally like to take a mindfulness class but maybe they can't go out in the evening, or their personal circumstances don't allow them. And it seemed like this would be a nice time to do it every day and really settle into it and get the basic instructions. So maybe some of you, or maybe you know someone who's been wanting to learn mindfulness, and we'll do it in the same format here on YouTube. There's more information on the website.

And then for your local communities, for people here on the Peninsula at Redwood City, the local hospitals here really need more protective gear. The county is trying to collect it for all kinds of places. If you have protective gear that you know of—masks and nitrile gloves or whatever you might have—you might want to bring it to the hospital. Or in Redwood City, they're collecting it downtown. If you go to the San Mateo County website, they'll tell you where the collection place is. But every county, wherever you live, I bet there's a lot of places that need supplies, need things. And if you have any access to it, or if you have a sewing machine, now people are apparently starting to make masks because of the shortage of it. I've heard that some of the fabric stores are beginning to give away material that's appropriate for making masks. Maybe those of you who are sewers can sew protective masks and give them to the people who need it.

This is a time for all of us to make our best efforts. So thank you all very much and I hope that you take good care of yourself and have a lot of compassion for yourself and for those around you and your loved ones. I look forward to being in community with you again. Thank you.