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COVID-19, Grief, and Mindfulness

So we've been living now in a COVID-19 world where this little virus, and billions or trillions of them perhaps, have disrupted our lives and disrupted our society in a way that was unimaginable just a few months ago. Many people have been living with this new life for long enough now that for some, it is starting to wear them down. They are tired, exhausted from it, and being impatient. For some people, it's bringing up all kinds of unresolved issues and challenges that have now taken center stage—difficulties at home, difficulties with work, or financial difficulties without work.

For some people, they're working extra long, difficult hours. Some people are living right up close to where it's dangerous for their health with the virus. Some people are being very sick, and some people are dying. Some people know people who have the coronavirus and^[1] who are dying or dead. Doctors and nurses in hospitals who haven't seen a lot of death are facing a lot of exhaustion and a lot of suffering.

So I hear now that there are a lot of people who are also grieving in this challenging time. Some people have been grieving for a while. Some people are now beginning to grieve because there's so much loss. There is so much that has changed and disappeared, for now at least, and some things have disappeared forever. To have week after week of a life where so much that we usually depend on, enjoy, and live with just vanishes can bring up a lot of sadness, a lot of anger, and a lot of grief. It might be helpful just to name that and to recognize grief.

The Core Experience of Grief

Grief is one of the great teachers. It is one of the primal conditions of human life. Sooner or later, it will come and visit us in one form or another. There is also a very deep grief—some people call it a core grief—that everyone carries inside. Some of it has to do with our life experiences, and some of it has to do with just the existential truth of life: that even if we haven't lost important things yet, we will. We will lose our lives, we will lose the lives of our loved ones, and we'll be separated from things we like and value. Built into this life is the loss of one form or another, of things changing and becoming radically different from what they were before. Things becoming radically different is challenging, and it brings people a sense of loss for what's lost.

I thought it was important to talk a little bit about grief and loss, especially because mindfulness practice is presented—and already is, in fact—as a very powerful support for the most challenging issues of a human life. This practice was actually designed for these challenges, designed for the deepest existential challenges of human life. We know from the story of the Buddha that he started on his path to the discovery of freedom through his encounter with the existential issues of sickness, old age, and death.^[2]

Mindfulness as a Support for Grief

So what is it that mindfulness can do to support us during this time? How does it help? First, it helps us to be present for it and to see it for what it is. It helps us to have the ability to stop and honestly admit to ourselves what we're feeling and what's happening. To be able to do it mindfully means to recognize it clearly, so clearly that there is some freedom in there. It is not a freedom from it, like it goes away, and it is not dismissive of it, but it is being deeply respectful of grief while still being able to recognize it is there.

In a certain way, we are not completely lost in the grief, but rather we are the witness, a companion, and we can accompany our grief. We bring the capacity to open to the grief and to allow it to be there. It's remarkable that mindfulness is a practice, especially in meditation, that provides this room. We cultivate the ability and prepare ourselves to allow the waves of grief, the tornados, and the volcanoes of grief to come.

It's nice to know that there's a practice where we don't have to live with the idea that we need to get over the grief, fix the grief, or be ashamed of the grief. This is the time to let the grief have its life and to make room for it. But at the same time as making room and allowing for it, in that recognition and mindfulness, we are not collapsing into it. It's painful and difficult, but we sit upright and allow it to wash through us and experience it.

One of the basic practices of mindfulness of breathing—letting go of our thoughts, going back to breathing, quieting the mind, and breathing—is very powerful in the context of grief. What can make grief unbearable is when we continually tell ourselves stories over and over again of what we've lost, of what's going to happen, what's not going to happen, how we've been hurt, how we're angry, how someone has wronged us, or how life is unfair. Of course, the mind will think these things; it's not a mistake that the mind thinks these things, but getting lost in those thoughts is where the grief can become too much.

Meditation is learning to let go of those thoughts just enough. What I've done with big grief is that I haven't exactly let go of those thoughts—because perhaps this asks for too much—but rather, I compost the grief back into the body. I bring the grief in and feel how it's experienced in the body. Feel how it is with the breathing, and breathe through it with the body.

I find that it's very respectful of grief to allow it to be there, but to feel it in the body. Keep coming back, and let the body be the container. Let the body be what holds it, no matter how painful and difficult it is. Trust the body, feel the sensations, and observe what's going on in the body. That is a way of not getting caught up in the thoughts, the projections into the future, and the stories. They are allowed to live, it's okay, but we don't feed them, we don't get involved in them, and we don't actively engage in them. We can recognize, "Oh, that's thinking. Okay, I'm thinking. There's a lot of grief, so of course I'm thinking."

Maybe we can't let go of it entirely, but we can turn our attention to feel the experience of grief in the body. I like to think of grief as kind of a mystery. It's something very profound in human life. The stronger the grief, the more it represents the profundity of something inside of ourselves that really needs its time. It needs to be seen, needs to be heard, needs to be felt, and needs to be expressed in some way.

I think of grief^[3] while we're meditating as a form of expression. It's not a damping down or a denial. It's to sit still and allow the volcano to flow inside, to just pour and pour, to let the tears flow. It is this idea of radical permission to just be, to allow it to be there while sitting still and quiet, and giving yourself lots of time.

Naming Our Losses

There are many kinds of losses that people can have, and sometimes it's helpful to be able to recognize and name the specific loss so it has a little bit of a handle to it, so it's not just amorphous and confusing.

There is material loss. We can lose our money, we can lose our work, and we can lose our access to some of the wonderful things in life. Sometimes there is loss of food or loss of the freedom to get food.

There is a loss of functionality. We can't function or behave in the way we're used to behaving. In places where people have been locked up in their apartments or homes for weeks, so much is lost. Children can't play outside. People can't go outside and hang out with their friends, or go out into nature to see the woods, or do their recreational activities. They can't get their education the way they're used to. Some kids are doing education at home, but that form of learning and that kind of discipline doesn't work for everyone. There are all kinds of functions and activities that have been curtailed. For some people, these are really important activities, and there is grief for not being able to do them.

There is loss of our imagination and self-image. We have an image of ourselves as being capable, as someone who can support ourselves, take care of our situations, and work. To have that self-image and the rug pulled from underneath is very, very challenging to feel. People feel disoriented, they feel loss, and they feel afraid. "Who's going to take care of me when I'm sick or old and alone, perhaps?" It is very frightening and difficult to be with. It's a huge grief to have that kind of loss of company and support.

There is anticipatory grief about the future. Because of what we've lost now, we feel we've lost the future. We lose a friend who dies, and now we've lost the future of all the things we were going to do together. We lose our educational opportunities or our jobs, and all the things we were anticipating doing are taken away.

There are relational losses. Certainly with death, we lose relationships, but where we are sheltering in place, our relationships are not as rich. We can't connect with people easily. People who don't see each other because they're quarantined might talk or video conference a little bit, but it is very different than just hanging out in the living room and talking with a friend, a grandmother, a parent, siblings, or children. There is a sense of loss in that relationship. There are relationships that have gotten dramatically strained—couples, kids, and families where the inherent stresses and tensions that were managed just fine all along are now compounded by quarantine, loss of work, and loss of money.

And then there's existential loss. It is the loss of the existential support that we need to live a successful and safe life. There is a loss of safety when going to a store and not feeling safe because maybe you'll pick up the virus and you wouldn't know it. Looking into the future, this virus is going to stay around for a while. Right now, there is no known vaccine. How long do we live with this existential fear of sickness, death, and suffering?

Learning to Grieve Well

So there are all these forms of grief. All these things come down to a loss, and of course, it's going to be difficult. There's no shame in grief. Grief is to be respected; it is a powerful working of the heart and a powerful working of something deep inside. The task of mindfulness is to learn how to grieve well—to have good grief.

It is possible to grieve in unhealthy ways. It's possible to collapse completely into it. It's possible to deny it, numb out, or distract oneself. It's possible to do all kinds of things that dampen it down or push it away, or ways in which we overindulge and get caught in it. Some of this has to do with strong identification with the suffering, or a strong attachment to the sadness.

There is sometimes a strong identification with anger. Grief can often come with anger, and it can often come with sadness. One of the interesting paradoxes around the anger and sadness that come with loss is that when you feel the anger, ask yourself where the sadness is. If you feel a lot of sadness, ask yourself where the anger is. The interesting practice in doing that is that we often get stuck in anger or stuck in sadness, but if you can notice that the other emotion might be underlying it, that can sometimes loosen it up and let it flow more easily. It's recognized, and we can breathe with it to have breathing room with the experience.

Grief will take its own time, which means there's no particular time limit on how long it will take. Generally, grief takes a lot longer than people think it will. Sometimes it takes a lifetime; some grief accompanies us for a long time. The art of mindfulness, when we really learn it and can stay with grief and feel it, is that even if it stays for a long time, it becomes our companion in such a way that it can actually help us become freer. It helps us to be more honest, real, connected, and full. The sorrow and the pain of loss doesn't have to limit us; it can actually free us and heal us in some way.

There can be healing with grief and through grief, but not on your timeline. If you're too quick to want to heal, then you're not respecting the deeper unfolding process that grief is. Grief is a process. Don't shortchange it, and don't speed it up.

However, there is one healthy way to let the process of grief move along, and that is to meditate. Meditate a lot. There is something about being undistracted, remaining open and receptive, and just coming back to the body over and over again. Things get composted, things get worked out, things get resolved, and things get released at a much faster rate than if we are busy walking around our lives being distracted. The grief will still wash through us and take time, but meditation can support the cycles of grief that we have to go through. It's not that we are deliberately speeding it up, but we're letting the system naturally unfold, roll, and move.

Grief takes a lot of energy. When there's a lot of grief, people can be really tired. It's hard to sleep sometimes. It puts stress and strain on us, which makes the suffering of grief more difficult. I say that just so we can recognize it, so we're not fighting it, surprised by it, or despairing over it. Whatever way it is, that's how it is now. This is the experience of the moment.

The statement "this is now" is an antidote to the mind that makes predictions—the mind that says, "This means it's going to be forever," "This means it's going to get worse and worse," or "This means this and that." This is just now. Back to mindfulness: "Oh, let me feel this now." This is just the experience of now. It doesn't have to be tied to the imagination about what's going to happen.

Respecting the Process

Grief is also a powerful teacher and a powerful event. When we grieve for a present moment loss, like the loss of work, rent money, housing, or health, it resonates and wakes up grief we've had in the past.

Not many people know how to grieve well. Our society, families, religions, and cultures sometimes don't teach us that much—especially in the modern world—about how to have respectful, proper, full, or healing grief. If grief hasn't been complete or hasn't really been respected well in the past, the pain of what happened then can still live in us. Contemporary losses reawaken the old ones, and sometimes the core grief we're feeling is not just the contemporary loss itself, but rather how it resonates with old, unresolved griefs we still carry.

One of the primary things I want to emphasize is the idea of respecting grief. Really respect it, and really give it its time. To grieve well is to trust the grief even when trust seems impossible. It is so painful, so difficult, and feels so over-the-top when the whole world is falling apart for people. It's okay. It's okay to grieve. Trust the grief.

If you've been meditating and you've prepared yourself through weeks, months, or years of practice, hopefully that preparation will allow you to keep opening to it. Feel it and be with it as a present moment phenomenon. Let it flow, let it be there. Trust it deeply. Be the companion to your grief. Help your grief feel safe. Help your grief feel that it is accompanied, that it's not alone, and that it is allowed to exist.

If you do this, you are working not just with this particular grief, but with deep conditioning and deep forces inside of us. It is definitely part of the path to liberation. Some teachers say the path to liberation is one grief after another—grieving what we let go of and what ends. That has not been my experience, but sooner or later, the path of liberation involves touching in with the historical grief we still carry within us.

If you are experiencing grief during these days of COVID-19, please know that you are not alone. These are challenging times for many people. Please know that there's nothing wrong with grieving, but see if you can grieve well. Grieving well doesn't mean you have to be clever or have the right tools or techniques. It mostly means you get out of the way of the grief by really feeling it in the body. Make room for the grief itself as an inconstant, impermanent flow of things coming and going.

Whenever you find yourself thinking about the loss, the upset, the anger, or the sadness, come back into your body. Let your body be the container. Let the body be the temple. Let the body hold it all. Create the friendly space around the pain so the pain is not alone.

My hope is that we can be each other's companions. Through our ability to sit with grief in ourselves, we can also have the ability to sit with others when they're grieving. Not to fix them, but to help them feel there's no shame, that it's safe and appropriate to allow it to be front and center, and to let grief have its time. Don't be in a hurry.

I hope that in this whole process, you learn that there is love. You can love yourself and have compassion for yourself no matter how dark it gets, and you can have love and compassion for others. May it be that we live in a world where we love each other. May it be that we live in a world that's built on the foundation of caring for each other and caring for everyone. May we live in a world of care, compassion, generosity, and love. That's the world I'm hoping we can make from the ashes of what is happening today.

Thank you, and I hope that you sleep well. For those of you who are going right to sleep, I hope that when you go to bed, you offer yourself loving, caring, generous warmth and support. Love yourself to sleep well through the night. Thank you.