This week, in light of the shootings of more African American men by police that took place in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the shooting of police officers in Dallas, Texas last night, I can feel the weight of helplessness making her way into my body.
This is dangerous.
When I slip too deep into helplessness, I become silent and frozen. I hold my breath and I shut down.
Lately, I notice this feeling and body state each time I see someone who I perceive as more vulnerable walking down the street. For example, a Transgender twenty-something. A teenage African American boy. A woman wearing a head scarf or burka.
When I see these folks I notice my whole body tightening up as I nervously scan the environment for possible perpetrators who would do them harm. And then that's when it happens. Helplessness sets in.
I remember once as an adult being at an arcade and seeing a group of children who were probably 10 or 11 years-old bullying another child because the child was obese. I remember the feelings of both anger and disgust I felt toward the group of children who were teasing and laughing at the child who was overweight.
I also remember my feeling of helplessness.
I knew I wanted the bullying to stop. I wanted to protect the child. I also wanted to help the children who were bullying to see how cruel and mean their behavior was so that they could understand and grow themselves.
But none of this happened. I couldn’t find my voice.
At one point I squeaked out something about the bullying behavior being “not okay.” But it wasn’t enough. Not by a long-shot.
Today I still feel shame about that day.
I believe with privilege and power comes responsibility. I was the adult in that situation. I could have chosen to use my privilege and power, that goes with adulthood, to stand-up for that poor child who was being bullied- but I didn’t.
Buddhist teacher, author and activist Thich Nhat Hanh says the purpose of mindfulness is to cultivate understanding, compassion and healing. In order to do this he says we must “look deeply,” in a non-judgmental way, into the present moment.
He also says in Living Buddha, Living Christ "meditation can help."
"Meditation is not a drug to make us oblivious to our real problems. It should produce awareness in us and in our society. For us to achieve results, our enlightenment has to be collective. How else can we end the cycle of violence? We ourselves have to contribute, in small and large ways, toward ending our own violence."
Hanh then recommends that each human being "look deeply at our own mind and our own life." He assures that this process of "looking deeply" will bear fruit.
"We will begin to see what to do and what not to do to bring about a real change."
He also says in Living Buddha, Living Christ "meditation can help."
"Meditation is not a drug to make us oblivious to our real problems. It should produce awareness in us and in our society. For us to achieve results, our enlightenment has to be collective. How else can we end the cycle of violence? We ourselves have to contribute, in small and large ways, toward ending our own violence."
Hanh then recommends that each human being "look deeply at our own mind and our own life." He assures that this process of "looking deeply" will bear fruit.
"We will begin to see what to do and what not to do to bring about a real change."
If I were to “look deeply” into that day when I chose not to stand up for a child, I would see intense feelings of helplessness inside of me in that moment.
Helplessness probably generated from my own experiences being bullied as a child, the enormous fear I still have when I speak-out against a majority point of view (even when the majority is a group of children), and the god-awful “witness feeling” of being overwhelmed by a scary situation that feels out of my control.
Putting helplessness in these terms—past experience + fear + witness + overwhelmed + scary + out of my control—it makes absolute sense that my behavioral reaction might have been one of Fight, Flight, or in my case, Freeze.
And yet, that is not acceptable to me.
Understandable, yes. But not acceptable.
In the type of psychotherapy I practice I teach my patients a skill called: Opposite to Emotion Action. This skill is to be used when the individual recognizes that it would not be skillful or effective to act from the emotion that they are feeling at that moment. In fact, what might be most skillful or effective would be to act opposite.
For helplessness, acting opposite might be spiritual protest.
What do I mean by spiritual protest?
In Buddhism there are two ideas that I really find helpful to get closer to what I imagine spiritual protest to be for us non-Buddhists: engaged Buddhism and the bodhisattva.
Engaged Buddhism is a term popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh through his roots as an anti-war activist in Vietnam, that is also sometimes referred to as “Humanistic Buddhism,” and it is the intention of emphasizing the Buddhist teachings for the purposes of addressing situations of social, political, environmental, and economic suffering and injustice.
A bodhisattva is a Sanskrit word for an “enlightened being” who makes a vow “to forego complete enlightenment until he or she helps all other beings attain enlightenment” (taken from Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh).
In an interview with Journalist and television host Oprah Winfrey, Thich Nhat Hanh said he once told Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that the Vietnamese people referred to King himself as a living bodhisattva.
He then added in a saddened tone of voice, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I thought the American people had produced King, but they were not able to preserve him.” I like to think if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were still alive today, he might say the same about the 80-something year-old Vietnamese monk as well…
But where does spiritual protest begin?
For me, lately anyway, it begins on the cushion with daily meditation. As Hanh says: “Peace begins with yourself. Understanding and compassion begins with yourself.” Learning and practicing mindfulness, non-violence, deep understanding, forgiveness, and compassion with myself on the cushion is my first step in spiritual protest.
Next, I try to bring and cultivate these same qualities in to my daily life. Which is to say, in to the home I share with my husband and two children. In to the department I share with 6 colleagues at the hospital. On to the road I share every morning and afternoon, 5 days a week, with thousands of commuters. In to the therapeutic space I share with a patient.
On this topic, I heard founder of Off the Mat Yoga, Seane Corn, say in an interview on NPR once:
“I ask myself this question all the time: where am I living an interpersonal war? Where am I creating some sort of psychic terrorism between me and another person or my own form of oppression? And if I’m not dealing with that which is within me, then I’m a part of this problem. And I don’t want to be a part of the problem, so I need to go into myself and see where are my shadows. Where am I not seeing that there is a bigger picture, a mystical picture? We can perceive things as bad or we can perceive things as opportunities.”
I also try to think about my dollars in terms of spiritual protest.
Where, when and how do I spend my money? To whom do I donate my dollars and to whose organization do I help fund?
Currently the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend is sponsoring a refugee family from Syria- a husband, a wife and 3 children under the age of 10. Knowing this important work of my church, I joyfully put my check in the donation basket on Sunday morning.
But here’s my question, when is it time to push myself further? When is it time to (compassionately) confront my helplessness head-on in a way that steps outside my fairly narrow, and overtly defined, spheres of influence?
Is it now? Is it through a broader and bolder act of spiritual protest?
What is your antidote for helplessness? I’d love more ideas.
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