When the Buddha taught that with awakening comes the cessation of grief and lamentation for the world, he was commenting on the world of India 3,000 years ago, marked by disease, old age and warfare. There was warfare, power struggles and hostilities then that led to killing and further suffering for all those subject to the powers that be. We’re still doing it. At the moment some very troubling events are unfolding that involve not only the major combatants, but also the long-held tradition of this country putting arms into the war machine of many foreign powers. The hostilities are ancient, deeply held and hard to interrupt. These are the ways of war. The general idea of “progress” is measured by how much more deadly our weapons can be. So how does Zen practice bring an end to grief and lamentation for the world? If you are at all tuning in, it’s hard to imagine having nothing but grief for the world. So it is. It’s congruent. Our practice, though, can enable us to embody a balancing state of mind and heart. We practice reaching deeply into the essential heart, where all combatants are one. We could almost say that it’s our responsibility to abide in awareness of this one heart that we share with all beings, warm and open. Seeing beyond our own fears and reactivity, and beyond automatically clinging to opinions about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s good and who’s evil, we embody the capacity of all humans to hold all sentient beings in our hearts. We keep this alive…even in the midst of the darkest ignorance, greed and hostility.
