Getting Off the Wire, Part 1
Preparing to Reduce the Harm
This is a long-delayed1 essay in a series exploring the implications of Donald Trump’s returning to power. The first essay explored how Trump won the 2024 election. The second essay looked at how we care for ourselves in the post-election world. The series will conclude with three tightly related essays, of which this is the first.
How we prepare to reduce the harm that Trump is causing.
How we act to reduce this harm.
How we engage in the longer-term work required to heal our culture.
Life on the Wire
For more than a decade, we’ve seen a fairly new phenomenon appear annually as the end-of-year holidays approach. News articles, social media posts, and conversations with our friends all explore how we can abide with family members peacefully during the holiday festivities. The fact that these appear at the same time each year leads one to conclude that during the remainder of the year, interaction with these same family members is limited or non-existent.
What is the issue that drives our common life to exist in such a diminished state? Our political differences. An NPR article from late 2024 explores just how strong these feelings can be. In the article, one young woman shared this regarding family members who supported a candidate that she opposed: “I'm disgusted by the blood I carry in my veins because I'm related to these people.”2
Most news articles on the topic then go on to explore how we can come together with family for a bit, and hopefully get out without a conflagration occurring. They essentially present a recipe for walking the high wire of a dualistic war taking place between the right and left within the USA. Most of them follow the same blueprint.
They start with the presumption that the reader is “right” in their views. This is actually a sort of savvy marketing technique that keeps us reading the piece, because we believe that the author(s) must be allies who agree with our viewpoint.
They offer some suggestions for tolerating “the other” while maintaining one’s own view as correct.
They recommend using “exit strategies” or not connecting at all if the distress or pain one is feeling is too intense.
These approaches offer helpful ways to treat the symptoms of our collective dis-ease, but they offer no hope of healing. They provide no way to get off of the wire. Before discussing how we may go about getting off of the wire, I want to acknowledge that the concerns and distress that people bring into these discussions are real and important. The next essay on reducing the harm will address how we include the pressing concerns of love and justice as we seek to move beyond dualism.
Preparing to Reduce the Harm
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh was a spiritual giant of the 20th and early 21st century. He was born in Vietnam when it was under French colonial rule. He witnessed the Japanese occupation during World War II, as well as the famine that followed the occupation. He became a Buddhist monk at the age of 16, and he was 29 when the Vietnam broke out. Over the two decades that the war raged, he would work tirelessly for peace, often at great personal cost. During his visits to the USA, he encountered many Christian leaders involved in the struggle for peace and justice.
He wrote, “Through men and women like these, I feel I have been able to touch Jesus Christ and His tradition. On the altar in my hermitage in France are images of Buddha and Jesus, and every time I light incense, I touch both of them as my spiritual ancestors.”3 The insight he realized as a result of his contemplative practice has created a movement of thousands of followers who seek to build a more loving, just, and peaceful world. The 30 minute film A Cloud Never Dies offers a lovely, loving, and inspiring perspective on his life and work.
A key insight that Thầy (which is the affectionate name his students use, meaning “teacher”) had is that to create a peaceful world, we must first have peace within ourselves. Without internal peace, our actions will be unskillful or even violent, leading to increased suffering and injustice for ourselves and others. Thầy teaches that “The quality of our being is the ground of all appropriate action.”4 Thus, working for peace requires that we first establish a peaceful quality of being in our own mind. This vital step is often overlooked by even the most well-intentioned of activists.
How does one establish peace of mind? All of the world’s great spiritual traditions offer us the same insight: peace of mind arises as a result of contemplative practice. The practices themselves differ by tradition, but at the core, all traditions recommend contemplation as a basis for establishing a peaceful mind. The contemplative practice offered by Thầy was Buddhist meditation, grounded in the practice of mindfulness. Let’s explore this practice further as a way of preparing to reduce the harm our society is experiencing.
Stopping
Human beings are subject to a mental analog of Newton’s first law of motion, which states that unless acted upon by an external force, a body at rest will remain at rest and a body in motion will remain in motion in a given direction. The first law describes inertia.
Our minds are also subject to inertia, constantly spinning thoughts and constantly in motion. We are not often aware of the claustrophobic and repetitive nature of our mental chatter, and most of us do not realize that we can cultivate a more spacious relationship to our own mind. The external influence that changes the inertia of our minds is mindfulness.
The cultivation of a more spacious and peaceful mind begins with stopping. Find a quiet place where you can sit upright, with your feet flat on the floor, your spine erected but relaxed, and your sit-bones grounded in the chair or on the cushion. The posture allows you to remain alert and relaxed at the same time. Next, begin to notice your breath entering and leaving your body. Do not try to change it, just notice it. When you are breathing in, know that you are breathing in. When you are breathing out, know that you are breathing out. In just a few breaths, you will have unified your body, mind, and breath. This is the foundation of stopping.
Our minds are used to being very busy, and it will not take long for thoughts to arise in your mind and hook your attention. When you recognize that you’ve abandoned your breath (recognizing this sometimes takes a while), gently note that and return to following your breath. Please don’t get irritated and judge yourself for chasing a thought. This is what our minds do, and the process of returning to the present moment is the heart of the practice.
It may be helpful to practice with a gatha, which is a short poem that we use to stay in the present moment with our breath. Here is a gatha that Thầy composed based upon the Buddha’s teachings on the full awareness of breathing.
Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.
Breathing in, my in-breath grows deep.
Breathing in, my out-breath goes slowly.
Breathing in, I cultivate calm.
Breathing out, I experience ease.
Breathing in, I smile.
Breathing out, I release.
Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment.
Breathing out, I know it is a wonderful moment.
You can simplify this gatha further by just using the last concept in each line. This approach yields a simple poem. Each line represents a complete breath cycle, with the in breath on the word/phrase before the comma and the out breath on the word/phrase after the comma.
In, Out
Deep, Slow
Calm, Ease
Smile, Release
Present Moment, Wonderful Moment
The practice of stopping is fundamental to the establishment of peace within ourselves, and it is the basis for healing of the stress that we carry in our bodies and minds. Internal peace is required before we can establish peace in the world.
Please make this practice something you do daily. You can start with 5-10 minutes of sitting and following your breath, and work your way up to 20-30 minutes. A very beautiful and simple guide to establishing a sitting practice is How to Sit by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Touching & Understanding our Suffering
The first Noble Truth that the Buddha expounded was the truth of the existence of suffering. The practice of the first Noble Truth is to recognize our suffering when it arises, and to seek to understand our suffering. Recognition of our suffering is built on our ability to stop. Once we are able to stop, to cultivate peace and calm in our minds, then we have the stability to look deeply into what we encounter. It is very important to look deeply into our own suffering, because doing so will help us understand it, and can also help us to understand that the unskillful actions of others are rooted in their suffering.
Thầy says, “We try to transform suffering into something good. Even a lotus flower needs mud in order to grow. It can’t grow on marble. You have to recognize that there is a close connection between suffering and happiness. If you run away from suffering, you cannot find happiness. On the contrary, we should try to identify the roots of our suffering. Only then can we gain understanding and cultivate compassion.
These two things are the key to happiness. All the money and power in the world will not bring happiness unless there is understanding and compassion. The only thing that helps in the face of fanaticism, oppression, fear and anger is looking deeply into the mud in order to allow a lotus flower to grow. If you can recognize the suffering of your aggressor, you don’t need to hate him.”5
When we encounter our fear, anger, and despair about the situation of our society, we must stop and take a close look to understand the cause of our suffering. It may be something we ate or drank, something we heard, read, or saw, something we aspire to, or some habitual thought that keeps us in despair. These are the four nutriments we ingest: edible food, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. Understanding what nourishes our suffering and helps it continue is a precursor to transforming our suffering.
While these teachings on suffering may seem very odd to Christian readers, they are actually deeply aligned with the teachings of Jesus. The mud of our suffering is very much like the cross which Jesus asks us to carry. In Matthew 16: 24 Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Touching and understanding our suffering is how we take up our cross. The self-denial Jesus demands in the verse is exactly how we cease to ingest the nutriments that lead to our suffering. Earlier in Matthew 11: 28, Jesus points to the lotus that can be born of this muddy, cross-carrying process when he says that our burdens will be made lighter if we bring them to him, and he promises to give us rest.
Transforming our Suffering
There are many practices to transform our suffering. Here I will touch on three that Thầy commonly teaches.
Indirect Transformation
Indirect transformation involves inviting wholesome seeds of happiness to sprout and grow in our mind consciousness. This leaves less energy for our seeds of suffering to take root. This is not avoidance. We do not seek to deny or avoid our suffering, but we do seek to notice and cultivate our happiness. A simple practice to touch our happiness is the intentional practice of gratefulness. Gratefulness is the primary spiritual practice of Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, a close friend of Thich Nhat Hanh.
.On Brother David’s grateful.org website, there are many offerings and courses to help us learn to cultivate this important virtue. Importantly, the primary method he teaches for cultivating gratefulness is to stop, look, and go. You can see the parallels with the practice described above, which involve stopping, looking deeply, and acting on what we learn. In this particular case, we are focused on noticing the gifts in our lives, the things that are given and not earned. These are everywhere, and they range from the simple to the profound. The yellow of a daffodil, a rainbow after the rain, the smile of a baby—all of these are given, all of these are gratuitous. We are surrounded by gifts like this if we only open our eyes to see them. Practicing gratefulness in this way leads to “great fullness” and happiness.
Here is a gorgeous five minute video narrated by Brother David to help us learn to cultivate this most important practice.
Continual Mindfulness
A second way to transform suffering is more direct. The aim of sitting meditation practice isn’t to add one more task to a “better self” list and check it off daily. It is to learn to generate the energy of mindfulness so that we can live our lives in the present moment. We do this by continually practicing mindfulness in our daily life.
Suffering is an energy in our mind consciousness. Mindfulness is also an energy in our mind consciousness. A miraculous property of mindfulness is that it has the power to transform unwholesome energies in our mind into wholesome energies. The continual practice of mindfulness allows us to recognize suffering when it arises. We bathe our suffering in mindfulness, treating it with compassion and care, like an old friend. As a result of this care, transformation occurs.
Inviting Suffering to Arise
In the third approach to transforming suffering, we invite our hurts, afflictions, anger, and despair to arise in our mind consciousness. We remember the circumstances that caused them to occur, and when they arrive, we greet them and take care of them. This is very similar to the approach of continual mindfulness, where we also bathe our suffering in mindfulness and take good care of it. The main difference is that in this approach we intentionally invite suffering to arise, whereas in continual mindfulness, we deal with it when it arises on its own. This approach should only be practiced after we have a very solid meditation practice, as it requires that the lamp of our mindfulness is bright, steady, and strong.
The Importance of Community
We are viscerally aware of the deep divisions, challenges, and injustices of our time. Many people I talk to express feeling both stuckness and rage. These are natural responses to the harm being inflicted on our society by the authoritarian actions of Donald Trump, but they aren’t a ground for acting to reduce that harm and heal the situation. To cultivate peace in our culture, we must first have peace in ourselves.
It is important to note that cultivating peace of mind will be very difficult to do alone. There are so many forces working against mindfulness, and so many nutriments around us that destabilize our minds. We need a contemplative community to support us in this work. I belong to Living Christ Sangha, which is an interfaith community that seeks to encourage one another in the art of mindful living. If you are interested, please join us on Zoom each week or during our monthly in-person session, which occurs on the 2nd Sunday of the month. Dates and times are in the website link above.
There are many other alternatives, including Sanghas that practice around the world in the tradition of Plum Village. In the Christian tradition, many churches now have Centering Prayer groups that practice the establishment of peace and intimacy with God.
Please find friends who will walk with you along the path. They are essential to your cultivation of peace, and they will be your allies in the cultivation of peace in our society and in the world.
I deeply apologize to my subscribers for the long lapse between posts. My life has been complicated by two challenges: a merger between the firm I work for and another large company, and a serious bout of insomnia. It took some effort, but I have a handle on both.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ, page 6.
Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Sit, page 15.