meditation and compassion

Toward more compassionate conversations online

August 7, 2026

Here are things I try to observe in my own communication online, especially around politics. These lessons are drawn from mistakes I’ve made in the past. Frankly, I’m still making these mistakes — but not as often as I used to.

Before logging in to social media or initiating any conversation that might result in conflict, pause and set an intention, perhaps along the lines of: “May I be kind to myself and others. May I recognize that anger is destructive. May I remember to be respectful. May I connect with others rather than provoke discord.”
Be selective about who you follow on social media. Unfollow or mute people who are frequently hostile or critical, even if they’re on your end of the political spectrum. I ended up unfollowing people who were witty and clever in the way they wielded criticism when I began to realize it was emotionally toxic. If you can find compassionate individuals, follow them. I don’t necessarily mean people who gush about love and light all the time. Compassionate people may simply be helpful, bringing clarity without heat, and explaining complex situations without being unduly emotive.
Imagine how you would feel if you were the person you’re talking to. If you’re tempted to insult them, remember what it’s like to be on the receiving end of insults. If someone has already been criticized by others, imagine what it’s like to be piled onto. Even if you refrain from insults, remember that it’s hard to be contradicted, and be sensitive with any criticism you offer.
Think of conversations as collaborations rather than competitions. You’re not there to win battles. If the other person is competitive, they’re still collaborating with you. They’re teaching you who you are and giving you an opportunity to practice compassion for self and other. They’re prompting you to dig deeper so you can find wiser ways to respond. Remember: “All people and all circumstances are your allies.”
One of the principles of effective, compassionate communication is to ask questions — out of curiosity, not as “gotchas.” If you point out the limitations or mistakes in someone’s thinking, they’ll dig in. If you ask them to elaborate and they come to see those limitations for themselves, they may have an epiphany.
Don’t just criticize things you don’t like; also share your ideals. People need to be presented with better alternatives. If can embrace complexity, or if you have a vision of a society that embodies your spiritual ideas, then present that unashamedly.
Watch your tone carefully. Pay attention to whether you’re even subtly trying to put the other person down, or to make them look or feel bad. Don’t exaggerate or misrepresent the other person’s point of view. Avoid addressing someone with sarcasm, which is a form of hostility.
Mocking someone’s appearance or infirmities does not become any less odious just because they have different politics from you or because they do harmful things.
It’s not natural to be discussing loaded topics all the time, so take longer-term breaks from social media and political conversations. Limit your time online so that you’re not constantly stressing yourself out. If politics proves to be a conversational flashpoint, families and friends can decide to avoid talking about it.
It’s okay to walk away from a an unproductive or heated argument. This might feel hard at first, because we can obsess, itching to retaliate. But those feelings will pass. Tomorrow you probably won’t regret not having had the last word, and soon you’ll have forgotten about the conversation altogether. You can agree to disagree: “I don’t think either of us is going to change the other’s mind, so I’m going to go do something else now. Thank you for taking the time to discuss this.”
(This is sometimes my last ditch effort at communicating as I’m walking away.) If someone’s being truly hateful, try saying “You can be better than this.” It’s always true, because we can all always be better. Because it recognizes the other person’s capacity for change, it’s always helpful. It doesn’t suggest they’re bad, and so it’s not unkind. It’s also not something they’re likely to disagree with.

The radio personality Peter Segal shared a list called “Peter’s Rules of Twitter,” one of which was “Never, ever insult someone personally. Mockery is fine, as long as it’s aimed upwards.” Comedians similarly say “punch up, not down.” In other words, make jokes at the expense of those who have power, high status, and privilege — if they deserve it. But don’t mock those who lack power. And note the word “personally.” If you are to be critical, make it about what someone has done or said, not about who they are.

We can still be critical — even very critical. I have no problem with describing a politician’s behavior as “corrupt” if that word is appropriate. It’s important that political leaders’ injustice or wrongdoing is exposed and condemned. I see this as following the lead of the Buddha, who sometimes called out bad behavior in strong terms.

Many times, though, I’ve started to compose a mocking reply directed at a politician or media figure and have deleted before posting it. Sometimes I realize that others have already said what I would say, but better. Mostly, though, I don’t think it’s good for my soul.

To end, I’ll share Peter Segal’s final piece of advice: “To survive on the veldt, humans evolved to crave sugars and fats and to get energized by anger and fear. We don’t live on the veldt anymore. Refrain from feeding obsolete hungers.”

Politics as a spiritual practice

February 20, 2026

Bodhipaksa

on practice

It’s hard not to get overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world.

Politics is polarizing, the news cycle fuels outrage, and social media tears relationships apart. A lot of us are swinging between anger, anxiety, despair, and exhaustion.

You want to stay engaged. You want to care. But you also want to hang on to your well-being.

That’s exactly why I created “As the World Falls Apart” — a course on treating politics as a spiritual practice.

This isn’t about taking sides. It’s about transforming how you relate to what’s happening.

In the course, I guide you through:

Practical in-depth teachings that reframe political engagement as part of your path of awakening.
Guided meditations that help you work directly with fear, anger, and polarization.
Community discussions where you can share your journey and learn from others.
Live Zoom calls to deepen practice, get moral support and clarity, and stay connected in real time.

Imagine being able to follow the news without losing your balance. Imagine disagreeing without dehumanizing. Imagine responding from clarity and compassion instead of reactivity.

The alternative is that we swing between anxious obsession and despondent disengagement.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you want your political life to become part of your spiritual path rather than a threat to it, I invite you to join As the World Falls Apart.

This course is only available to Wildmind’s sponsors. But joining is easy. Just click the button below for details. (There are lots more benefits to being a sponsor!)

With love,
Bodhipakṣa

Click here to become a sponsor and join me in “As the World Falls Apart”

Join me in “As the World Falls Apart”

January 6, 2026

Bodhipaksa

on practice

I am launching a major new course for 2026, on the topic of how we deal with political turmoil.

Here’s why:

It sometimes seems that the world we’re living in is falling apart in terrifying ways.

I feel oppressed by the knowledge that the world is on a very wrong track at the moment. My fears of where things might go are a heavy burden to carry. The events unfolding around me were once unthinkable and are now shocking and I view them with a sense of disbelief. It’s like one day I woke up and found myself in the wrong timeline. How can all this be happening?

Much that we value is being lost or is under threat: a livable climate, free speech, the rule of law and due process, the reliability of the US as an international partner, our expectation that the world had learned “never again” with regard to genocide, the assumption that larger countries should not invade smaller ones just because they can, the belief that all human lives matter and that racism and xenophobia are wrong, economies in which ordinary people can better themselves, trust in science and medicine — even democracy itself.

n so many ways a familiar world (imperfect though it is) seems to be crumbling around us, being replaced by something crueler, less human. The forces of authoritarianism and fascism, although largely defeated, never went away, even in liberal democracies, but they’re undergoing a dark resurgence.

Change is coming at us so fast that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We might feel paralyzed with terror. We might feel tempted to give up in despair. We might find ourselves consumed with rage.

I have to say, some of you might be sick of politics. You might want to just hide.

But that’s what authoritarians want. They do and say outrageous and cruel things at a breakneck pace so that we’ll feel overwhelmed and hopeless, and so that we’ll stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen, because things will just get worse. Many, many people will suffer.

We can’t directly change the upsetting things that are happening in the world around us. But we can change how we respond to them. And if we want the world to change direction, that’s what we’re going to have to do.

A new course

For the last few months I’ve been working on a new course on how we can learn to stay calm, open-hearted, and optimistic as the world is falling apart.

The course is structured around three broad headings for spiritual practice:

Feet On the Ground: This means learn to calm ourselves even in the midst of chaos and outrage. This involves not just mindfulness, but the sense of calm empowerment that comes from knowing we’re doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We practice self-care to keep ourselves in balance. We get smarter about reading the news and using social media.
Heart Wide Open: This includes actions such as supporting ourselves with self-compassion, staying open to the sufferings of others, and cultivating joy as a form of resistance. It includes becoming more fearless. It includes reconnecting with the good that exists in the world and remembering that there are more people who want peace and unity than want violence and division. It includes connecting with and working with those people.
Keep Looking Up: This includes developing and maintaining our faith in a better world. It involves becoming clearer about what a better world would look like. It’s about learning to work with other people of good will to make that a reality.

Taking action — which is one of the emphases of this course — doesn’t necessarily mean becoming an activist. It might mean encouraging those who are. It might mean holding a sign at a rally. It might mean contributing to groups that are working for good. It might mean staying in touch with others who know that what’s going on is wrong, and offering each other moral support. It might include smiling at strangers, and showing that you’re not cowed. It might mean reading an inspiring book with friends. However little we can do, it’s important we do it.

We can push for the creation of a better world, starting here, starting now. In the future, you’ll want to be able to say, “We couldn’t stop them. But we slowed them down. And when the insanity collapsed in on itself, we’d already worked out how we wanted to rebuild things.”

How it works

This course is based on others I’ve run in the past — especially “Love Your Enemies” and “Politics As a Spiritual Practice” — which many people found helpful. I’ve been substantially reworking the materials from those courses and creating new content to make sure I address the renewed threat of fascism and authoritarianism, how we resist it, how we live with it, and how we make it less likely to happen next time.

The course starts Wednesday, 28th of January.
This course has a weekly email, which will go out on Wednesdays at 5 AM US Eastern Time. Each email contains a substantial essay, or a part of one.
There will be meditations, but the emphasis is more on the readings, reflections, and practice suggestions.
The number of emails isn’t finalized, but the course will probably run for the whole year.
There will be live Zoom discussion groups every two weeks where we can talk about the articles, our thoughts and feelings, and our lives. I’m aiming to do these at two different times, to accommodate people in the US, the UK and Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Bear in mind it’s not possible to suit everyone’s schedule. Details to follow.
We can also have written discussions in the community website. Participation and sharing are important.

Our world falling apart is an opportunity

The title of this course is not meant to be alarmist or depressing. In a sense the world is always falling apart. Our own bodies are falling apart, right now. The leaf in the photograph above is falling apart. What keeps things together is the ongoing work of building and sustaining. As well as falling apart, your body is constantly healing and growing. The leaf’s very falling apart is the condition that supports the growth of new leaves. Old institutions die, and new ones are created.

The falling apart of the old world is like the death of a leaf. It looks like a loss. But it’s also an opportunity for new growth. We know that the world we lost, no matter how much we mourn its passing, can never be put back together again the way it was. And it shouldn’t. It fell apart because it was a bad world for too many people. What we grow in the leaf litter has to be something better, fairer, more just, more human. It has to be a world in which all people can flourish. That’s what we need to aim for. What is that world like? How do we get there? We’ll talk about that together.

This course is only open to those who sponsor Wildmind, thereby giving me the opportunity to reflect and write. But it’s easy to become a sponsor, and it’s only $8 a month. That’s a sound investment in an exploration that will help you feel happy and balanced amidst the turbulence, and that will help you be of more use to our suffering world.

With love,
Bodhipakṣa

👉 Click here to become a sponsor and to join me in “As the World Falls Apart” 👈

Publication Day! The Heart’s Awakening

October 14, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

It’s always an interesting day when one of your books is published. It’s exciting. But you’re sending your inmost thoughts out into the world for other people to read and perhaps judge, and so sometimes it’s nerve-racking as well.

I felt rather tired for most of today, and I think it’s probably because of the emotions going on under the surface.

So far the reviews and comments have been very positive. Reading some of them made me well up. To know you’ve touched another person’s life and offered them something they’ve found helpful can open the heart.

Opening the heart is the theme of this book. It’s about the four Buddhist practices — although they’re really just human practices — called the brahma-viharas. This term is usually translated as “divine abidings” which sounds so elevated it’s almost out of sight. It could also be accurately rendered (and has been historically) as “the four best ways of living your life.”

I think that’s more down to earth and practical. Practicing the four best ways of living your life is a different kind of challenge. It’s the challenge not of transporting yourself to some exalted elsewhere, but of choosing over and over to be here in the best way you can.

And the best way we can be here is to be kind and compassionate to ourselves and others, and to see and appreciate our own and others’ goodness. These are the first three of the four best ways we can live our lives.

The fourth way is to refuse to leave any place in our hearts for hatred, contempt, or dismissal. Because our attempts to be kind, compassionate, and appreciative are always bound, at least sometimes, to fail. And so the fourth practice is to look closely at what the mind is doing that gives it permission to be unkind. It’s to see in what way we are refusing to see others’ nature as feeling beings who suffer just as we do, and who long for peace and happiness, just as we do.

The word “upekkha” — the fourth of the brahma-viharas — comes from a root that means “to look closely.” It’s usually rendered as “equanimity,” though: emotional balance. And that’s a part of it. But not all.

We try to be loving. But then other beings get under our skin and we react to them with ill will. To overcome this, we look more closely. For example, we see that all beings are impermanent. We see that they are all caught up in webs of conditioning, and are not fully responsible for their actions. We see that they all have the potential for awakening. This looking helps us to find our emotional balance again. But we don’t leave things there. From a place of equanimity we are free once again to return to being kind, compassionate, and appreciative.

Anyway, I aimed to make the book very practical. It’s in 108 short chapters, so that you can pick it up, read, reflect, and practice. And then repeat.

If any of this sounds at all interesting, the book is easy to get hold of. Here are a few links:

I hope you find it helpful!

Books and cats

August 29, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

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It was lovely to receive this photograph the other day. This is Mara, one of the people who wrote an endorsement of my forthcoming book, “The Heart’s Awakening,” receiving her advance copy.

The cat in the background is Cleo.

The book doesn’t come out until Oct 14, and I didn’t even know that it existed in physical form!

I’m looking forward to seeing one myself.

“The Heart’s Awakening” has the subtitle, “108 Steps to a Life of Love.” It explores how we can bring more kindness, compassion, and appreciation into our lives. These are things that enrich our lives and make us happier.

It explains how we can overcome anger, hatred, resentment, and contempt — which make us and others unhappy.

One of the things it addresses is the way we undermine ourselves through self-criticism. Lots of people in our lives have criticized us in order to “improve” us. We internalize that strategy to the point where we can’t imagine living without it, even though we hate it!

The teachings in my book show how we can support and encourage ourselves through kindness instead. It makes such a difference to our lives when we do this. We realize that we’ve been going through life traumatizing ourselves with self-criticism. Then we wonder why we procrastinate on doing important things. Well, isn’t it kind of natural to avoid doing things when you’re only going to criticize yourself for not doing them “perfectly”?

There is a better way. And it’s not that hard. It starts with learning to show ourselves a little warmth and encouragement, using soft, kind, eyes (which is something I explain in the book), kinder inner communication, and other methods.

The Heart’s Awakening is available for preorder now. Why not reserve your copy so that you can hit the ground running (or sitting) on October 14?

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon, and os bookshop.org (which allows you to support your local bookstore).

Gratitude in a time of calamity

July 14, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

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First, the calamity

We’re on a very bad path in the US at the moment. Many of you live in the US, as I do, although many of you don’t. However, as they say, “If America sneezes the rest of the world catches cold.” What happens here affects the entire world. Many people outside the US are concerned, worried, or despondent. In some cases they are seeing the rise of politicians and voters inspired by what’s happening here.

I’m not going to detail the calamity. Let’s just mention that it’s not normal to have masked men grabbing people from the streets, from hospitals, from courtrooms, and government offices, while refusing to show ID or provide warrants. It’s not normal for the government to be sending people abroad to concentration camps where they are tortured and have no hope of ever being set free. It’s not normal for the highest court in the land to allow this to happen.

What is happening is not normal. It’s a calamity. It’s the collapse of democratic norms. Usually we’d rely on elections to get us out of a calamity caused by government action. But much of what is going on right now is illegal, and governments that commit crimes are not generally open to being removed from power, because then they might end up in prison.

Things are grim, and the grimmest part is that this has only just begun. It’s pretty much guaranteed that there is much worse to come.

On top of this, we all have our individual difficulties to deal with: an aging spouse, a messy divorce, struggling to make ends meet, uncertainties about our health, and so on.

It’s a lot to deal with.

Next, the gratitude

I’m not suggesting that gratitude is going to overthrow an authoritarian regime, stop masked men from kidnapping people off the streets, or restore democracy. But I do suggest that it can help us stay more emotionally balanced while bad things happen.

The worst things we can do are to become hopeless and despondent, thinking that things can never get better. We need optimism — the positive optimism of confidence, not the toxic optimism of just assuming things aren’t really that bad and that even worse things won’t happen. We need faith that there are things worth fighting for.

There are people who want us to feel afraid, traumatized, and hopeless, because it makes it easier for them to accomplish the evil acts they’re set on. Finding joy and optimism is an act of resistance. Creating emotional resilience is an act of resistance.

As an image someone recently shared in the Wildmind community says, “If you ever feel heavy because you care deeply about injustice, suffering, and ecological destruction, remember that a trillion dollar propaganda machine was built to make you numb, and it didn’t work on you.”

The same is true regarding the destruction of democracy and the rule of law.

Gratitude helps.

Even in normal times, our minds have a tendency to focus on the things that we don’t like — things that are going wrong, or aren’t going the way we would like them to go, people that annoy us, events that disappoint us, and so on. We also have a tendency to take good things for granted, forgetting that most things in our lives are actually going well. These tendencies are inherent, and evolutionary psychologists say they’ve been useful for our species’ survival by helping us to avoid danger. But in modern times our main problem is usually not avoiding dangers. It’s learning to be at ease, to be happy, and to create and sustain loving connections with others.

Gratitude gives us a break from obsessing about the things that are going wrong, and turns our attention to the things that are going right. I have a practice of sitting down every morning and writing down five things (at least) that I’m grateful for. They’re often small things. This morning I shared my gratitude for learning from a kind and wise man in my dreams, text messages from my teenage son, an injury that’s healing (and another that at least is not getting worse), and the joy that has come from simplifying my possessions and making sure that the things I own have homes.

The secret, I find, is to avoid rattling through these things in a rote fashion, but to dwell on each one. I describe this as “holding each one in my heart until I feel the goodness of it.” In other words, I take something that’s good in my life, and I think about it for a little while. I might just let it lie in my mind. Or I might imagine what life would be like without it. Usually after just a few seconds I begin to feel a warm glow of joy. That’s what I call “feeling the goodness.”

This is the opposite of taking good things for granted. It’s the opposite of dwelling on the negative. And it has the opposite effect of those things. It uplifts me rather than dragging me down. It gives me joy rather than leaving me feeling disgruntled and critical.

Another secret is not to see my morning gratitude practice as the be-all-and-end-all of gratitude. It’s a gentle reminder at the start of the day of the direction I want my mind to move in. I want to be more appreciative. I want to take joy in life’s little things. And so I remind myself to keep returning to gratefulness throughout the day.

Every so often I’ll just pause and appreciate little things, like the way the leaves are blowing in the wind, or that sewers exist, or that there are shops just down the road where I can buy the food I need. This brings joy to life. It changes the very structure of the brain. It changes who we are.

(Feel free to join me and the others here who regularly share what they’re grateful for.)

We need joy and gratitude in order to get through these difficult times.

Rebecca Solnit Points out that beneath our anger is love: “You are angry the children are being bombed or the forest is being cleared because you care about them, so it’s not the feelings about the forces of destruction that is primary. It’s the love, and not losing sight of that is crucial.”

If we’re just angry, we’re playing a similar game to the authoritarian, who is angry and hateful about almost everything. We need to see what’s good and stay in touch with it. This takes practice.

Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist at Wayne State University, says “When you’re afraid, all you’re thinking about is what you’re afraid of.” He also points out that we need to balance the bad things we’re hearing by focusing on the good — even simple things like science, the arts, and sports.

There will be a time when this is all over. Maybe they won’t rig the elections enough. Maybe there will be a massive, non-violent uprising. In the meantime:

In a time of lies, appreciate truth.
In a time of division, be grateful for connection.
In a time of denunciation, recognize and celebrate the good in others.
And most of all, in a time of hatred, be grateful that love persists. Show it to others. Give them support and encouragement.

As the lawyer and commentator Joyce Vance likes to sign off, “We’re in this together.”

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Democracy and spiritual practice

July 1, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Because of the alarming political situation in the US, which has parallels with events in other countries, I’ve been writing about how we, as spiritual practitioners, might skillfully face the troubling emotions politics can give rise to.

The two emotions that stand out for me are fear (where is this all going? how bad will things get?) and despair (mourning the loss of democratic norms).

To help me to deal with these potent emotions, I’ve adopted three slogans: Feet on the ground. Heart wide open. Eyes upward (or keep looking up). These provide a framework for my practice.

Feet on the ground means finding ways to keep ourselves emotionally balanced, so we can avoid panic and despair. We might want to be mindful in our news consumption. We might choose not to follow those who build followings on social media by generating, outrage, and follow instead people who are informed, compassionate, and balanced. Keeping up a daily meditation practice helps us be calmer. Keeping up our friendships (especially with those who are wise and balanced) helps us with emotional regulation. We might also understand that what’s happening today is part of a long historical pattern of swings between more democratic and autocratic styles of government.
Heart wide open reminds me that it’s important not to shut down and disengage, no matter how overwhelming the news might be. We need to create an inner space of compassion — staying in touch with our own suffering — and live from that space. We need to stay in touch with the reality of others’ suffering, and do what we can to help.
Eyes upward reminds me that we mustn’t ever let what’s happening now seem acceptable. We must remember, at a time of viciousness and chaos, what’s good and normal, and how things should be. But a return to normal, difficult as it is to imagine the path that takes us there, wouldn’t be enough. “Eyes upward” means aspiring to create a better, fairer society than we had before. Above all, it means developing a deeper appreciation of democracy and wanting a better, more inclusive, less corrupt democracy.

Democracy Is Under Threat

In fact, one of the things we are losing, or might be losing — and this is a source both of grief and fear — is democracy itself. The grief comes because of the freedoms and security we have lost. The fear comes for many reasons, but chief amongst them is that when leaders are no longer subject to democratic accountability, very bad things start to happen, from political persecution up to torture, murder, and genocide.

Democracy goes through periods of expansion and contraction. There were very few democracies before World War I, but an explosion of them afterwards. Democracies in that period also became more truly democratic, extending the franchise to working class men and to women.

Before WWII there was rise of authoritarianism and a decline in democracy. But after that war, the former colonies shed their European overlords, former dictatorships became democracies, and democracy expanded again. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many former communist dictatorships adopted democratic forms of government. The number of people living in democracies peaked around 2006, after which democracy there was a rise once again of authoritarianism. Sometimes this authoritarianism took the guise of “illiberal democracy” where elections take place, but the ruling party has rigged things so that they’re almost certain to stay in power. Orbán’s Hungary is a prime example of this.

Right now we’re seeing a stark decline in democracy in the United States. Danger signs include:

the president taking control of governmental spending (a function reserved for congress)
threats to media outlets and law firms that the president regards as enemies
threats against judges (and actual arrests)
the executive branch defying court orders
the government attempting to take over the running of universities, etc.

These are all classic moves in establishing a Hungary-type authoritarian pseudo-democracy.

Recognizing the long-term ups and downs of democracy reminds us that it’s not “game over” when a country becomes authoritarian or even an outright dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes tend to implode, and people’s hunger for freedom and self-determination can never be entirely suppressed.

Reasons to Have Faith In Democracy

I have faith in democracy as the best form of government for complex modern states. It is our best hope for a dignified human existence. And it is the best political system for facilitating spiritual practice.

I say this knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect democracy. Human beings are themselves not perfect, and we are emerging from a history soaked in blood. We cannot slough off the past, and have to learn from it, sometimes painfully, in order to move on.

I offer four grounds to support my claim that liberal democracy is the best form of government.

1. Liberal Democracies Are More Peaceful

It is exceedingly rare for democracies to go to war with each other. The establishment of democracy in virtually all of Europe and South America has drastically reduced the incidence of war in those areas of the world. The more democracies there are, the more peaceful the world is likely to become.

Autocracies are inevitably violent. Their leaders are themselves belligerent and intolerant. They see wars as a good way of distracting a population from the poor standard of living that results from their inept leadership. Their populations are often unable to protest against wars. This is the case in Russia, for example. People may be so misled by propaganda that they don’t understand what’s going on. Many people in Russia think their soldiers are fighting Nazis in Ukraine. The more freedom there is, and the more the media is able to report what’s going on, the more opposition there is to war.

When autocratic leaders don’t direct violence against other countries, they often do so against less-favored citizens of their own countries. Liberal democracies tend to be peaceful places to live. Citizens do not generally have to fear that they will be dragged off for holding dissenting views. As Orwell wrote, “No system except democracy can be trusted to save us from unspeakable horrors.”

2. Liberal Democracy Allows for Material Flourishing

Liberal democracies tend to provide a far higher standard of living than autocratic regimes. The 10 countries with the highest standard of living are all liberal democracies, and yet liberal democracies count for only a third of the world’s governments.

Liberal democracies tend to be stable, predictable, and durable. No democracy is perfect, but in the main they have strong political institutions and legal systems, and democracies usually choose people with demonstrated competence to staff its agencies. Authoritarian regimes, offer government posts as rewards to those who demonstrate loyalty to the leader. Corruption flourishes, and as a result, the country and its economy become inefficient. The more dysfunctional and corrupt a democracy is, the more likely it is that it’s in the process of becoming authoritarian.

The more flawed a democracy is, the worse the standard of living tends to me. Neither the UK and US is anywhere near the top of the standard of living chart (the US is 15th, while the UK is 22nd), and both countries have been downgraded by the Economist Intelligence Unit from “full” to “flawed” democracies.

3. Liberal Democracy Allows for Emotional and Spiritual Flourishing

There is a reason why so many great spiritual and philosophical teachers—including the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Plato—arose in the so-called Axial Age. The invention of iron meant that society was no longer living at a subsistence level. People could use iron axes to clear forests for agriculture use, and plow fields with iron-tipped plows. The agricultural surplus they generated, they could transport long distances in carts with iron-rimmed wheels. This created cities, where minds could more easily meet and talk.

With a higher standard of living, and with more free time, people could now ask questions like, “What is my life’s purpose? What does it mean to live a good life?” To focus here on material flourishing is not to be materialistic. It’s to recognize that freedom from material want allows for spiritual flourishing.

Many of the qualities necessary in the political culture of a democracy — a democracy’s “personality,” so to speak — are skillful traits of trust, ethics, and empathy. These qualities give rise to well-being in those that bear them and open them up to spiritual growth.

By contrast, authoritarian regimes produce unhappy people. Authoritarian governments engender feelings of powerlessness and cynicism. People may believe a regime’s propaganda for a while, but eventually they realize that they are surrounded by lies. Everyone is corrupt, and nothing is done well, but changing things is almost impossible.

Authoritarian regimes have to distract their populations from their problems. One way to do this is to generate hatred. Leaders will often target a despised group that they blame for society’s problems. In this way, authoritarianism encourages unskillful emotions of hatred and intolerance. For the same reason it encourages simplistic black and white thinking, rather than more nuanced thinking that encourages truth-seeking.

4. Liberal Democracies are Tolerant of Spiritual Exploration

One of the “personality traits” of democracies being their tolerance of diversity, democracies tend to allow for spiritual experimentation. Mature democracies officially recognize, minority religions such as Buddhism, and often give them access to special benefits, such as tax-exemptions. Although in some ways the US is a religiously intolerant nation, people who are Buddhists or members of other minority languages have been elected to high office.

The American experiment took as axiomatic the idea that people should be free to follow their own conscience in seeking a life that’s meaningful. For that reason, the founders of the US avoided having a state religion. In contrast, autocratic nations often have a favored state religion, and minority religions may be disadvantaged, discriminated against, or even persecuted.

Because of these positive conditions, Buddhist sanghas tend to flourish in democratic nations.

So for these four reasons — democracies being more peaceful, prosperous, emotionally skillful, and supportive of spiritual exploration — I describe democracy as the most desirable form of political organization.

We Are the Majority

As democratic norms are eroded, we need to avoid panic (feet on the ground), yet we need to care deeply (heart wide open) and channel our love anger into opposing harmful changes. And as we do these things we need to keep reminding ourselves and others of democratic ideals, and of the material, emotional, and spiritual benefits of democracy (eyes upward). We need to keep democracy in people’s minds and on people’s tongues, and resist their tendency to see what’s happening as inevitable and unstoppable.

It’s the desire for freedom that’s unstoppable. Yes, sometimes people take democracy for granted. Sometimes they’ll vote for authoritarian leaders because they’re struggling economically or afraid of demographic change. And for some people the cruelty is the point.

But as I’ve written before, “[it’s] important to remember that there are many people in the US (and elsewhere, of course) who believe in kindness, generosity, tolerance, compassion, democracy, standing up to autocrats, and protecting the world that sustains us. That’s much more than half of the population. We are the majority.

We are the majority. And we will prevail.

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Self-compassion for troubling times

February 24, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

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At the moment lot of people are suffering more than usual. They are anxious, exhausted, and overwhelmed about the awful things going on in the world. They’re often glued to the news and steeped in the commentary that takes place on social media, their amygdalas on overdrive and their endocrine systems jangling with adrenaline.

I recently shared three slogans that have been helping me stay in balance. They are: Feet on the ground. Heart wide open. Eyes upward. These are phrases I suggest we all bear in mind.

I want to explain now how they relate to the practice of self-compassion.

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion is a major part of my spiritual practice. It helps us when times are hard. (I wrote a book on it called “This Difficult Thing of Being Human.“)

Self-compassion is treating ourselves as if we, and our suffering, matter. It’s where we are our own advocates. It’s where we provide ourselves with emotional support when times are rough. It can involve cutting yourself some slack when you realize you’ve messed up. After all, who doesn’t mess up? It can mean recognizing that suffering is normal, and not a sign of failure. Again, everyone suffers; it’s part of the human condition. It can mean offering yourself emotional support and reassurance. We all need those things. It can involve self-care, which means recognizing your needs for rest, nutrition, friendship, recreation, and so on, and making sure you meet those needs as best you can.

Let’s see how this works under the headings of the three slogans I’ve suggested.

1. “Feet on the ground”

We need to learn to keep our feet on the ground, emotionally.

Reactive emotions such as worry, anger, and despair hijack the mind and create suffering. In response to our feeling bad, the mind generates catastrophizing thoughts that make us feel even worse. These reactive emotions seem to imply that they will help; the unspoken assumption seems to be something like, “If I just keep worrying about this enough, thinking about all the things that might go wrong, I’ll be safer.” But instead, we suffer even more intensely and make it even harder for ourselves to do things that might actually help.

Recognize you’re suffering

The first step with self-compassion is recognizing that we’re suffering. You can’t meet your suffering with compassion if you don’t recognize how it’s there. So instead of being caught up stories about how awful things are, we need to recognize that these stories are part of our suffering. We need to recognize that worrying, anger, and despair are forms of suffering.

Drop the story

Having recognized that worry, anger, and despair are patterns of thinking that intensify our suffering, we next need to gently let go of them.

You can recognize, “This way of thinking doesn’t serve me” and decline to put any more energy into it. You drop the story.

But we don’t just drop the story and find ourselves in a mental vacuum. What we do instead is to turn toward the body, so that our awareness is filled with sensation, rather than thinking.

Turn toward painful feelings

We do this by noticing and accepting our suffering as it manifests in the body.

When the mind gives rise to worry, anger, and despair, what it’s reacting to are painful feelings in the body. Emotions are responses to feelings.

Any time you’re in a reactive state, notice what’s going on down in the chest, around the diaphragm, and in the belly. You’ll notice that there are unpleasant sensations there. There might be tightness, tingling, fluttering, heaviness, pressure, and so on. None of it feels good.

These are “feelings,” which are not the same as the reactive emotional patterns I described above. Feelings are just sensations. Emotions are something we do. They are our attempts to address those feelings.

Feelings may be unpleasant, but they are never “bad.” So we can accept them. They’re just sensations. They’re just signals arising in the body as communications from ancient parts of the brain that are saying, “Look. I think there’s a threat here that you should pay attention to.”

Accept what’s difficult

Rather than reacting emotionally to our feelings, we can just accept them and allow them to be present.

If necessary, you can say to yourself things like, “It’s okay to feel this. It’s just a sensation. Let’s just experience this. Let’s just allow it to be. There’s nothing to fear here. It’s unpleasant, but it’s not bad.”

This kind of self-talk helps support us as we bring our attention back, over and over, to our feelings.

You can notice the qualities of the feeling: the pressure, tingling, etc. You can notice how it changes.

The more the mind is engaged with observing the feelings as if they were any other sensation, the less the mind is able to react to them. And so observing our feelings reduces our tendency to be reactive, and helps us become calmer.

2. Heart Wide Open

Yet there’s much more to self-compassion than accepting painful feelings, no matter how important that may be. Compassion is when we meet our suffering with kindness. So we need to evoke kindness.

One of the easiest ways to awaken our innate capacity for kindness is the practice of “kind eyes.” We simply remember what it’s like to look with kindness, and notice the qualities of warmth, tenderness, softness, etc. that arise in and around the eyes. Then as we turn our attention toward a painful feeling, we find those qualities follow, having permeated our inner gaze of interoceptive awareness. In this way, we meet pain with kindness.

We can also talk to our pain. In effect this is the compassionate part of us communicating with and offering support and reassurance to the hurt or frightened part of us. We can say things like, “I know this is hard for you, but we’ll get through this. I’m here for you. I love you and I want you to be happy.”

Often when we’ve done all these things — recognized that we’re suffering, dropped the story, turned toward and accepted painful feelings, and offered ourselves support — we lose our reactivity, which benefits others. As the Buddha said, “Taking care of myself, I take care of others.”

Turn outward

Our reactivity had previously been keeping our attention running in circles like a dog convinced that its own tail is an enemy to be pursued. Now the mind has stopped running in circles, and is able to have a wider view. We’re able to see, for example, that others are suffering just as much, and often more, than we are. And because we’ve already aroused our empathy and compassion, we meet their pain with compassion as well.

Having self-compassion frees us up to have compassion for others.

Feeling compassionate toward others who are suffering — whether it’s because they’re in a war zone, are having their civil liberties withdrawn, or are scared about the future — is a good start, but ideally it sets us up for taking action so that we help where we can. That action might just involve asking someone how they’re doing, and listening with an open heart as they tell us. We should be wary of jumping in to give advice, but we can at least let the other person know that they’ve been heard and understood.

Being compassionate toward others helps us as well as them. It helps us meet our deep need for connection with others. And it reminds us that we’re not alone in suffering. Suffering is a universal feature of the human condition. Because compassion helps both parties, the Buddha said, “Taking care of others, I take care of myself.”

3. Keep Looking Upward

Keep looking upward. We need to remember what’s good and normal, even when it’s been replaced by viciousness and chaos. This is hard to do, because our expectations tend to slide. One tragicomic element of the first Trump administration was the repeated eagerness of some journalists to declare Trump as having been “presidential” because he’d managed to read a script from a teleprompter without going into word-salad digressions and without tossing around childish taunts and unkind nicknames.

Those journalists had made the mistake of letting their standards slide: being presidential no longer meant having personal qualities of decorum, leadership, wisdom, and emotional maturity. Now it simply meant “being able to read a prepared script.”

Remember “normal”

In so many ways, we need to remind ourselves of what “normal” used to be, so that we can, hopefully, return to normal. I highly recommend Masha Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy” as a reminder of what “normal,” how we’ve departed from it, and how the media normalized those departures. Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” is, however, a better guide for how to stay sane when a government slides into autocracy.

Keep hope alive

We need to keep hope alive. As Howard Zinn said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”

Hope helps us psychologically. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

We can change things. Maybe not much. But we can change things a little. And one person changing things can inspire others, which leads to more meaningful change.

There’s strength in numbers

Remember that there are more decent people than there are cruel people. We are the majority.

And according to a study by Erica Chenoweth of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Maria Stephan of the U.S. Institute of Peace, no democracy moment has ever failed when 3.5% of the population has protested over a sustained period.

It’s hard for us to sustain hope. But it’s essential, for our own emotional well-being, for us to be able to sustain others, and for the world.

So these are some of the ways in which self-compassion can manifest as we keep our feet on the ground, live with our hearts open, and keep hope alive.

Staying sane in turbulent times

January 27, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Especially for those who live in the US, there’s a huge amount going on politically. Many supporters of Donald Trump may be delighted by current events, but the rest of us are alarmed, or arguably should be.

Violent criminals, including some that assaulted police officers and one who ran an online drugs market, have been released from prison. An executive order was issued that tried to negate part of the constitution. Some of the president’s political enemies have had their security details withdraw, which puts their lives at risk. Round-ups of both citizens and undocumented migrants have begun. A man with a history of extreme drunkenness, threats against women, and financial impropriety has been put in charge of the world’s largest military. Federal contractors have been given the green light to practice racial and sexual discrimination. And so on, and so on. It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming.

I do not want to be overwhelmed, and I assume you don’t either. So I’d like to talk about what I’m doing to stay sane.

My slogan at the moment is “Feet on the ground. Heart wide open. Eyes upward.”

Feet on the ground

“Feet on the ground” means staying calm and emotionally grounded.

I’m practicing very light (or zero) engagement with the news, and instead reading thoughtful overviews from people like Heather Cox Richardson, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, and so on.

I’m trying to take care of my needs for rest and emotional nourishment by doing things like listening to music and seeing friends when I can. We need to look after ourselves.

I’m aiming not to be outraged, but instead to see everything as “to be expected given the circumstances” — that is, most of what’s happening (except for thinly veiled threats to invade Greenland and Panama) was flagged well in advance. Assuming you’d been paying attention, you won’t be surprised.

Accepting things as “to be expected” doesn’t mean accepting those things as okay. Instead it means treating them as matters of fact without freaking out. We can know that things are morally wrong and harmful, and support lawsuits, protest, legislative action, etc as countermeasures, without getting outraged (and thereby exhausted). Believing that outrage is necessary and helpful is one of the most unhelpful things we can do.

Bad as things are, I ground myself by reminding myself that things have been much worse here. Think of the times of slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, the wars against native peoples, the two World Wars. Things are bad, but we can be grateful they’re not worse. Having a historical perspective is another way of keeping my feet on the ground.

As far as fear goes, I’m trying to focus on the fact that right now, in this moment, I am safe. I’m aware that circumstances can change, but for now I’m okay. (My partner is more prone to anxiety, and is worried sick at the moment.)

Heart wide open

Heart wide open means staying in touch with the reality of others’ suffering.

It’s profoundly unhelpful in times like these to withdraw into selfishness, thinking that if we’re okay, then everything’s okay. This is a kind of solipsism that many spiritual practitioners slip into. Certainly there are times we have to withdraw and take care of ourselves. But the best kind of practitioner, the Buddha said, is one that practices for the benefit of not just themselves, and not just others, but both themselves and others. So we withdraw in order to benefit not just ourselves, but the world too.

So I need to think of others, some of whom have much more reason than I to be fearful, with roundups of both citizens and unregistered migrants, people with their jobs threatened, even people (as I’ve mentioned) having their security details cancelled. I’m trying to keep my heart open and compassionate, but unanxious.

Compassion is not anxiety or worry. It’s having concern because we or others are suffering, and it’s a desire to relieve that suffering. Having compassion for others helps us to avoid worrying. Worry is a form of anxious rumination, where we obsessively think about things that are going wrong (or might go wrong), often feeling helpless in the face of them. Worrying prevents us from having real compassion. Having compassion also reduces our tendency to worry. Having a concern for others takes us out of our tight, closed loops of ruminative thought.

Another thing that counters anxiety is actually doing something, so it helps to find organizations to support, such as those that offer legal advice. Raices, which provides legal representation for migrants and asylum seekers, is one I’m donating to. But there are many others. Whatever organization you support, even if you can afford to give only a little, you’ll almost certainly feel empowered by donating. You’ll feel you’re contributing, rather than just standing on the sidelines decrying everything that’s wrong.

To balance the need to avoid overwhelm with our natural desire to stay engaged and aware, you might want to pick just a couple of key topics to focus on. We can’t stay on top of everything.

Keep looking up

Keep looking up means, “be hopeful.”

As Howard Zinn said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”

Keep in mind not just the aim of combatting change that you find unwelcome, but also the kind of society you’d like to see emerge in the future. It might take decades to bring about some changes you’d like to see, but that means it’s all the more important to start now, sharing your vision and changing minds.

Feet on the ground. Heart wide open. Keep looking up.

These are the things I’m doing to stop feeling helpless and overwhelmed. What’s helping you?

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Create a space of compassion, and live from it

November 26, 2024

Bodhipaksa

on practice

In the immediate aftermath of the US presidential election, most people I know were shocked. Since then they seem to be making emotional adjustments, which is good.

This is no doubt partly to do with the nature of emotions themselves. Emotions are created by the way we interpret and think about the world. At first, all people could think about was the election, and so their emotional responses were heightened. Quickly, though, we start to — and have to — think about other things, from what we’re doing at work to what we’re buying for dinner. As the thing that shocks us becomes just one thing that we focus on, rather than the one thing that we focus on,, our emotions settle. Or they do to a certain extent, anyway. The big thing is still a big thing. We’re never able to ignore it for long, nor should we.

So we need other tools to help us deal with troubling feelings.

There are more good people than bad people

Many people have been seeking useful perspectives that help them to feel calmer. In another post here I suggested it was helpful to recognize that we are not alone in a sea of terrible people, which is what we might at first think. Most people who voted did not vote for Donald Trump, and that many of them don’t even support his policies. They were simply expressing dissatisfaction with the current economy, often for very legitimate reasons. Many were misinformed and didn’t know what exactly what they were voting for. After all, we never do. Elections are a statement of hope. Sometimes things work out better than usual. Sometimes we’re disappointed. Perhaps you were overjoyed with the election results. I hope you don’t come to regret that, although I suspect you will.

It’s reassuring to consider that many people were low-information voters rather than supporters of authoritarianism. Many of the people who supported him don’t know what “authoritarianism” meant (it was a Republican who pointed this out). And some of them think of authoritarian leadership as no big deal (they’re just “owning the libs”) not realizing that authoritarian regimes can be hard to remove from power and inevitably do immense harm while they exist.

So that was one strategy for helping to calm the anxious mind; remembering there are lots of good people around us, some of whom are merely misguided rather than monsters. True authoritarians are found in all societies, but are a minority — perhaps thirty percent of the population in the US, meaning that seventy percent are not.

Self-compassion for political feelings

As another strategy for calming emotions, I’ve been encouraging people to practice compassion: first for themselves, and then for others.

We may be feeling grief, or panic, or fear. I suggest that we surround those feelings with a space of kindness and compassion, and then live from that space.

These troubling feelings are often around the diaphragm or heart. They are unpleasant, and this can make us want to avoid them. But that’s the worst thing we can do. We need to accept them. This can mean a number of things:

Remembering that in being in pain or discomfort we are not failing. Pain is a normal part of life.
Seeing these feelings simply as sensations like any other.
Breathing with the discomfort.
Telling ourselves, “It’s okay to feel this. Let me feel this.”
Seeing them as communications from a part of us that needs our support.

We can do all of these things. The more tools the better. The last one, though — seeing them as communications from a part of us that needs our support — is crucial.

The nature of feelings

Feelings arise from relatively ancient parts of the brain. They act as a communication when potentially harmful circumstances are detected. And the election of someone who has values conflict with our own, and who wants to enact those values through policies we consider harmful, is such a threat. Hence, these ancient systems send a signal into the body, alerting our whole system to the perceived threat.

The part of us that is alarmed is just part of us. There is a part that is afraid, but there are also parts that can offer it reassurance. The problem is, when we are panicking we don’t even realize that we have this self-reassuring capability.

Seeing with kindness

To trigger it, we have to mentally step back. We need to step, imaginatively, into a different time and place. Into a safer space. So try remembering, right now, a time you looked with love and affection. (I’m remembering what it was like to watch my children sleeping when they were young. You can recall looking at a child, a lover, a partner, a friend, a pet — it doesn’t matter as long as you’re immersing yourself in a memory of love.)

As you bear this memory in mind, feel the qualities that arise in your sense of vision. Feel what’s happening in and around the eyes. Notice qualities of softness, warmth, cherishing, tenderness, love. And then turn your attention — imbued with those same qualities — inward, toward your own feelings of dread, or anxiety, or grief, or whatever they may be.

Regard your painful feelings with loving eyes.

Talking to yourself compassionately

And talk to those feelings, or to the ancient parts of the brain that create them, with kind, reassuring words. Say things like:

It’s okay. I’m here for you.
I care about you and I want you to be at ease.
I know this is hard, but I’ll take care of you.
We’ll get through this together.

With this combination of regarding our pain with loving eyes, and offering supportive messages, we’re offering ourselves a lot of reassurance. This helps to calm down our emotional responses and make them more manageable.

But it does more than that. While before, it seemed like our painful feelings dominated our experience and were who we are (or as the Buddha put it, we sensed ourselves as “conjoined with them”) now our feelings are just one part of our experience.

Living from a space of compassion

Surrounding our feelings is a space of warmth, compassion, and stillness. And we are relating to our pain from that space. We feel ourselves securely in this compassionate space, regarding our painful feelings with empathy and warmth, offering them support. This is much better! We can feel comfortable with our discomfort.

But we can go further. Not only do we relate to our own painful feelings with compassion, but we can also relate to others’ pain with compassion. Aware that there are others out there in the world, suffering as we had been suffering. And we can regard them with empathetic, loving, supportive eyes. And we can think supportive thoughts.

And this helps us with our own suffering, because we’re no longer focusing narrowly on ourselves, and we’re aware we’re all in it together.

Taking compassion into our actions

But we can go further than that, do. Feeling compassion is hollow if it doesn’t lead to acts of compassion. So find something to do. Maybe it’s as simple as reaching out to some friends and letting them know they’re not alone. Maybe it’s donating to one of the many organizations we’re going to need if things get really bad. Maybe it’s attending a vigil or demonstration. Maybe it’s starting or joining a book discussion group, reading something like Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” together.

Doing something gives us a sense of power, of agency. It makes us feel stronger and less fearful.

So in this way, having created a space of compassion around our pain, we live from that space, both in an inward direction, supporting what is suffering within us, and in an outward direction, offering support to others and strengthening the fabric of civil society.

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