faith

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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Stay in touch with the good

April 25, 2025

As human beings, we are psychologically porous. We’re open to influences from outside ourselves, including others’ words and actions. That’s largely a good thing, because it means we can learn from other human beings.

But it also means that what’s going on around us can affect, in not-so-good ways, our sense of what’s normal and what’s right.

Peer-pressure is one term we use to describe that kind of influence. It’s a term that might suggest a conscious attempt by an individual of group to persuade someone to do something, like a group of teens pressuring one of their members to try smoking.

But this pressure can also be indirect; we witness people talking and acting in certain ways, and even if they don’t try to sway us, their actions can become a cultural norm that we want to conform to. We want to fit in. This pressure comes not from our peers, but from ourselves.

Moral compasses can shift

There are, however, more subtle ways that we conform to what’s around us. Our sense of right and wrong can shift without our even knowing about it. This happens not because we want to conform, but because our moral compass responds to the magnetic field of what’s happening around us.

This isn’t about wanting to fit in. It’s simply that we are attuned to our environment, and as moral values, actions, and speech change in our society, we change too. And this can happen in good ways. Generally there’s been a shift toward greater tolerance, for example. In 2005 gay marriage was almost unthinkable in the US. In 2015 it was legal everywhere, and more and more people accepted it. The more people there are accepting something, the more likely others will start accepting it too.

Also see:

On the negative side, if we see cruelty and dehumanization around us, we may start to buy into it. We get used to it. Tune it out. We may believe the story that the person snatched off the street and deported to a hellish prison camp is a dangerous gang member, even though no evidence, or only laughable evidence, is given to support this. The government says that’s the case, but there’s no due process and no opportunity for the abducted person to defend themselves against legal charges, because there are no legal charges. Many of us may want to believe the government. We assume they must have their reasons. Or maybe we don’t care much because we don’t think this will happen to us and we lack empathy for those who are effected.

Shift happens

I remember seeing moral change happen to a young man, not long after Margaret Thatcher had been elected. We were both 18 and had worked together for a few months over the summer. We happened to bump into each other on a train platform, and when the train arrived he pushed his way past other travelers in his haste to get on board.

After I caught up with him he told me that you have to grab what you want in life. Having been been brought up to make sure that older people and women with children were seated first, I was shocked by his selfishness. He hadn’t been like that before, but the Thatcherite ethos that greed is good had taken root in his mind. He saw boarding a train as a way to show he was a “winner” in life’s competition, rather than as an opportunity to be civil to others.

Binding our minds to the good

One way we can resist becoming less skillful is to explicitly root our lives in moral values. As a Buddhist, I have lists of ethical precepts to guide my actions. The simplest of these is the five precepts. These are practices where we consciously aim to abstain from unskillful actions. There are, however, although ethically skillful actions we can commit ourselves to. For the sake of convenience, I’ll combine these:

I undertake to abstain from harming living beings, and vow to live with compassion.
I undertake to abstain from taking what’s not given, and vow to live with generosity.
I undertake to abstain from sexual misconduct, and vow to live with respect for others.
I undertake to abstain from untruth, and vow to live with honesty and integrity.
I undertake to abstain from intoxication, and vow to live mindfully.

Ethics as a free choice

These are not rules. There is no authority making us obey them, and no punishments, beyond the natural consequences of our actions, for failing to observe them. Each precept contains something we choose to undertake for the benefit of ourselves and others. Together they comprise a set of “training principles” (sikkha-pada) through which we aim to change ourselves through the decisions we make in life.

To keep themselves oriented to these precepts, many people chant them daily, often as a prelude to their sitting meditation practice.

I talk about this as “binding our minds to the good,” but this does not imply a lack of freedom. A ship that’s adrift, being pushed around by the winds and tides, is not free. A ship that has sails and an anchor is free.

Ethics as a mirror

But simply saying words doesn’t change us. We need to keep coming back to examining our thoughts, words, and actions against the yardstick of the ethical principles that the precepts remind us of. For example, no matter how badly some politicians behave, it’s unethical for us to wish harm upon them. No matter how much we think an item of fake news might help our cause politically, if it’s untrue we shouldn’t spread it. Fighting these temptations is difficult, but it’s a good difficult. It’s the kind of difficulty that makes us better people.

The Buddha pointed out to his son that just as a mirror reflects our appearance, moral reflection shows us who we are. The precepts give us a way of seeing ourselves.

By holding ourselves to a framework of ethical standards, we’re more able to prevent the moral forces around us from pulling our inner compass out of alignment . Sangharakshita described this in terms of becoming a true individual rather than a group member. The group member feels they’re right because they’re doing the same as others are doing. The true individual’s moral compass is better insulated, and they can rely more on the precepts.

Keep looking up

In responding to our current political situation, one of the phrases I’ve been bearing in mind is “Keep looking up.” This means, stay in touch with your ideals. Keep aspiring for and working toward a better world. It also means, don’t accept the erosion of what’s good and right.

At the moment, what’s good and right is under grave threat in the US.

Free speech is being punished and curtailed.
The right to legal defense is under attack.
Judges are being threatened for upholding the laws and the constitution.
Due process is being dispensed with, so that the government claims it has the right to determine, without needing a trial, who is and isn’t guilty of crimes.
The government is saying it can snatch people off the streets and deport them to inhumane prisons overseas, and that these decisions are irreversible, even if they are illegal.
The government is saying that it can break the law with impunity and ignore the courts.

Our crumbling democracy

With remarkable rapidity, an entire democratic system is crumbling, because without due process, and especially without habeas corpus (the right to challenge your imprisonment) there is no basis for a democratic society. Any of us might vanish at any time. When means we’re fearful, and silence ourselves. Which means that our speech is not free, because it can land us in prison. Or in my case it could get me deported. This article, if brought to the attention of the immigration services, could get my green card revoked. This has happened to others.

And this is just the start. The track record of autocratic leaders is well-known. They always persecute political opponents, who they harass, jail or even kill. That is the path we are on, and we are moving down it much more quickly than most people had feared.

We have no idea how far things will go before they are reversed. This will happen, because human beings aspire to freedom. But we don’t yet know how this reversal will be brought about. Will we even have free and fair elections in future? Neither do we know how long it will take.

Aim higher

In the meantime, we have to keep looking up. Don’t just long for and work for a return to free speech, due process, the rule of law, and the separation of powers. Long for and work for a world that’s better than what we had, because our democracies are always flawed, and democracy in the US was more flawed than most.

The law has never been equally applied to all, regardless of social status, sex, or race. It’s always been harder for some people to vote than others. Not everyone’s vote is equal. Those in power have often served the interests of the rich and powerful more than their own citizens. Our task is not just to return to the democratic norms we used to take for granted, but to create a better, fairer democracy for ourselves and our descendants.

To that end, support courage when you see it. When a university refuses to comply with governments attempts to curtail its academic freedoms, celebrate and support them. Support courageous politicians. When a librarian refuses to remove books that contain LGBTQ themes or ethnic minority characters, praise them. Support courageous publications and give them your attention and your money. When someone gives a TED talk and names a coup as a coup, share this as an example of courage that we should emulate. When someone shows up at a demonstration and waves a banner showing resistance to the erosion of democratic norms, appreciate them and thank them.

These are all things we can look up to and emulate.

Keep looking up. Things will get better, but only if we remind ourselves and everyone else that they can.

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Self-compassion for troubling times

February 24, 2025

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. Keep looking up. 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

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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Politics as a spiritual practice

November 6, 2024

I don’t normally post about politics here, but I feel I have to today, because a lot of people are distressed, shocked, and fearful. Even though the results of yesterday’s US election are not yet fully in, it’s clear that Donald Trump will be our next president.

I did not know what to expect with the US election. I thought it was possible that Trump might scrape to a narrow victory. I hoped, though, that Harris would would win, narrowly or (I scarcely dared dream it) by a landslide. I feared that if Harris did win, that the election would be disputed and that some Republican-controlled states might attempt to overturn the election results.

I had not expected Trump to win resoundingly, with a majority of the votes. [Later edit: not a majority! Slightly less than 50% of the votes cast.] (In 2016 Hillary Clinton got five million more votes than he did.) I think we’re fortunate that the election was not disputed, and that there was no attempt to overturn the vote.

At the moment I feel quite calm. My poor partner did not sleep a wink.

I am for once grateful that in the US system the victor does not take power immediately (unlike in the UK where the Prime Minister moves out of Downing Street the day after the election). So there’s a sense of normality at present. That won’t last, though.

It’s impossible to know what’s coming. Trump himself is just one part of things. He’s vindictive, petty, vain, and impulsive. He’s easily manipulated by those around him. Last time he was in office he was surrounded by people who, although not saints, were at least better than he was. With a small number of exceptions, those people have repudiated him and said he’s unfit for office. Two of them described him as a fascist. He’s now likely to be surrounded by people who are much worse than he is. It’s likely they’ll encourage his worst instincts and that we’ll see some very bad things happening.

Normally you prepare to ride out four difficult years until the next election. This time we’re facing potentially catastrophic demolition of the mechanisms that preserve democracy, a collapsed economy, the partial restoration of the Soviet Union, and an acceleration of climate change.

There may not be another totally free and fair election for a long time, and even if decent people are elected in the future, what they inherit may not be fixable. But they’ll have to do what they can with what’s left. It’s possible that there may be a re-founding of the United States, if there is a United States in the future. A catastrophic collapse gives the opportunity to learn from the past and to avoid its mistakes. The US constitution and its laws have been manifestly “unfit for purpose” as they say in the UK. The fact that Donald Trump is heading for the White House rather than prison is just one illustration of that.

I find it important to remember that many of those who voted for Trump did not know what they were voting for. Many are struggling in an economy that favors the ultra-rich and largely ignores ordinary people. They wanted a change. Right wing channel news networks manipulate and dis-inform. They think inflation is at an all-time high when it’s not. They think crime is rampant, when it’s falling. They think their way of life is under threat from immigrants, when they are themselves the children of immigrants and depend on immigrants to do basic tasks that keep the economy running.

Many of those people did not know they were voting for a man who says he wants his generals to be like Hitler’s generals, and that he wants to use the US military against the civilian population. Or they’d heard this and thought it was propaganda. Or they thought it was just Trump trolling the libs. But many of the people working for Trump do not think it’s just Trump trolling. Some of them want violent oppression of all opposition.

Some people showed up to vote yesterday not knowing that Biden had dropped out of the race. A study showed that a mild Covid infection reduces a person’s IQ by three points. A more severe case with lingering symptoms causes a six-point drop. If hospitalization is required, the drop is nine points. That’s from a single infection. Presumably repeated infections cause further cognitive damage.

The population has literally been been dumbed down. I say this not as an insult (I’ve had Covid and an not immune to its cognitive effects). I say this because it may well be part of how we got to where we are.

In short, many people who voted for a man who has been called a “fascist” by people who worked closely with him have no idea what they’ve just done. They are not our enemy, and they deserve our compassion. (Others are enemies in the sense that they want to harm us, but we need not hate them in return. It’s a myth that you can’t oppose someone without also hating them.)

I find it 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.

I find it important to remember that fascist regimes (and it looks like that’s what we’ll end up with) always collapse. The “strong man” is emotionally fragile and cannot stand contradiction. So he doesn’t listen to critics on his own side, and his actions eventually bring things crashing down.

It’s likely that there will be a series of brutal moves following the transfer of power. These will be designed to intimidate, demoralize, and traumatize anyone who opposes the Trump administration.

We’re going to need to find ways to hold onto our faith when this happens.

We’re going to need to find ways to sustain that faith, and to sustain our kindness, compassion, tolerance, and belief in democracy for much longer than four years.

The best way to do that is to be actively involved in some organization that represents your values. Being engaged with like-minded people helps us feel strong. Doing something that makes a difference helps us feel strong.

I suggest we all start looking for ways to get involved, if we’re not already.

In the meantime, I highly recommend reading Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny.” Snyder is a history professor who studies autocracy. On Tyranny is a small book, easy to read, and simply written. It’s a guide-book to surviving fascism, and on keeping alive positive values through dark times.

I strongly suggest that you do NOT buy this book from Amazon, which is owned by a billionaire. People like Jeff Bezos have a lot to gain (in the short term) from an illiberal regime. (The day Bezos announced that the Washington Post would not endorse either candidate, he was reportedly in negotiations with Trump about the government using his rockets.) These people are not your friends. Don’t support them.

Instead, support a local book shop. Support ordinary people. Support your neighbors. Live your values.

If you don’t have a local bookshop or can’t get to one, try bookshop.org in the US, Hive in the UK, or look for some other independent outlet where you live.

If everything gets reduced to what’s most convenient (“one click purchasing”) you’re not living your values. The essence of ethics is doing things that are less convenient. It’s slightly harder in the short term. But it feels good in the long term.

We are the majority. It’s imperative that we stick together.

A couple of years ago I taught an online course called “Politics as a Spiritual Practice,” which is where the graphic above comes from. I do think it’s vital that we don’t just “do politics” but that we see our engagement with politics as a vehicle for developing patience, courage, compassion, and wisdom. The next four or more years are going to test us. Those tests can potentially make us better people. And we’re going to need better people to rebuild whatever we’re left with.

The five spiritual faculties: freedom in every moment

January 30, 2023

Buddhism is full of lists: the three trainings, the four foundations of mindfulness, the five skandhas, the eightfold path, the twelve-fold dependent origination, the 37 limbs of awakening, and so forth. Often these lists are presented in a rather static way, as if we’re just being offered an overview of some area of life. So the four foundations, for example, are often described as simply being four aspects of our experience that we can be mindful of, and the five skandhas as simply a way to break down the idea of a unified self.

The five spiritual faculties

One such list is the five faculties, or five spiritual faculties, as it’s often termed. If you aren’t familiar with the five spiritual faculties, they’re a very common teaching. They are faith, vigor, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. They tend, as I’ve suggested is often the case, to be presented as if they just are, or as if they are five things we simply need to develop in order to become awakened. That’s how they’re often presented in the scriptures, as in the following:

A mendicant must develop and cultivate five faculties so that they can declare enlightenment. What five? The faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.

My impression of the Buddha is that he wasn’t really interested in providing overviews, but that he was instead very interested in how things work. He had a mind that was perhaps a bit like an engineer’s. His teaching on dependent origination, for example, is all about how one thing provides conditions for another arising and that to another, each of those conditions leading to a greater sense of freedom and joy. So when I see Buddhist lists one of my first thoughts is, how might the items on that list work together as a dynamic system.

The five spiritual faculties as a dynamic system

As it happens, when I was doing some background reading for writing this article, I found that there’s a relatively early text that does just this with the five spiritual faculties. In one Sanskrit commentarial work, “The Discourse on the Analysis of Topics” (or Arthaviniscaya Sutra) they’re presented as a dynamic series, with each of the factors building on the previous one. Although this text is called a “sutra,” a term usually reserved for records of things the Buddha and his disciples said, the Discourse on the Analysis of Topics is actually a commentarial text. It was created by monks a few centuries after the Buddha’s death, as they tried to explain some of the teachings found in the actual scriptures. And in the Discourse on the Analysis of Topics the five spiritual faculties are described as contributing, step by step, to the development of the skillful qualities needed for awakening to take place.

Here’s how that works:

The faculty of faith is an awareness of the possibility of practicing in order to be happier.
The faculty of vigor allows us to actually practice and develop skillful qualities.
The faculty of mindfulness helps us to preserve and maintain those skillful qualities.
The faculty of concentration allows us to stay focused on those skillful qualities.
And finally the faculty of wisdom allows us to “penetrate and reflect on the birth” of those things, and thus to develop insight.

This early text tries to show the five spiritual faculties as working together as a system. And the explanation makes sense, although I’ll shortly show another way of looking at how they can work together.

The five spiritual faculties, moment by moment

Recently I taught a class in a local Buddhist center where I explained how the five spiritual faculties can work, moment by moment, working together more or less simultaneously, in order to help us move from unskillful to skillful states of mind, from states of mind that cause suffering to states of mind that are imbued with a sense of peace, calm, and even joy.

So let’s say that we experience anger, and see how the five spiritual faculties function. Because they work together in a simultaneous way, we could deal with them in any order.

1. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the activity of observing our experience. Without mindfulness no practice can take place, which is why I prefer to start with its role. Mindfulness gives us the ability to see that anger has arisen. So rather than simply being angry, now we’re aware that we’re angry.

These days there’s a tendency to see mindfulness as the only spiritual quality we need. But really it’s nothing more than simply observing. In itself it does nothing, which is why we also need the other spiritual faculties.

2. Wisdom

Often (especially in a Buddhist context) we might think about wisdom as an enlightened quality, as seeing reality as it really is, as something that arises at the end of the path and that we’ve yet to gain. But early Buddhism saw wisdom as consisting also of a very mundane form of understanding spiritual truths. For example, understanding that “There is meaning in giving, sacrifice, and offerings. There are fruits and results of good and bad deeds” are forms of wisdom.

So, in our example of being angry, our mindfulness tells us that anger is present. Wisdom tells us that this anger isn’t good for us and will likely lead to our suffering. Our wisdom also knows that there are alternatives to anger — curiosity, patience, kindness, and so on — that will make us happier in both the short and long terms.

3. Faith

Faith in Buddhism is not blind belief. It’s more like a sense of confidence and clarity. It’s from a root that literally means “to place the heart upon.” So we can know on some level that anger is going to cause problems for us, but on some other level believe that we need anger to get what we want. So our confidence in our practice is compromised.

But as we continue to mindfully observe actions and consequences unfolding in our lives, and with wisdom to see how those things are connected to each other, we can start to have more confidence that letting go of anger, and instead practicing things like curiosity, patience, and kindness, has both short- and long-term benefits.

So in this example, we’ve now mindfully noticed that anger is present, have wisely seen that anger causes suffering, and now, with faith, have confidence that some alternative to anger is more appropriate. Now, coming from the heart, there’s a desire for change. But we still haven’t actually acted.

4. Vigor

Vigor is virya, also sometimes rendered as “energy.” This is the faculty of taking action. So, now that we have confidence that non-anger is preferable to anger, we now act. We can act by letting go: we might have angry thoughts or be speaking angry words, and we simply let go of those. We can act by opening up to the possibility of acting in ways that are more helpful than anger, so that we have a sense that curiosity, patience, and kindness are there, waiting in the wings, ready to be activated. And some actions involve actually bringing those skillful qualities into being. We speak kindly or apologetically, for example. Or we empathetically try to understand a person we’re angry with.

5. Concentration

Concentration is samadhi, which comes from a root meaning something like “bringing together” or “holding together.” It refers to the mind being unified around one purpose.

Often when we hear the word “concentration” we think of a narrow focus, but that’s not necessarily what samadhi is about. Samadhi is more about having an absence of internal conflict, and therefore continuity of mindfulness.

So, in our example of dealing with anger, our concentration can mean keeping up a sustained effort to respond skillfully. As we all know, that’s difficult to do. There are parts of the mind that want to be angry and that see anger as solving our problems. And those parts of us can be very persistent, and can come back over and over again and hijack our attention. This is why maintaining concentration is necessary. So that’s one thing that concentration can mean in this instance.

But it can also refer to the state of mind that emerges from mindfulness, wisdom, faith, and vigor. As we continue to give priority to the wiser parts of our mind, the more reactive parts become weaker. They’re less able to affect us. They’re less able to control us. We’re less likely to do things we regret by acting unskillfully. And so, over time, we experience less inner conflict. The mind is more harmonized, more (to coin a word) samadhic.

But although I started to talk in that last paragraph about the long-term functioning of the five spiritual faculties, what I want to emphasize is how they function moment by moment, and how they’re intrinsic to every act of skillful change that we bring about. They function together, supporting each other, very time we work with an unhelpful or destructive habit. And as we exercise them over and over again in this way — at least if we do this in a half-way consistent way — they become stronger. So when the scriptures say something like “A mendicant must develop and cultivate five faculties so that they can declare enlightenment,” this is what they’re talking about: change, taking place moment by moment, and those acts of change developing habits that help liberate us from suffering.

“Trust in the Dharma”

August 6, 2020

At one of the online meditation sessions the other day we were talking about the powerful attraction of social media. Many people find the lure of social media to be so strong that it’s virtually an addiction. And in fact the designers of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like have invested massive amounts of money into finding ways to keep us hooked.

Research shows that social media make us unhappy and that we’re more content without them. Yet we still keep picking up our phones. Social media sucks us in because of our insatiable attraction for novelty. They suck us in because people “liking” or commenting on what we’ve shared gives us a sense of validation . And it’s hard to leave, because there’s always one more thing we can look at and interact with. The hope that this one more thing might be more interesting than what we’ve just seen is what keeps us on the hook.

Also see:

And this constant manipulation of our attention has a bad effect on us. We find ourselves no longer able to abide moments when there’s nothing to do, no information to scroll through. I see people in the supermarket check-out lines and virtually every single one of them is staring at a screen. I see people waiting at a drive-through coffee shop, and virtually every one of them is glued to their phone. Even while we’re brushing our teeth or using the toilet, we feel bored and find ourselves picking up our phones. Apparently daydreaming is a lost art.

We get so accustomed to consuming information in small bursts that many people report they can no longer focus well enough to read a book. This is especially hard when we’re reading on an electronic device, where the sirens digitally calling to us are just a click or swipe of the screen away. Concentration is a lost art too.

How can we learn to say no?

I’ve pretty much quit social media now (I have a Twitter account I don’t use and I have a business Facebook account but don’t use a personal account). But back in the days when I struggled with social media addiction I found a very simple and powerful tool that helped me to put my phone down and stop Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey from manipulating my attention.

It’s just three words: “Trust the Dharma.”

Those words have resonance and meaning for me that perhaps they don’t have for you, so let me unpack this.

“Trust the Dharma”

The “Dharma” is a word that can mean “teachings” — in this case the Buddha’s teachings. It can mean “truth.” It can mean “principle.” The Buddha recognized that his own formulations were just an illustration of general principles that lead us from suffering to finding peace and fulfillment. Those general principles are Dharma. When his aunt, who was a nun, wanted a brief teaching before going off on a solitary retreat, he said to her:

When you see that certain things
lead to contentment, not to craving;
to being free, not to being fettered;
to letting go of things, not accumulating them;
to having fewer desires, not more;
to contentment, not discontent;
to seclusion, not socializing;
to energy, not laziness;
to being easy to be with, not to being hard to be with,
You can with certainty hold, ‘These things are
the Dharma, the training, and the Teacher’s instructions.’

Reminding ourselves of spiritual principles

A simple moment of mindfulness helps us move toward calmness. Paying attention to just one breath helps to calm the mind a little. A single kind thought helps us to be more at peace with ourselves and others. Observing a feeling without judgement creates a sacred pause in which wisdom can arise. These are principles that we can trust.

And so in saying to myself, “Trust the Dharma” I’m reminding myself of those principles.

I’m saying to myself:

“Trust yourself. You’re OK without looking at your phone.”
“Trust that you’re happier without Facebook right now.”
“Trust that this moment, if observed and accepted, holds everything you need in order to be fulfilled and at peace.”

All this, and much more, is contained in those three simple words, “Trust the Dharma.”

Evolution versus the Dharma

We need to remind ourselves of these spiritual principles because we so easily forget them. Our evolutionary history has equipped us with principles that are totally in contradiction to Dharma. Primitive parts of the brain operate on the principle that we need to constantly worry in order to be safe, that we should look after ourselves at the expense of others, and that attack is the best form of defense. Less primitive, but still ancient, parts of the brain tell us that belonging to and being accepted by a tribe is the key to happiness, even if this means joining in with their hatred for other tribes and subjugating our own individuality in order to fit in. They tell us that more is better, and that we should therefore scroll, scroll, scroll our way down those screens, until we find satisfaction.

The pressing urgency of all those genetically scripted imperatives can swamp our awareness of those Dharmic principles. So we need to keep reminding ourselves that they exist. And because Dharmic principles and the programming we’ve inherited often conflict, we have to remind ourselves to trust them. We need to keep reminding ourselves to “trust the Dharma.” Trusting the Dharma is something we have to learn, slowly, over years and decades.

Boredom is the trigger

This phrase, “Trust the Dharma” is triggered by that familiar sense that I’m restless, and afraid of being bored, and therefore want to pick up my phone. And every single time that happens I feel a sense of confidence and calm descend upon me. I trust that mindfully paying attention to my present-moment experience is going to be enough. I trust that standing in line at the supermarket checkout, without touching my phone, is going to be pleasurable. I trust that simply breathing, simply noticing what thoughts and feelings are arising, simply turning my mind to kindness will lead me to calm, joy, and kindness.

It works for me, every single time.

I wonder how it will work for you?

Facing the demon of self-doubt

April 22, 2015

Someone wrote to me the other day, asking for advice regarding how to deal with a bout of self-punishing doubt:

I just started regularly meditating about a month ago. I’m scared to continue now though. I had a sudden feeling of self-resentment and I felt it so deeply. I remembered the bad choices I have made in my life and felt so unworthy of love and compassion. I felt unworthy of the meditation itself. I felt like I was the most selfish person in the world. I can’t even begin to describe how painful it was.

What she’d described is what we call the “hindrance of doubt.” There are five of these hindrances, which are mental patterns that stop us from being at ease with ourselves. They are (1) craving, (2) ill will, (3) anxiety, (4) lethargy, and (5) doubt, which is the sneakiest of them all.

Doubt tells us stories that sap our confidence. This woman’s thoughts of unworthiness and of being “the most selfish person in the world” are doubt’s modus operandi. Sometimes the doubts are about our practice, but more commonly they’re about ourselves.

Doubt is the hardest of the hindrances to recognize, because the stories we’re telling ourselves “hit below the belt” emotionally and leave us feeling vulnerable and exposed. We totally believe the stories we’re telling ourselves, and have difficulty questioning their validity.

A heart that is ready for anything

March 5, 2015

Tara Brach