Engaging the World with Compassion with Roshi Joan Halifax
We Don't Trust Love Enough
How different our lives would be if just once we decided to trust love
Trust that out of faith hope and love the greatest of these is love
Trust that it is okay to love
That loving in the face of fear takes courage
Trust recklessly enough to experience one of the greatest joys in the world
Trust that allowing someone in will always outweigh the pain of leaving them out
Trust that in spite of all the finite things of this world
Love never gives up
Loves cares more for others than for self
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have
Love doesn’t strut
Doesn’t have a swelled head
Doesn’t force itself on others
Isn’t always, “me first”
Doesn’t fly off the hand
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others
Doesn’t revel when others grovel
Love takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth
Puts up with anything
Trusts God always
Always looks for the best
Never looks back but keeps going to the end
Love Never Fails
(Excerpt from We Don't Trust Love Enough by Hannah Drake)
It almost seemed fitting that after an afternoon rainstorm, in strolls Roshi Joan Halifax bringing in the quiet stillness that typically follows a raging storm. Roshi Halifax’s demeanor was calm, centered, and focused. The energy that radiated seemed to say, “Be calm in this space.” It reminded me of a sign that Oprah Winfrey said that she has hanging in her office that says, “Be responsible for the energy that you bring in this space.” She stated that she was 72 and I knew whatever lifestyle she was leading certainly did agree with her! I suppose that is the way you look when you have learned to lead a life that is centered, in the moment, in tune with self and focused on love and compassion. The audience was filled with just a few seats left empty. I made my way to the back row gazing over the crowd filled with men and women, old and young, and similar to my first experience in the Discovering the Self in Sacred Journey with the Other, there were just a few faces that looked like mine. It made me wonder why more minorities did not attend the Festival of Faiths. In truth, this was my first time attending the event so I posed the question to myself. Perhaps it is because my version of Christianity has been so indoctrinated in my life that I was closed off to hearing about other religions and faiths. Perhaps it was because I was taught that my way is the only way. Perhaps it was because I am used to being around people that look like me, that hold similar values as me, that think like me. Perhaps because I am too afraid to step out of my corner of the world and recognize that listening to a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care, could be beneficial to my life. Whatever the reason, I quickly learned that stepping outside of my corner of comfort was well worth it!
They started the session by us taking 3 minutes to pause in silence. In a world that is always in a state of motion, a microwave society, in an, ‘I want it right now and do not want to wait’ era, three minutes of silence can seem like three years of silence. Deafening. Long. Pointless. Shouldn’t I be on Facebook? Tweeting? Snapping a picture to place on Instagram for likes? Shouldn’t something be buzzing, dinging, vibrating reminding me that I am connected to the world, that I am important, that people know I exist? Yet, as I stood, I discarded those thoughts and just stood in the moment, listened to my breath, felt my heartbeat, closed my eyes and let the calmness settle into my body. I was disconnected from my phone my so called lifeline and I got in touch with my lifeline and it felt good.
After the 3 minutes, Roshi Halifax opened up her conversation with us. I call it a conversation because her voice was calm, inviting. Her words came from her mouth slow, deliberate. You could tell that she was not a woman that enjoyed wasting words. She understood the power of words and was not one of those people that spoke simply because they liked the sound of their voice. It left me hanging on each word wondering what she would say next.
Roshi Halifax spoke about Thomas Merton and him leaving his place of comfort and going to Gethsemane. She explained that Gethsemane translated to the oil press. My goodness. Everyone loves the olive and indeed we value the olive oil but when you mention the oil press, we pause. I doubt many people walk into suffering joyfully. Especially knowing that you can lead a life of comfort, yet you deliberately lay down that comfort and take on a life, a mission, a stand that you know will not be comfortable. That is walking into Gethsemane. Walking into the oil press. In dealing with the topics we discussed at Festival of Faiths I believe most of the presenters and the audience had made a choice to walk into the oil press. Although we looked different, had different backgrounds, lived in different areas, we all had made a choice and one of those choices that Roshi Halifax wanted us to focus on was compassion. One way to have compassion is to embody it. When I heard her say that I thought of getting dressed. Compassion is something you put on each day. When you move, it moves, it as close to you as the air that you breathe. You do not take a stand for justice, for the least of these and leave compassion at home. You do not just empathize with someone and then go back to your place of comfort but you take their hand and as you are trying to get them out of the trenches you get in the trenches with them and say let’s get out of this together.” Justice”, as Roshi Halifax said, “without compassion is not enough.”
One area that Roshi Halifax focused on was that she entered into the prison system to speak to individuals on death row. We are all aware that we will die, however to know you have been sentenced to die is a different concept. Something you have done has been deemed so horrific that the justice system and some in society feel your presence is no longer worthy of being on the earth. An eye for an eye. Seemingly someone on death row more than likely has taken someone else’s life and in such a horrific ways it calls for death. And this soft spoken women meets with them. She said some have said it was the first time someone treated them with respect and kindness. This part of the conversation resonated with me because last year I became obsessed with a trial that rocked the nation. The Jodi Arias Trial. I had never met Jodi Arias and I never will. I have never spoken with her yet the details of her crime were so evil that something in me hated her deeply. I wanted her on death row so badly that if the prison warden asked me to come prepare her cell I would have flown out that day and spit shined it clean! Watching her on trial caused such a physical reaction with me my blood pressure would rise. I even joined Facebook pages with people that hated her as much as I did so that we could talk about how much we hated her. I watched the trial daily. I just wanted her to face justice! When she was sentenced to life without parole and not death I felt defeated. How can you murder a man basically 3 times over and yet are not sentenced to die? How can I find love in my heart for her?! To me, she was the epitome of evil! Yet, Roshi Halifax said that somehow we must look at people, even those we deem as “evil” and find a way to see them and love them. There is no way! Doesn’t Roshi Halifax understand what this woman has done?! Yet somehow in her conversation I knew her answer would be to love anyway. That is what I am taught as a Christian to simply love. To find it somewhere in my heart to love and that is why it cannot be based on how you feel. Love is not a feel good emotion because there are days when you run smack dab into evil and you are going to have to defer to a source bigger than you that can show you how to have love and compassion. Love and compassion isn’t about loving those that make it easy because that is easy enough to do. Love is loving those that don’t look like you, that spew hate, that despitefully use you. Be it Buddhist teachings or any other teachings, the philosophy is the same-Love Never Fails! No doubt this would be a challenge for me because at times we feel justified in our hate, in our ways, in our opinions. However, I am learning to let go and to let God help me, heal me and allow me to love in spite of.
Roshi Halifax also spoke about the definition of compassion which is the capacity to attend, having a deep intention to serve, having a desire to alleviate the suffering and engaging in action. Excellent points especially the last one. Too often and I am guilty as well, we do not engage in action. It is easy to buy a Black Lives Matters shirt. It is easy to say, “I give to the Red Cross” or “I donate to the Salvation Army”. But can we get our hands dirty? Compassion often times is about getting your hands dirty, working through issues that may not be worked out in your lifetime. Are you willing to endure the marathon of justice or are you just in it for the quick sprint?
We are able to have compassion as Roshi Halifax so eloquently put it when we extend GRACE to others.
Gathering our attention. STOP what you are doing. Trust me you are NOT that important. The world will continue to turn if you pause and focus your attention on another human being.
Remember why you are here. Touch into your capacity for moral sensitivity. Care more about others than you do yourself for a moment.
Attune to yourself on a physical level both mind and heart. Have you ever been speaking to someone and you can tell they are no more interested in your issues than they are watching paint dry? Be a person whose entire being is focused on that particular issue at that time. Be in the moment.
Consider what will serve this person. How often have we wanted to do something for someone because it will make us feel good? We do not take the time to think how will this serve this person? Instead often we think how will this serve me?
Engage and End. Engage means call yourself to action and then end the exchange. When I heard end the exchange for me there was a sense of completion encouraging the person to go and be well.
Roshi Halifax let us know that we can make a difference and that difference may be made one person at a time but one person can make a difference. In order to make a difference we must center our lives on having a heart and mind for compassion. Justice cannot exist with compassion and compassion cannot exist without justice. We must not seek the easy road but similar to Merton, we are going to have to enter our own Gethsemane and take on the hard problems. No one ever promised that it would be easy and no one ever promised that it would always be roses and rainbows. Difficulty does not negate the fact that work still needs to be done. The only thing we can do is vow to get our hands dirty because someone has to be a voice for the voiceless and perhaps many of us were called for such a time as this…
(As an aside, if I could ask Roshi Halifax anything, one thing I was curious to know after her discussion, was in dealing with her end-of-life occupation, what do people say is the most important thing from life? What do they say they wished they had focused on more? What should those still living disregard and/or embrace? At the end of someone’s life they speak the truth. There is no more need to hide, to lie, to be concerned about what others may think and that is what I want to know. I feel I have wasted a lifetime over things that are unimportant and I want my life to matter. I want my relationships to matter. I want people to say, "Hannah was here and she made a difference". I do not want to focus on things that truly do not amount to a hill of beans. I want to live my life in color and squeeze all that I can out of it and when I think I am done squeezing, squeeze just a little bit more of it out for good measure and know that something I did in my lifetime made a difference to someone. Thank you Roshi Halifax for your teachings.)
We Don't Trust Love Enough
How different our lives would be if just once we decided to trust love
Trust that out of faith hope and love the greatest of these is love
Trust that it is okay to love
That loving in the face of fear takes courage
Trust recklessly enough to experience one of the greatest joys in the world
Trust that allowing someone in will always outweigh the pain of leaving them out
Trust that in spite of all the finite things of this world
Love never gives up
Loves cares more for others than for self
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have
Love doesn’t strut
Doesn’t have a swelled head
Doesn’t force itself on others
Isn’t always, “me first”
Doesn’t fly off the hand
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others
Doesn’t revel when others grovel
Love takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth
Puts up with anything
Trusts God always
Always looks for the best
Never looks back but keeps going to the end
Love Never Fails
(Excerpt from We Don't Trust Love Enough by Hannah Drake)
It almost seemed fitting that after an afternoon rainstorm, in strolls Roshi Joan Halifax bringing in the quiet stillness that typically follows a raging storm. Roshi Halifax’s demeanor was calm, centered, and focused. The energy that radiated seemed to say, “Be calm in this space.” It reminded me of a sign that Oprah Winfrey said that she has hanging in her office that says, “Be responsible for the energy that you bring in this space.” She stated that she was 72 and I knew whatever lifestyle she was leading certainly did agree with her! I suppose that is the way you look when you have learned to lead a life that is centered, in the moment, in tune with self and focused on love and compassion. The audience was filled with just a few seats left empty. I made my way to the back row gazing over the crowd filled with men and women, old and young, and similar to my first experience in the Discovering the Self in Sacred Journey with the Other, there were just a few faces that looked like mine. It made me wonder why more minorities did not attend the Festival of Faiths. In truth, this was my first time attending the event so I posed the question to myself. Perhaps it is because my version of Christianity has been so indoctrinated in my life that I was closed off to hearing about other religions and faiths. Perhaps it was because I was taught that my way is the only way. Perhaps it was because I am used to being around people that look like me, that hold similar values as me, that think like me. Perhaps because I am too afraid to step out of my corner of the world and recognize that listening to a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care, could be beneficial to my life. Whatever the reason, I quickly learned that stepping outside of my corner of comfort was well worth it!
They started the session by us taking 3 minutes to pause in silence. In a world that is always in a state of motion, a microwave society, in an, ‘I want it right now and do not want to wait’ era, three minutes of silence can seem like three years of silence. Deafening. Long. Pointless. Shouldn’t I be on Facebook? Tweeting? Snapping a picture to place on Instagram for likes? Shouldn’t something be buzzing, dinging, vibrating reminding me that I am connected to the world, that I am important, that people know I exist? Yet, as I stood, I discarded those thoughts and just stood in the moment, listened to my breath, felt my heartbeat, closed my eyes and let the calmness settle into my body. I was disconnected from my phone my so called lifeline and I got in touch with my lifeline and it felt good.
After the 3 minutes, Roshi Halifax opened up her conversation with us. I call it a conversation because her voice was calm, inviting. Her words came from her mouth slow, deliberate. You could tell that she was not a woman that enjoyed wasting words. She understood the power of words and was not one of those people that spoke simply because they liked the sound of their voice. It left me hanging on each word wondering what she would say next.
Roshi Halifax spoke about Thomas Merton and him leaving his place of comfort and going to Gethsemane. She explained that Gethsemane translated to the oil press. My goodness. Everyone loves the olive and indeed we value the olive oil but when you mention the oil press, we pause. I doubt many people walk into suffering joyfully. Especially knowing that you can lead a life of comfort, yet you deliberately lay down that comfort and take on a life, a mission, a stand that you know will not be comfortable. That is walking into Gethsemane. Walking into the oil press. In dealing with the topics we discussed at Festival of Faiths I believe most of the presenters and the audience had made a choice to walk into the oil press. Although we looked different, had different backgrounds, lived in different areas, we all had made a choice and one of those choices that Roshi Halifax wanted us to focus on was compassion. One way to have compassion is to embody it. When I heard her say that I thought of getting dressed. Compassion is something you put on each day. When you move, it moves, it as close to you as the air that you breathe. You do not take a stand for justice, for the least of these and leave compassion at home. You do not just empathize with someone and then go back to your place of comfort but you take their hand and as you are trying to get them out of the trenches you get in the trenches with them and say let’s get out of this together.” Justice”, as Roshi Halifax said, “without compassion is not enough.”
One area that Roshi Halifax focused on was that she entered into the prison system to speak to individuals on death row. We are all aware that we will die, however to know you have been sentenced to die is a different concept. Something you have done has been deemed so horrific that the justice system and some in society feel your presence is no longer worthy of being on the earth. An eye for an eye. Seemingly someone on death row more than likely has taken someone else’s life and in such a horrific ways it calls for death. And this soft spoken women meets with them. She said some have said it was the first time someone treated them with respect and kindness. This part of the conversation resonated with me because last year I became obsessed with a trial that rocked the nation. The Jodi Arias Trial. I had never met Jodi Arias and I never will. I have never spoken with her yet the details of her crime were so evil that something in me hated her deeply. I wanted her on death row so badly that if the prison warden asked me to come prepare her cell I would have flown out that day and spit shined it clean! Watching her on trial caused such a physical reaction with me my blood pressure would rise. I even joined Facebook pages with people that hated her as much as I did so that we could talk about how much we hated her. I watched the trial daily. I just wanted her to face justice! When she was sentenced to life without parole and not death I felt defeated. How can you murder a man basically 3 times over and yet are not sentenced to die? How can I find love in my heart for her?! To me, she was the epitome of evil! Yet, Roshi Halifax said that somehow we must look at people, even those we deem as “evil” and find a way to see them and love them. There is no way! Doesn’t Roshi Halifax understand what this woman has done?! Yet somehow in her conversation I knew her answer would be to love anyway. That is what I am taught as a Christian to simply love. To find it somewhere in my heart to love and that is why it cannot be based on how you feel. Love is not a feel good emotion because there are days when you run smack dab into evil and you are going to have to defer to a source bigger than you that can show you how to have love and compassion. Love and compassion isn’t about loving those that make it easy because that is easy enough to do. Love is loving those that don’t look like you, that spew hate, that despitefully use you. Be it Buddhist teachings or any other teachings, the philosophy is the same-Love Never Fails! No doubt this would be a challenge for me because at times we feel justified in our hate, in our ways, in our opinions. However, I am learning to let go and to let God help me, heal me and allow me to love in spite of.
Roshi Halifax also spoke about the definition of compassion which is the capacity to attend, having a deep intention to serve, having a desire to alleviate the suffering and engaging in action. Excellent points especially the last one. Too often and I am guilty as well, we do not engage in action. It is easy to buy a Black Lives Matters shirt. It is easy to say, “I give to the Red Cross” or “I donate to the Salvation Army”. But can we get our hands dirty? Compassion often times is about getting your hands dirty, working through issues that may not be worked out in your lifetime. Are you willing to endure the marathon of justice or are you just in it for the quick sprint?
We are able to have compassion as Roshi Halifax so eloquently put it when we extend GRACE to others.
Gathering our attention. STOP what you are doing. Trust me you are NOT that important. The world will continue to turn if you pause and focus your attention on another human being.
Remember why you are here. Touch into your capacity for moral sensitivity. Care more about others than you do yourself for a moment.
Attune to yourself on a physical level both mind and heart. Have you ever been speaking to someone and you can tell they are no more interested in your issues than they are watching paint dry? Be a person whose entire being is focused on that particular issue at that time. Be in the moment.
Consider what will serve this person. How often have we wanted to do something for someone because it will make us feel good? We do not take the time to think how will this serve this person? Instead often we think how will this serve me?
Engage and End. Engage means call yourself to action and then end the exchange. When I heard end the exchange for me there was a sense of completion encouraging the person to go and be well.
Roshi Halifax let us know that we can make a difference and that difference may be made one person at a time but one person can make a difference. In order to make a difference we must center our lives on having a heart and mind for compassion. Justice cannot exist with compassion and compassion cannot exist without justice. We must not seek the easy road but similar to Merton, we are going to have to enter our own Gethsemane and take on the hard problems. No one ever promised that it would be easy and no one ever promised that it would always be roses and rainbows. Difficulty does not negate the fact that work still needs to be done. The only thing we can do is vow to get our hands dirty because someone has to be a voice for the voiceless and perhaps many of us were called for such a time as this…
(As an aside, if I could ask Roshi Halifax anything, one thing I was curious to know after her discussion, was in dealing with her end-of-life occupation, what do people say is the most important thing from life? What do they say they wished they had focused on more? What should those still living disregard and/or embrace? At the end of someone’s life they speak the truth. There is no more need to hide, to lie, to be concerned about what others may think and that is what I want to know. I feel I have wasted a lifetime over things that are unimportant and I want my life to matter. I want my relationships to matter. I want people to say, "Hannah was here and she made a difference". I do not want to focus on things that truly do not amount to a hill of beans. I want to live my life in color and squeeze all that I can out of it and when I think I am done squeezing, squeeze just a little bit more of it out for good measure and know that something I did in my lifetime made a difference to someone. Thank you Roshi Halifax for your teachings.)
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