EVOLUTIONARY IMPERATIVE
As I sit in my living room reading the Sunday newspaper, I am inundated with stories and images of tragedies, violence, greed, impending environmental catastrophe, and despair. Sometimes I say to myself, in light of the horrors of these days, “Why am I writing a book telling people to meditate? Shouldn’t we be out on the streets?”
Well, these actions are not mutually exclusive, and from time to time I am out on the streets. But what I’ve come to see is that natural awareness practice, and any other meditation practice, has profound effects on individuals, which in turn impacts families, professional lives, neighborhoods, and institutions of which we all are a part.
When we live connected to our natural awareness, we have an ongoing experiential sense of well-being that can counteract the depression and anxiety that paralyze so many of us. Since many of us struggle with these symptoms, a healthier planet can begin with healthier individuals, and meditation is a proven mental-health strategy.
Individual transformation is the beginning. By engaging natural awareness, many of us have an experiential sense of connectedness, and from this comes compassion. What causes separation—greed, violence and hatred, the creation of the “other”? As we practice, we move from the theoretical to the embodied sense that we are connected; we come to know intuitively that doing harm to another is like harming ourselves or our loved ones. How do we bridge religious, cultural, political, and social divisions? We begin with the willingness to listen, to not hold so tightly to our views, and to truly be in the presence of another without an agenda.
I have seen meditators leave unfulfilling jobs in sectors that were exploitative to live a life of service. I have taught activists how to meditate and seen their resultant activism be infused with equanimity, power, and compassion rather than routine anxiety, powerless rage, and despair. I have known meditators who bring principles of awareness into conflict resolution on the global level. I have observed meditators make compassionate choices in the face of horrific odds—not because kindness makes a nice theory, but because their inner understanding tells them this is the only way to act.
So rather than being navel-gazing, which meditation is occasionally accused of, it is absolutely connected to outer change. I believe that for human survival, there is an evolutionary imperative for all of us to wake up—to wake up to our inner suffering and learn how to reduce it, and then wake up to the suffering of others and of the planet. We need to act from a mind that has reduced its clinging, that defaults to awareness and compassion, that lives from a place of connectedness. When these realizations are second nature, there is no question in my mind that each individual will contribute to the cultural and institutional change that is so deeply needed in this time. It is urgent that we practice—and let this practice mature—so that we can become agents of peace.