Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
CHUANG TSU
If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place. Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst of times there is a world worth struggling for. We need to find ways to keep the vision alive, to acknowledge but not get caught in the dark side, to remember that even the worst aspects of suffering are only part of the whole picture. We need to enter lightly.
Entering lightly means not ignoring suffering but treating it gently. We don’t want to ignore another’s pain, but our becoming depressed or angry about it doesn’t relieve it and may increase it. The delicate balance is in allowing ourselves to feel the pain fully, to be sad or angry or hurt by it, but not be so weighted down by it that we are unable to act to relieve it. It is a matter of ends and means again: to create a caring, loving, peaceful world, we need to act with care and love and peace.
Easy to say, you may think, remembering your heavy heart, tears, and anger when you first saw babies in Ethiopian refugee camps dying from malnutrition. But it is exactly at these times—in the presence of pain, injustice, and horror—that our equilibrium is most needed. How can we keep it? Meditation can help; singing or walking can help; talking with people we respect can help; simply being quiet with ourselves can help.
It is the continuing work of life: of learning to trust that the universe is unfolding exactly as it should, no matter how it looks to us; learning to appreciate that each of us has a part in nurturing this interconnected whole and healing it where it is torn; discovering what our individual contribution can be, then giving ourselves fully to it. Demanding as that sounds, it is what, in the spiritual sense, we are all here for, and compassionate action gives us yet one more opportunity to live it. It is an opportunity to cooperate with the universe, to be part of what the Chinese call the great river of the Tao. It is not a coincidence that Hanuman, who in the Hindu cosmology is called the “embodiment of selfless service,” is the son of the wind god; when we give ourselves into becoming fully who we are by doing fully what we do, we experience lightness, we are like kites in wind, we are on the side of the angels, we are entering lightly.
Looking for lightness, we find there is one thing that can sometimes spring us out of the heavy places. What is this magic? In Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, the aliens, after looking around at life on earth, say, “You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes.” Laughter is healing, we all know that. It’s very difficult to laugh and be angry at the same time. Laughter gives present reality a break.
Most people working with the more difficult realms of human existence know the value of humor in returning us to the incredible lightness of being. Lily Tomlin’s bag lady Trudy, funky vehicle for truth in ?he Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, helps us beyond the pity and superiority that we sometimes feel when we see an apparently crazy woman on the street. Trudy reflects to herself and the audience:
See, the human mind is kind of like … a piñata When it breaks open, there’s a lot of surprises inside. Once you get the piñata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience. I was not always a bag lady, you know, I used to be a designer and creative consultant. For big companies! Who do you think thought up the color scheme for Howard Johnson’s? At the time, nobody was using orange and aqua in the same room together. With fried clams.
Trudy is lovable and brilliant in her madness. We realize that we were caught in our oh-poor-bag-ladies track—we haven’t allowed for this possibility of brilliance. We have forgotten that it is all relative. We have gotten stuck thinking something very limited about who was inside that woman on the street who looked like Trudy. How different it all is from another perspective. That’s part of what’s funny. Not just how different it all looks but how limited our view is. Humor opens up reality. We remember that we don’t always know the whole picture. And that’s very liberating and lightening—there isn’t only one way to see it all. What a relief!
Word leaked out of Israel that there were some very funny jokes made by some very funny Israeli comedians about how people looked in those gas masks when Tel Aviv was being bombed by Iraq. It didn’t make the threat any less terrible, but, for a moment, people weren’t stuck in a reality circumscribed by fear. They had become preposterous animals or extraterrestrials.
In 1990, a year that gave us the savings and loan scandal, Desert Shield, and cutbacks in nearly every social service, Wavy Gravy, court jester of the Hog Farm Commune, ran for city council in Berkeley with the slogan “Why not elect a real clown for a change?” He was not completely without a political portfolio: as he says, “I had run a pig—Pigasus—for president in 1968. In 1972, we ran a rock for that high office, with a roll for vice president. Then along came Nobody, and Nobody is still the perfect presidential candidate. Nobody cares about the poor. Nobody cares about the environment. Nobody represents us in Washington. Nobody makes apple pie like Mom. From 1976 to the present, I’ve worked for Nobody, cuz Nobody is in Washington working for me!” But this time, at the local level, Wavy was running himself. Promoted by flamingo lawn signs designed by R. We Really, Wavy promised more creeks and fewer cars, campgrounds for the homeless, and whistle rings and hooter horns at the weekly council meetings. Wavy said about the council, “They tend to get lost in their own Berkeleyness. I think I can lighten things up.” Even with his pledge to put a chicken in every pothole, Wavy lost the election, but he won 2,000 of the 6,000 votes, partly because people felt that a little humor is what politics really needs. Humor, Wavy says, helps life go more smoothly; it’s the rubber between the elevator doors. “And don’t forget,” he adds, “if you don’t have a sense of humor, it just isn’t funny.”
It is not always easy to be light in the presence of pain and suffering and politics, but remember that, when we are not, it is a signal to be careful. We may be clinging to an idea of how things should be rather than simply looking at how they are. We may have forgotten that all of us have something important to give, but it is different for each one of us. There was once a hungry pig and chicken walking toward a diner with a neon sign saying BACON AND EGGS. The chicken hurried toward it, but the pig hestitated. “For you,” he said to the chicken, “it’s a contribution; for me it’s a commitment.”
We need to catch ourselves and laugh. When we find ourselves on the way to an interview at Greenpeace to see how we can help the environment, and we notice that we are drinking Folger’s (boycotted) coffee from a (Styrofoam) cup, we can resolve to change our ways, but first we deserve a good laugh. We’re doing the best we can, and if we appreciate ourselves and others along the way, if we stay light, we’ll be able to do a lot more.