Things are getting pretty intense out there. Each day the news is more disorienting and harder to take in. Friends often mention the stress they feel all around them. These days, when someone asks me "How are you?” I usually answer that it depends on what lens I'm looking through. Personally, my life is quite blessed at the moment. Knowing things will change, I feel incredibly fortunate to have good health, a wonderful family, enjoy my work, share an inspiring circle of friends and be part of a conscious community.

When I widen the lens and take in what is happening in the world, it becomes heartbreaking to see all the cruelty and harm that people less privileged are going through. The challenge is to not turn away and to keep the heart open in the midst of so much anger, hatred and suffering. I’d like to share some thoughts on skillful ways that may support you going through these times.

Honoring Our Pain

In his First Noble Truth, the Buddha states that there is dukkha in life. The Pali word dukkha can be defined in various ways: suffering, unreliability, unsatisfactoriness or stress. As one friend puts it “Life is a bumpy ride.”

As a meditation teacher, my job is to be present for people’s suffering. A central part of the work is being with others in their most vulnerable moments. This is particularly true in intensive silent retreats. That journey involves being willing to dive deep inside and open to the whole package, meeting all of the painful parts that we usually distract ourselves from seeing.

Early in my teaching I learned the importance of allowing people to go through their experience. A friend came on her first retreat and I really wanted her to have a positive experience. However, she was going through something very different, having a miserable time encountering all the demons inside. It was clear she couldn’t just sit there and be with it all so I suggested going for a nourishing walk and relaxing a bit.

While she was gone, I realized that I too was having a hard time, wishing and hoping she would feel better. At some point I realized she was experiencing the First Noble Truth. I understood that learning to skillfully be with suffering, rather than getting rid of it, was the most profound way for her to transform her pain into compassion. It was a tremendous gift in my teaching. It’s not my job to take away someone’s suffering. I can support them by just holding space for their pain, letting them learn to be with it and hold it for themselves.

The first step is learning to skillfully allow for the pain and sorrow we may feel. In her poem “Unconditional” Jennifer Welwood writes,

Each condition I flee from pursues me.

Each condition I welcome transforms me

And becomes itself transformed

Into its radiant jewel-like essence.

Sometimes we aren’t able to just be with our pain. Instead, we need to “titrate our dukkha” so we don’t become overwhelmed. Finding our “window of tolerance” means knowing our limits as to how much we are able to take in while maintaining a balanced mind. How much news is right for me? Do I need to do something nourishing like gardening, going for a walk in nature, enjoy the company of a friend? Reflect on what helps you get some balance when you’re going through a hard time.

Accepting Things as They Are

The next step in working with suffering, whether it’s inside or around us, is to accept the fact that although life can be painful, is to accept the fact that suffering is part of life. Those with a meditation practice are fortunate to have been exposed to teachings that help us wisely navigate through life.

We learn that we have a choice as to how we relate to our experience. If we can’t change the situation, wishing things were different than they are is a certain prescription for increased suffering. What we resist persists. This is the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth: the cause of most of our suffering is attachment to things being different than the way they are. The truth of impermanence helps us to embrace reality instead of fighting it. Sooner or later things change. What’s the point of railing against reality when that’s just the way it is.

For me, one of the most important teachings about navigating life came when I first read Be Here Now by Ram Dass many years ago. He talks about Shiva’s Dance of Life. Shiva in Hindu teachings is the God of Transformation. Sometimes referred to as the Destroyer, he is the embodiment of impermanence, showing us that life is always changing. How we respond to that fact determines if we resist change or learn to dance with it.

This teaching was a turning point in understanding for me. I saw I had a choice and I was determined, as much as possible, to live my life from AAAAHHHH. Yes, I still get humbled and I’m not always surfing through it all. But knowing where happiness and peace can be found makes all the difference. I just have to keep facing in the right direction and learn from my mistakes along the way.

Learning to Keep Our Hearts Open

So, first we honor our pain, holding it with kindness. Then, understanding that everything changes allows us to keep learning from the difficulties we encounter. We realize with deepening clarity that the best way to do Shiva’s dance of life—is to do it with an open heart. A potent support for that is to keep looking for the good. Yes, there is suffering in life. But many of us have a “negative confirmation bias.” We find what we look for. If we are on the lookout for how life will disappointment us, we will easily notice that. If, however, we look for the blessings in life that will become our orientation. Albert Einstein said that perhaps the most important question a human being can ask is “Is the Universe friendly or not?”

This loving heart is who we really are. Buddhists call it our Buddha Nature or True Nature. Christians call it the Kingdom of Heaven within us. In Judaism, Shekhinah refers to God's immanent or indwelling presence. In Islam, the heart (qalb) is seen as a mirror that can reflect God's divine light.

Lewis Thomas, author of Lives of a Cell, puts it this way: “I maintain that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and that we have genes for that. We can be talked out of that fondness, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection. Hard-of-hearing, we go to war. Stone deaf, we make thermonuclear missiles. Nonetheless, the music is there, waiting for more listeners.”

My Tibetan friend and teaching colleague, Anam Thubten, speaks of the Tibetan practice of looking at life with Sacred Perception. We see everything as sacred and train ourselves to embrace it all. For learning to keep our hearts open amidst both joy and sorrow Buddhism offer four heart practices, the Brahma Viharas or Divine Abodes. Metta or loving kindness, is the cultivation of a kind heart, consciously generating good will towards ourselves and others. We learn to change our perception and relationship to ourselves and everyone around us.

When that loving heart encounters suffering it becomes karuna or compassion. When metta meets happiness, it transforms into the uplifting quality of mudita, sympathetic or appreciative joy. And to hold the other three heart qualities without getting lost in overwhelm or grasping we develop upekkha or equanimity, a balance of mind in all circumstances.

I believe that there is no better way to go through life in these intense times than to deepen our capacity to keep our hearts open and share our love well. As Martin Luther King Jr. so wisely put it, “I’m sticking with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” Deepening these four heart qualities affects everyone around us, awakening the love and goodness in others as well. This is the most subversive and effective response to all the confusion and negativity we are dealing with at this time. Let’s remind each other of that goodness for the benefit of all beings, human and non-human, living on this beautiful home that we share.

Our hearts contract when we feel threatened. Whether real or just a perception, we sense danger and respond with fear, anger, hatred, despair, worry or other unpleasant feelings. When we feel safe and at ease the heart naturally opens and radiates kindness, compassion, joy, peace, and many other beautiful qualities. In this intense time of daily headlines filled with disorienting news, it’s not surprising that people feel stress and all those negative qualities that accompany the resulting contraction. Those in power find it easier to manipulate others by creating an atmosphere of negativity, pitting segments of the population against each other through fear and intimidation. Thus, the ubiquitous “othering” we see in the headlines each day. Authoritarian leaders thrive on these conditions of aversion.

Cultivating an open heart in the face of aversion is a subversive act. Aversion is a contraction in response to reality. When we’re caught in aversion our happiness depends on things needing to be different than the way they are. How can we find peace or well-being when we fight against this moment? We can’t.

The radical antidote is learning to keep the heart open even in the face of difficulties. We are not expected to like the unpleasant moment. We can even fiercely resist it. But when our hearts close in fear or hatred we lose our ability to choose a wiser response. One of the most radical gifts of meditation practice is understanding a great paradox: The more we try to escape from difficulties, whether internal or external, the more they follow us and the more contracted we become. In learning to face them, they become the very source of courage, strength, and transformation.

The first step in mindfulness is learning to accept things the way they are, acknowledging “this moment is like this.” With an accurate recognition of reality, we can choose a response that can support a more expansive way of seeing things. That shift from contraction to openness leads to greater ease and lightness.

A friend was recently stuck in a negative tape loop. It didn’t help that they were running on empty and hadn’t slept well. Their mind kept going down a rabbit hole with one worry following another. At some point they realized what their mind was doing and saw another way. They decided to change the channel and focus on all the blessings in their life. For five minutes they reflected on all the things they were grateful for. The shift of focus affected their whole system. They understood that the mind can create any reality and we can choose how we see the world.

I recently wrote a reflection about how Be Here Now by Ram Dass deeply impacted me, highlighting one page that summed up the possibility of choice: It asked: “Do you live your life from ‘Uunnkkk’ or from ‘Aaaahhh’” Do you receive each situation as a burden or can you learn to respond with grace?

There is another lifetime instruction from that book that has been my north star for over five decades: “You just love.”

This guiding principle is often just an aspiration. I’m not always there. After all these years of practice, there’s still anger, impatience, self-righteousness, etc. Given the right stimulus, I can be humbled once again. But that’s not where I live. Sooner or later—and thankfully it’s more often sooner than later–I come home to that simple instruction, “You just love.” When I remember, it always brings me back to my true self.

Fr. Gregory Boyle, author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, has worked with the toughest street gang members in East Los Angeles. He’s been awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Humanitarian of the Year for his amazing work, giving the most hardened youth the possibility of a new life. His Homeboy Industries is the largest and most successful gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world.

What is his secret ingredient to transform these tough guys into people committed to becoming upstanding citizens? His central practice is to see each person as God would see them. No matter how dangerous or mean, no matter what acts they have committed, he understands that God would love them unconditionally just the same. His practice is embodying what he calls the no matter whatness of God. He writes, “You seek to imitate the kind of God you believe in, where disappointment is, well, Greek to Him. You strive to live the black spiritual that says, “God looks beyond our fault and sees our need…The ‘no matter whatness’ of God dissolves the toxicity of shame and fills us with tender mercy.”

At the heart of each religion is this same understanding. True happiness is found in the loving and caring heart. The Dalai Lama says, “My religion is kindness.“ Jesus exhorts us to love our enemies. “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." It is who we really are.

We’re wired up to care. In one research study, 14- to 18-month-old toddlers showed the innateness of genuine compassionate behavior. An experimenter who was hanging up clothes on a clothesline, “accidentally” dropped a clothespin, which he pretended he couldn't reach. Almost every child in the study tried to help even when it was hard for them to do or interrupted their play.

Three months of compassion practice has been shown to increase telomerase, an enzyme that counteracts the effects of aging. Major studies of elderly populations have shown that volunteering slows down the aging process. And research also has shown that those who regularly express their compassion are less likely to feel lonely and stressed. Cultivating a compassionate heart is really good for you.

The beauty and power of love is that it’s contagious and can be transmitted by a stranger’s simple gesture. Many years ago, I became intrigued and uplifted by the light shining from a man smiling and waving to everyone when I occasionally drove down a busy street in Berkeley, California. “Who is this guy?” I wondered. He’s always there waving to me and wishing me a good day.” I came to deeply appreciate one of Berkeley’s most beloved citizens. For 30 years, Joseph Charles, “Berkeley’s Waving Man” would stand outside of his house from 7:45 to 9:30 AM each weekday morning waving to everyone passing by calling out to each driver, “Have a good day!” Charles was featured on national TV and in the press. When asked why he did it, he simply said, “I love people. That’s all. They seem to like it and love me back.” One couple, after going through a hard time and contemplating divorce, told him that his joyful loving spirit made them decide to get along and try to work things out.

Developing the capacity to keep the heart open in the face of suffering takes practice. Practice is the key word in training ourselves. We need to have patience with habits that don’t serve us anymore as we learn new ways of responding. But if the intention is there, it’s absolutely possible to change. It begins with our intention to simply practice meeting our experience with a basic attitude of good will, whether towards ourselves, others or life. That goodness will become strong when we intentionally meet experience with kindness. Kindness turns into compassion when it encounters suffering. It turns into joy when it meets happiness. And it develops into a profound balance with things as they are as we learn to stop fighting with the world. This is how we can cultivate the Four Divine Abodes of Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity.

Not only do these qualities bring well-being to ourselves, but they also have two additional benefits. Our kind heart is actually a powerful protection against danger. People relax when they sense our good will and feel safe around us. Think of how you feel when you’re around someone who is radiating a loving energy. You likely enjoy that person’s company and feel at ease around them.

And perhaps the most transformative result of learning to keep our heart open is the ability to awaken that kindness in others too. It lights up the mirror neurons in the minds and hearts of others spreading good will and bringing out the best in them. Indian sage Meher Baba writes, “Though love cannot be forced upon anyone, it can be awakened through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative; those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes on gathering power and spreading itself until eventually it transforms everyone it touches."

At this time when kindness, compassion and empathy seem in short supply on the world stage let us be agents of caring and love for the benefit of all.

Originally published at insightberkeley.org (part 1, part 2)