Cooling the Fire of Stress

I left hospital chaplaincy close to the height of the pandemic, feeling drained and hopeless. I became tired of seeing people die at the hospital and hearing about the public debate on masking and whose lives matter. I wanted to help more with an integrative medicine approach that had proven to be effective, but I had to be careful not to cross lines and be considered untrustworthy and unorthodox. The fact that I could not visit the forest sanctuary I usually went to did not help, either.

But how much of those frustrations actually came from outside causes? It took me nearly a year to be sure that, yes, they were all results of my internal turmoil. My feelings, perceptions and thought-formations became so entangled with the outside world that they conspired to create a situation that seemed unbearable.

That may sound extreme or harsh, but I don’t blame myself for dropping out. Given where I was and what I knew, that was a reasonable choice for the most part. The question was: where do I go from there?

Long story short, I recently came across a book called Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. It eloquently and sufficiently captured what I felt and thought when I left the healthcare system, and echoed my exploration thereafter. The world was on fire. Giving myself some space to attend to the burning inside, I reconnected with my spiritual resources and learned to find the new seeds and keep them alive.

With support, I’ve found the pond where I can turn to for coolness and nourishment. I’ve recognized the gentle stream that is so easy to miss and renews the pond. The pond will be the source of all the goodness I can do in the world. And I realize that it needs to be treated with care, not abuse. I also need to remember to align myself with the stream to fill up my pond.

So what kind of spiritual care am I going to provide for the world, if any? I imagine it to be cool water sprinkled on the fire of stress, be it illness or death, grief or trauma, addiction or hollowness. It can also be water that combines with the flour to become a dough, bringing cohesion in communities that support people in healing and thriving.

The specific shapes and forms remain to be seen, but this is where I start.

Take Out the Personal Sting

The morning after I finished reading the anthology Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation & Freedom, my husband told me that the night before, he dreamed of witnessing a white man kill two African American kids outside a department store. “It felt traumatic, and I still have a headache,” he added.

“Oh, wow…I wonder if this is your way to comprehend the deep pain of the black community, since you’ve never witnessed something like this in real life,”  I responded from the cognitive side of my brain.

“Maybe,” he uttered.

I asked him if he’d like some energy healing and he agreed. I did Mind Clearing and slowly and thoroughly cleared out the congested energy in his energy field.  Then we did a metta meditation to send loving-kindness to the two boys and then to my husband. By late morning, his headache subsided, but I started to feel a little headache, which I rarely do.

I realized that I did not intentionally separate my energy field from his at the end of the healing. I made up this simple act in my mind and thought to myself, “It’s time to shift.”

Over the past year, I took a deep dive into social justice issues, starting from racism to neocolonialism and to hypercapitalism. I first began paying attention to these issues to improve my cultural competence as a spiritual care provider, in order to become more aware of how social oppression affected patients’ experience when they received spiritual care and of the ways my social location influenced how I provided care. This learning soon led to reflections on my own experiences as an Asian female immigrant from the communist China. I came to see that Eurocentricity permeated the air I breathed back in China and white supremacy was the water I swam in in the United States. Racism exacerbated the stress and suffering in my life, compounded by patriarchy of a much longer history. It was fascinating how those social forces perpetuated existential pain.

Initially, I was reluctant to engage in such exploration, considering it out of alignment with the Buddhist teaching on non-self. After all, “Asian,” “woman,” or “communist” were all conventions in the Buddhist sense and did not have an essence of their own. It turned out that my reluctance probably had more to do with a knowing that this was a Pandora’s box than with following a Buddhist strategy.

Apart from making sense of my past from those lenses, I also witnessed firsthand at the hospital the nationwide consequences of some privileged individuals’ preference for comfort and freedom in not taking coronavirus precautions seriously. And I definitely had my share of experiencing unconscious bias, microaggression and belittlement.

So I was curious what I would learn when I finally began reading Black and Buddhist. I was immediately hooked by the first two chapters of the moving accounts of healing trauma. Where was racism? Well, it was woven in the fabric of the authors’ lives. It needed no highlight. Its impact was by no means downplayed, but it was placed in the larger context of a person’s being. This means that when that person sought healing that was effective, their racialized trauma was held in spaciousness. They were not defined by their oppression, contrary to what oppression often sought to do.

Ruth King elaborated on this quite nicely in the final chapter of the book:

“I was beginning to realize that my mind—my relationship to distress—was not only a righteous and persistent oppressor but also my understanding of the nature of mind was my ticket to freedom.

“Are you taking this situation personally—to be a personal experience instead of a human experience? Have people before you felt this way? Where else in the world are people feeling similarly gripped?

“I am not focused on your story but on the direct experience story is having on this moment. I am more invested in your freedom than your comfort zone or safety, and I won’t be complicit in your suffering. I’m listening intently to your rhythm of unfolding, how you are freeing yourself through the practice, and how you are contributing to improvisational jazz—a sound larger than self-interest or indulgence.”

This reminded me of a Dhamma talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu that I really liked several years ago. It’s called “The Particulars of Your Suffering.”

“The Buddha offered his teachings as aids both in overcoming bewilderment and in finding protection, i.e., protection from the suffering. One of the first things he has you do is try to take the personal sting out of your suffering…It’s good to recognize that everybody is suffering in the same way. There are differences in the particulars, but deep down inside everybody has that same sense of being burdened, being overcome: pushed in ways they’d rather not be pushed, weighed down in ways they’d rather not be weighed down.”

“A human birth provides the stark contrasts and inequalities which cry out, not for justice, but for the compassion and self-reflection aimed at finding the fundamental cause of these problems within us, rather than merely attempting to alleviate their symptoms on a social level.”

The reason why crying out for justice is not suggested is because justice is practiced differently by each person and will not be genuine when it is imposed. Paññāvaddho Bhikkhu said:

“He realized that every group is a collection of individuals, each of whom has a conscience that disciplines personal behavior. He addressed his teaching to that conscience because he knew that social justice is practiced differently by each person based upon their intentions, kamma, strengths, weaknesses, wishes and fears.”

“Social harmony can only manifest when enough people freely choose the path of harmlessness and compassion over the one of confrontation and self-interest. When a philosophy of social justice is imposed upon a population, which complies merely out of social pressure or the fear of punishment, people’s compliance is insincere, and therefore not grounded in real virtue.”

"I can sense the turning of my thinking as I read these words. I did not realize how deeply I adopted the notion of justice, or was it an adaptation? Recalling Chinese folk tales, I could see how fairness was a central value in most Chinese people’s minds, and there were many stories where the bad guy was punished and the good guy received what he deserved. How can people trust in a society if there is no fairness, or justice? The simple answer is empathy, a quality valued in every religion and secular psychology, as Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote in a recent Tricycle article,“Karma Is Individual”:

“The ultimate purpose of this reflection is to spark a desire to get out of the karmic network altogether. The interim reaction, though, should be empathy: We’ve all been in this together for far too long. It’s time that we helped one another, rather than taking advantage of people when they’re down.”

But empathy cannot be willed. It can only come from a sense of freedom, knowing that you have something to spare. Investigating and separating out the raw materials in the mind that cause suffering will open the possibility to liberation. Those raw materials are, in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s words, “the intimate details that all forms of suffering have in common”.

The “Intellectual” Monk Who Pointed Me to a Spiritual Path

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on what spiritual resources I have, and the people who have contributed to the development of these resources. One night, I found myself reminiscing about my experiences learning from Ajaan Geoff and thought it would be meaningful to put them in writing.

A couple weeks after I arrived in California in 2014 to attend graduate school, I sat in on a “Theory of Meditation” class taught by a professor, Dr. William Chu. I was skeptical toward any theorization of meditation, but half an hour into it, I was hooked. The approach to meditation Dr. Chu introduced gave greater clarity into how to train the mind, and it made more sense to me than any other approaches I was exposed to. It was more of a practical guidance in meditation than a theory. In fact, Dr. Chu joked at class that he had to teach in this theoretical way to follow the tradition of making ideas complicated in the academia.

Dr. Chu offered the “Meditation Practicum” course in the following semester, where he explained different aspects of the meditation method and guided us in practicing one of them at each class. The practice always left students feeling relaxed and nourished. We were also encouraged to practice at home and write a short reflection every week. I discovered that there were many ways to engage the mind and gave up the “dry method” I learned during a ten-day silent retreat I did before.

Dr. Chu mentioned a forest monastery, about a hundred miles from the university, as an ideal site to retreat and referred to Ajaan Geoff as the teacher who showed him that Awakening was still possible in this modern age. So a couple of fellow students and I decided to check out the monastery. When I was there, I was surprised that such a peaceful, traditional community existed in 21^st-century America and that the monks all seemed happy and at ease leading a mostly secluded life. I also liked the fact that there were many trees and plants at the monastery in the largely barren Southern California landscape, and that the monastery was surrounded by the mountains. Ajaan Geoff, the abbot, came out to greet us. I didn’t speak to him, but I remember his answer to the question asked by the friend who was visiting with us. The friend asked what he should do now that he found schoolwork was not very meaningful. Ajaan Geoff responded succinctly that if you have to do it, you just do it, without mentioning meditation or any specific Buddhist concepts at all. This down-to-earth attitude left an impression on me, as it cut through any unnecessary mental fashioning and focused on personal responsibility and action.

Having a good first impression of Ajaan Geoff as a person and the kind of life he lived, I started to learn more about him. I read that he attended Oberlin College partly because he loved classical music. I liked how, in his Dhamma talks on breath meditation, he often uses different perceptions to encourage the listeners to become a “connoisseur of the breath”. Ajaan Geoff was first introduced to meditation when Dr. Donald Swearer, a professor of religion, brought two monks to Oberlin. Dr. Swearer later served as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and taught at my university as a visiting professor. I took his class “Buddhism and Society in Southeast Asia” that focused on the relationships between the state and religion in Thailand and Burma. I learned the social and historical background of the tradition Ajaan Geoff practices and teaches.

For a while, my interest in Buddhism was mainly in meditation, like many western Buddhist converts. It was because Ajaan Geoff majored in European Intellectual History in college that I became curious about what he had to say about Buddhism from an intellectual standpoint. So I began reading his books. I think the first book I picked up was The Paradox of Becoming, because as a person with little faith in any spiritual matter, I needed to first see by logical reasoning to decide whether this path would work. Of course, the book convinced me to give it a try.

Many people in the Thai Forest Tradition and wider Buddhist circles consider Ajaan Geoff’s writing to be a little too intellectual and complicated. I found it to be necessary for him to write in this way to be effective in reaching readers like me, given that most Buddhist concepts are very subtle and elusive and that there are many interpretations (or distortions) in later commentaries. That said, I must admit that I did enjoy reading that kind of sophisticated writing at that time, as I did like reading David Tracy’s discussion on Christian theology using music theory for my class “Use of Sacred Texts in Spiritual Care”.

I never considered such writing as a reflection of the perspective of writers who wrote mostly from the head instead of the heart. Rather, when I read writings of Christian theologians and pastors for my chaplaincy classes, I was often moved by their deep concern for the welfare of the humanity. In the same way, I sensed Ajaan Geoff’s profound compassion and strong desire in his books to guide readers in finding a way out of suffering in his study guides like Beyond Coping (on aging, illness, death, and separation) and Merit: The Buddha’s Strategies for Happiness and essay collections Noble Strategy, Purity of Heart, and Beyond All Directions.

I must mention, however, that it can be difficult to understand the viewpoint where Ajaan Geoff and even the Buddha speaks from when reading these books. I didn’t have a solid grasp of Ajaan Geoff’s writing until I read one of his treatises Skill in Questions, which discussed the Buddha’s teaching strategies based on the four ways he responded to questions, and scanned through another, The Wings to Awakening, a thorough treatment of the factors to awakening.

These readings would still seem dry if I didn’t listen to the recordings of the Dhamma talks he gives every evening at the monastery. Available to be played at any point of my day, these dhamma talks served to shift my consciousness, deepen my understanding of the Dhamma and encourage my practice. Many of them were quite good in terms of both the content and the delivery, and a few were significant in my “conversion”.

“The Story behind Impatience” pointed me to the power of present intention and gave me the freedom to question the narrative I created out of my life. “The Samsaric Mud Fight” showed me the consequences of having ill-will towards or holding grudges against anybody. “The Particulars of Your Suffering” helped me see beyond my own dissatisfaction about life and engage the possibility for transcendence.

Apart from solitary study, I also attended the yearly one-day retreat he led in LA and the biweekly book study held at the monastery. It was such a delight to be in his presence, hearing his teachings with timely and good-natured humor. It also helped to hear about the experiences and questions of the audience.

My personal interaction with him was mostly during the daily Q&A session at the monastery whenever I visited it. I was told that, in the early years, he would chat with a group of students taking a course from Spirit Rock in the afternoon, but he had become so much busier with different teaching responsibilities that students today couldn’t have that luxury. Nevertheless, the most memorable question I asked was when I blissed out from doing the breath meditation incorrectly. Ajaan Geoff gave a Dhamma talk that night later titled “Worker, Observer and Enjoyer” to elaborate on his answer to my question. I knew of only two traditional roles in meditation, the doer and the observer, but he added the role of the “enjoyer” to address my issue.

Another memorable question was about parents. He gave a Dhamma talk later titled “Respect as a Sign of Intelligence”, which removed some deep-seated pride in me so that I became more open to learning from other people. It also helped me better connect with my parents.

I had several brief interactions with him about practical matters around the monastery, and he was always very attentive and modest. One time, when I volunteered to take out the lights and arrange them around the meditation hall before evening sitting, I wasn’t sure where two lights on one side of the hall were kept. He happened to walk up to the hall from his hut and took out those two lights from underneath a table. He set them up and gently said to me, “Here you go.”

At the end of the month-long retreat I did at his monastery, I thanked him for letting me stay and told him that my time there gave me an idea of what early Buddhist training was about. He had a genuine, childlike smile on his face when I said that, like he had shared something precious with me, and I recognized it. It is in moments like this that you know when someone is watching out for your long-term wellbeing.

That brief exchange was the last time I’ve seen him in person before I moved to the East Coast. When the pandemic hit, he gave longer and more exhaustive Dhamma talks, which were uploaded online every day. I picked up the responsibility of working on the translation of his With Each and Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation that I started during the retreat and that became my spiritual nourishment when visiting another Thai Forest monastery in Virginia was not possible. Through the translation process, I was able to read his writing more closely and better appreciate his skill and compassion in teaching people a valuable tool to find lasting happiness.

I don’t see myself moving back to California any time soon. As the learning in the Thai Forest Tradition relies very much on in-person interactions, I know that my karmic connection with him will likely not go much deeper at this point. I wrote this article to reflect on how much respect and gratitude I have for him for showing me a path that is truly worthwhile.

References:

Being A Monk: A Conversation with Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff '71) https://www2.oberlin.edu/alummag/spring2004/feat_monk.html

All the Dhamma talks, books and essays mentioned in this article can all be found at https://www.dhammatalks.org

 

The Opposite of Oblivion

I finally got the chance to open the book Oblivion: Grace in Exile with a Monk Behind Bars two weeks after it arrived from California. Brother Dennis Gibbs’ handwritten dedication “thanks for being part of the journey” brought back the memory of the Sacred Journey my husband and I attended on summer evenings. At this weekly book club held in the serene library of his monastery, I was introduced to Brené Brown’s work that led me to choosing my current CPE residency program.

Reading about Br. Dennis’ early life was a connecting experience for me. Even though I may never grasp the extent of the darkness he went through, I could relate to each shade of darkness he described and better understand the darkness in my childhood. This is the power of sharing our story in a safe space—a key element for us to heal from brokenness.

Looking at the bright side of his story, it’s amazing to see how he walked out of the thick layers of darkness with a sporadic, faint light of hope. Trusting the right inner experiences opened him up to God’s grace that manifested in unexpected ways. As he put it, “Looking back on it, it was more intuition than anything … God meets us where we are in life.”

When I first started CPE, I found it hard to make sense of a single visit in the context of my patients’ long-term wellbeing, which to me must build on a solid spiritual path. My supervisor said that my role was to support the patient’s spiritual journey through our brief encounter in whatever way possible. Now I’ve experienced how certain fleeting encounters supported my own spiritual journey and I’ve also had better sense of how my visits supported my patients’. Br. Dennis’ spiritual journey inspired me to embrace both the unpredictable, mysterious aspects and the sacredness of such experiences, which involves a fine balance between spontaneity and intention.

His struggle with addiction also showed how fragile this light could be amidst storms of destructive forces. What can keep the ember burning is the compassion either for others or for oneself. As he wrote, “That day helped me rediscover the place within me that was – and is – out of reach of all the bad stuff, untouchable by darkness. It’s the place where God dwells within us.”

This led me to thinking that the work of spiritual care is to ignite, recognize, or protect this ember, which is why it’s called “care.” It’s about caring for the divine within. As he stated, “No matter who we are or what we have done, no one is beyond God’s grace and love. Our task is to be instruments of that love for one another. Final judgment is God’s work; ours is something different.” This rings true not only in the context of prison ministry but also in healthcare where people experience the pain of alienation arising from physical degeneration, fast or slow.

Lastly, he affirmed the connection between monasticism and modern spirituality, or more specifically for me, the role of contemplative practices in benefiting the world. (“All these elements of the monastic life in our community help us to engage with the world with clean hearts and spirits that are open, loving and truthful.”)

The eloquence and elegance of his writing gave me the words to describe my personal experience and spiritual care practice. The honesty and simplicity in the book helped me think through my pastoral theology. It has become clearer to me that what I want to offer in every brief spiritual encounter is the opposite of oblivion. Seeing what is here and now, and lifting it up.

Illusion of Peace

I knew one way that the East Asian shame differed from the American shame was that there was an element of dishonor in the East Asian shame, which is probably why shame became so deeply rooted in the culture for centuries. To better understand the context of shame in Chinese culture, I read a journal article on the utility of shame by the Early Confucians. The article traces the origin of that dishonor: engaging in warfare in defense of the honor of the warrior class and aristocracy.

“The warrior aristocracy lived in near constant war. Warfare represented the defense of the clan’s lineage and honor so it became a part of the ancestral cult, institutionalized as a religious duty…In a society in which rank is determined by physical aggression and force, bravery and physical prowess become prized virtues. In a society in which rank is determined by social attention-holding power, social influence and empathy are prized virtues…Early Confucian texts aimed to increase social harmony and decrease violence by promulgating a networked ideology with specific emotional, behavioral and cognitive content. Early Confucians sought this goal in two ways. Confucians in Warring States China inherited a social rank system dominated by physical dominance. First they recalibrated the sense of shame to function in and to facilitate the development of a social environment in which dominance is achieved by prestige, not physical force. Second they altered shame experience, the sense of shame, and additional features of our bioprogram, so that embodiment of a suite of quasi-moral traits of character was necessary for achievement of high social status in their prestige-based system of social rank.”

The article went on to revealingly elaborate on how shame was elevated to the status of a basic human emotion in Chinese culture. Its discussion on the shame profile in the present-day Confucian diaspora echoed my own experience of feeling shame.

I was aware that the most influential schools of Chinese philosophy were all founded during the Warring States Period, which deservedly earned its name. I was mostly proud of these philosophical schools and their ideals, but I paid little attention to the level of social unrest and cruelty that Chinese people experienced during that time.

One thing that the majority of today’s Chinese people are proud of is that — even though the Middle Kingdom was invaded and conquered by other ethnic groups, from the Mongols and the Manchus to the Western imperial powers — China never conquered other nations by force. In fact, that was how past generations of collapsed dynasties throughout Chinese history coped with the humiliation of losing their homeland. They believed they were more civilized than their conquerors. The mechanism of that civilization process, however, involves what psychologists call shame induction.

It is unsettling to revisit the social background of how shame was established in Chinese Confucian culture, just as when I heard about how Burmese Buddhists treated their fellow Burmese Muslims. I feel like I was awakened up from my illusion of peace and saw the undercurrents that were constantly in conflict. It is like a state in meditation called delusion concentration, where the mind is not really concentrated, but one comes out of it believing it to be right concentration.

Perhaps, we sometimes need that illusion of peace in the same way that we need guilt or shame to keep destructive actions at bay.

At the right time, we will replace guilt with grace and shame with compassion because we want to be motivated by love rather than fear.

It is a long process to transform ordinary goodness to true benevolence. I believe honesty is the stepping stone. That’s how we break through our illusion of peace.