Breathing Wholeness: Growing Into Humanism, Part Two
Everybody breathes. You have to breathe, all the time, to stay alive. When the gospel stories tell us that Jesus breathed his last, we know this means that he died. Many primitive peoples equated breath with the soul, because breathing was the thing that visibly ceased when a living creature died. In the mother language of Latin, the word ‘spirit’ comes from the same root as respiration; to breathe. To inspire is to give breath to. Breathing is one of the most ancient tools of spiritual practice, because it is readily available and constant. You might not always have a crystal bowl handy, but you always have your breath. Breathing also connects us; we breathe each other’s air, and the trees breathe in our carbon dioxide and exchange it for oxygen. Matching the rhythm of each other’s breathing is one of the ways in which we close the open limbic loop of mammalian physiology, and help to mutually regulate one another’s well being. It is one of the things that infants learn by being held, how to breathe. Breathing is also one of the most intimate examples of the essential polarity of life. Both inhaling and exhaling are necessary and good, but they are mutually exclusive. You can’t choose one over the other, or find a compromise between them. You have to alternate between embracing each of them fully, the letting them go when they have fulfilled their necessity, and fully embracing the opposite. Every breath teaches us about connection and change – no wonder it is such a powerful spiritual tool!
The eastern traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism in particular, have long used attention to breathing as a method for cultivating spiritual awareness. By gaining control over the automatic process of breathing, we become better able to focus our intention on any aspect of our inner or outer lives that we might choose. In the practice of Tonglen, the Buddhist tradition invites us to use breathing as the foundation of an imaging practice that seeks to cultivate our capacity for compassion. By deliberately summoning ourselves into the presence of our own and others’ pain, we learn to dissolve the attachment to our own selfish ego that keeps us separate from the people and beings who share our world. This is, as the teachers remind us, counterintuitive. The ordinary human ego instinctively wants to turn away from pain, to escape it, to do anything rather than deal with it. Yet pain is a reality of the human condition, and in the end we cannot escape it. We who follow the humanist path toward maturity and wisdom are well advised to consider this dilemma; what do we do with the inevitable truth, that living in this universe hurts?
How are we to make sense and meaning of the losses, the fears, the frustrations, the aching disappointments, the woundedness, the defeated struggles, the damage that is done to us, the damage that we do – we, who proclaim the gospel of human possibility and affirm the goodness of life – how do we answer life’s sufferings, and the pain that is part of being human?
This is the question that Easter poses, every year, just at the earth’s tenderest and loveliest moment, when the killing cold ceases, and a blush of green creeps over the washed out grey of winter’s departure. How can we think about betrayal and tears and abuse and tyranny and the suffering of innocence at such a season? The Christian tradition, in its own way, summons us to confront the pain of being human; to imagine what it means to stand at the foot of the cross when those we love are suffering, when our own most precious hopes are reduced to ashes, when power and cruelty triumph over goodness, and the tragic truth of mortality is made starkly real. It is true that Easter offers the promise of resurrection, but only after the crucifixion is over, after we have lived through the darkest hour of despair, and only, I would suggest, when we have come to understand this most essential truth of spiritual maturity, whatever religious language we may speak, that it is possible to be in the presence of pain without panic.
There are four fundamental types of pain that all human beings encounter at various times, and they may feel like different propositions, but the techniques for dealing with them are essentially the same. We know, first of all, our own pain; when our bodies are injured or diseased; when we grieve for the loss of those we love; when our hopes are disappointed or our trust is violated. The hurt that we ourselves experience is the hardest to escape, but that doesn’t stop us from trying, and sometimes it seems the most threatening, as though if we let ourselves be fully present to all the pain that lurks in our tightly closed up memories, it might be more than we could bear, and destroy us. If you don’t have a sense of your own resilience, the fear of pain can be more incapacitating than the suffering itself. This is why teenagers are particularly vulnerable to suicidal impulses, because they don’t have the life experience to know that even devastating disappointment and hurt will pass, and the fear of their own pain can make them panic. The more spiritual maturity we acquire, the greater our willingness to stay with the reality of pain in the moment, knowing that other moments, and almost certainly better moments, will follow.
The advantage of suffering that is our own is that we have the most control of what to do about it. We are far more helpless when someone we care about is in pain, and that helplessness can contribute to a feeling of panic. How often people avoid being around someone who is sick, or grieving, or dying, because as they put it, “I never know what to say.”! And anyone who has been on the receiving end of a caring presence at such a moment can testify that it’s not about what you say; you don’t have to say anything. Indeed, sometimes just jabbering away can be its own form of avoidance, filling the silence with protective irrelevancies. The question is not whether you have clever ideas or eloquent comforts to offer; the question is whether you are willing to abide in the presence of someone else’s pain, without adding your own panic to it.
Part of our growth toward spiritual maturity begins the day we first make the conceptual leap of intuitive empathy, and realize that other beings experience pain that is similar to our own, and this is part of what constitutes our interconnection with the web of all existence. Often it comes as a revelation to a child that her seemingly all powerful parent can be hurt. We learn the rudiments of fairness by asking, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” and recognizing that what injures ourselves also injures others. The capacity for intimacy grows out of the ability to cherish another person’s well being, and to feel it as a source of distress to ourselves whenever something causes them pain. Parents often affirm that they would endure any depth of suffering themselves if it could prevent their child from being hurt. These are normal relational stages of emotional development, but along with them in every case goes the reality that we cannot always prevent our friends or loved ones from experiencing pain, no matter how hard we try. That inability to protect those we care about can make us frantic with a sense of powerlessness and failure, unless we can develop the inner resources to face their suffering in such a way that we can maintain a useful presence. Parents know that if they themselves fall apart over every vaccination shot, or skinned knee, or failed tryout or romantic crisis or college rejection letter, it will make the child’s experience worse. The spiritually mature parent or partner or friend can offer a serene strength to support those they care about. The wisdom of Tonglen shows us how to nurture that serenity in ourselves, so that we can offer it to others in need.
Another type of pain that can make us respond with panic is the suffering of the oppressed, and of victims of injustice. It is part of our sense of moral accountability to identify with those who are robbed of what is rightfully theirs, or who are subjected to pain by the indifference or cruelty by others who happen to have more power. The world is unfortunately filled with such examples, and part of a spiritually mature life is to do our share to redeem these conditions and create freedom, justice, and peace in which everybody can share. Yet it is often easier to move too quickly into our impulse to fix someone else’s problems, and more comfortable to abide in our sense of outrage, than it is to be present and bear witness to a suffering that we know is wrongful, and might have been prevented. The wisdom of Tonglen suggests that what the privileged owe to the oppressed is not to take over their lives, but rather to share a compassionate and unflinching witness to the truth of what goes on in their world, until both groups come to a shared understanding of what changes can and should be made. The study of human dynamics shows that both victims and rescuers too easily fall into the trap of becoming oppressors in their turn, unless a conscious effort is made to stay grounded in wisdom, intention, and compassion. Tonglen practice invites us to open ourselves to the pain of injustice in all its forms, so that we can bring our best and wisest insight to the work of healing the world.
The fourth type of pain that we all must deal with is what the ancient Greeks called ‘lacramae rerum’ – the tears of all things. At some level, life is simply tragic; all that lives is mortal, even the stars burn out at last; evolution has given us predators that must kill or starve, parasites that thrive as their host sickens, reproductive strategies that fail as often as they succeed; the human quest for knowledge and meaning drives us to abuse our powers, and the endless hunger for love breaks our hearts. There is no element of that interconnected web that is not shot through with suffering and finitude; the lacrimae rerum are part of all that we know and are. Some people would say that it is just this reality that makes the existence of god necessary, because only a divine presence can counter the despondency of such an awareness. Humanism teaches us that no matter what the case might be about god, we must find the path that leads beyond despair for ourselves. Whatever worth there is to be known in life, it has to stand in the face of this truth, that there is a strand of suffering woven into the fabric of creation that can never be removed, no matter how wise, or careful, or righteous, or brave we may ever be. We are not born with that resolution; it is an achievement of the spirit, only gained by learning over time that the reality of pain need not consume us.
The panic response that is the opposite of Tonglen can take a variety of forms. Perhaps the most instinctive is simply the impulse to run away from pain, which can also be done in several ways. From our own pain, it can be as simple as a refusal to acknowledge that a loss or a wound or a disappointment actually hurts. We can turn away from the suffering of others by withdrawing from relationships when we don’t know how to be with someone who is hurting, or avoiding the opportunity to acknowledge or talk about what they might be going through. We can run away from the pain of injustice by not paying attention to the stories of what is going on in the world, by wrapping ourselves in the safety of whatever privilege we might enjoy, and telling ourselves that it is not our responsibility to save the world. And we can escape from the tears of all things by choosing not to think too deeply about anything, by pretending that mortality will never touch us personally, or the things and people we love. Even faith can be a form of running away, if we try to use an idea like heaven to deny the realities of loss. Tonglen summons us to spiritual maturity by seeking the courage and confidence to turn and face the truth that we know about suffering.
Another form of panic in the face of pain is the immediate impulse to fix things. This may take the form of trying to force ourselves to heal faster from an injury than our bodies can actually manage, or it may be the rebound second marriage that will prove everything that was wrong was the first spouse’s fault. Premature fixing is a well known relational mistake, when one person just wants to vent and be heard with understanding, while their partner is so uncomfortable with their distress that they instantly start offering instructions about how to solve the problem. For authentic communication and real help, it is important to be fully present to the pain before we start crafting solutions. Panic in the face of injustice can lead those who have greater power or resources to try to make things right by restructuring the communities or lives of oppressed people in ways that are unwanted and inappropriate. Empowerment happens when marginalized people are given attentive witness that does not flee from their suffering into an ill-considered quick fix effort. And the attempt to correct the tragic realities of the natural world and the human condition usually just make people end up looking foolish, and underline how small we actually are in the overall scheme of things. The wisdom of Tonglen invites us to abide in the presence of pain without needing to solve it, until a truly helpful response becomes clear.
Another familiar form of panic is the effort to anaesthetize ourselves, to block out the feeling of pain. This can be physical self-medication, with drugs or alcohol, or all the other forms of addiction, to work, or food, or sex, or gambling; often these are ways of substituting either numbness or some other intense feeling for the suffering that would otherwise be present in our minds and bodies and spirits. We can anaesthetize ourselves to the pain of those we love in these same ways, or we can create other kinds of energy in the relationship, like anger, or anxiety, to prevent the feeling of hurt from ever getting to the surface and gaining attention. We make ourselves insensible to the suffering of the oppressed through common cultural distractions, like frivolous entertainment and consumerism, and we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of problems that are not within our capacity to solve single-handedly. In the same way, by substituting vanity and trivial concerns for the deeper questions of human living, we can anaesthetize ourselves to the implications of mortality and finitude. If we become sufficiently invested in the college basketball championships and Dancing with the Stars, we can avoid thinking about our own inevitable losses, and the tragedies that unfold daily all around us. The spiritually mature person is one who seeks not oblivion or false comfort, but an awakened presence that honors even the painful truth of our existence.
Another way to flee from pain is to assign blame for it; to try to determine what made it happen, so that whatever it was can be prevented in the future. This can lead to superstition, when we create a connection with some arbitrary preceding event even though no causal relationship actually exists, so that by avoiding that event, we propose to avoid getting hurt. This impulse can also lead to blaming the victim, because it may be easier to believe that a person, even ourselves, is the cause of their own suffering, than to believe that some tragedies are arbitrary, and have no rational explanation. People have been known to go to elaborate lengths to protect themselves and their loved ones from all possible harm, no matter how remote, because they are so afraid of what might happen if they were actually called upon to deal with pain. Part of the practice of Tonglen is the realization that pain is actually not the end of the world; in fact, most of us are more resilient than we know, and we do not need to run away from our own or others’ discomfort, but rather learn what we can from it, which is sometimes quite a lot.
The final move of panic is despair, and allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed by the experience of pain. We may turn cynical about the possibility of any good in the world, or just stop caring about anything but ourselves. In psychological terms, we may dissociate, or create different aspects of personality to handle the pain, which other aspects then don’t have to carry with them. It has been reported that burn victims have an unusually high suicide rate, even when they apparently recover well physically, and it has been suggested that perhaps this is because they have experienced a higher degree of suffering than most of us, and are not always willing to go on living in a world that incorporates the possibility of so much pain. This is in some ways a rational proposition, and yet the wisdom of Tonglen would suggest that it is not the best answer to the problem.
In the end, the wise and mature spirit will come to realize that the Buddha was correct in observing that suffering is an inherent element of the human condition. The capacity for pain is part of our genetic inheritance, as well as of the common experience that connects us to each other and makes us part of the larger human family. Moreover, pain is an important reality check, that lets us know something about the way we ought to live, and the kind of world we are trying to build. We are not going to eliminate the lacrimae rerum, but those tears are a valuable source of advice about how we might do better in the future than we have in the past; by them we learn to understand who we want to be, and what we want to be real. Much of the suffering each of us experiences would be gone if we were not so connected to one another and to all living beings, but then what kind of isolated creatures would we be? I know that for myself, I want to live in such intimacy with my fellow beings that when others weep, I taste salt. I don’t think it’s an accident that the story tells us that the women who stood at the foot of the cross, waiting with Jesus through the agonizing hours of the crucifixion, were the ones who first discovered the resurrection. When we have the maturity to meet it with serenity and compassion, suffering will not destroy us, but offers a sacred gift. The Easter miracle is that if we use its power wisely, pain dissolves our separateness, and opens our inner lives more fully to the beauty of the world, the love of other people, and the community of all creation. As long as there is life, there is breath; as long as there is life, there is also pain. If we choose, we can use that breath as a tool to become wiser and stronger, more caring and more at peace. We can grow into the kind of people whose courage and clarity give comfort to the world, who do not run from the suffering that is an inherent aspect of our shared humanity. Growing into our humanism, we are summoned to that work, so that all beings may be healed and drawn together in mutual sympathy and understanding by the power of our presence, intention and lovingkindness.
