At many temples in Asia, one encounters statues and paintings of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. Avalokitesvara is sometimes portrayed as female, sometimes male, so we could say they are transgender—and also transcending gender. In some depictions, Avalokitesvara has a thousand arms, symbolizing all the skillful means they have of responding to suffering, and on each of these arms is an eye in the palm of the hand, the eye of wisdom.
We need the eye of wisdom in our palms. If we see deeply into a given situation, then our action will be appropriate action. But if we are caught up in our own story, not seeing the situation in its depth, in its complexity, then our action may actually cause more harm than good. We need to act, but it is also vital that we see clearly.
When 9/11 happened, I was on a bus with monastics accompanying my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh (known to his students as Thay) to Berkeley, where he was going to be giving a talk. We were all deeply shaken by the news and wanted to respond immediately. We knew there would be a lot of people looking to Thay and the community for guidance. A group of us were brainstorming and discussing what we could do, how we could help, and we came up with a plan to go into town the next day to get resources from our archive at Parallax Press and create a press release so we could respond right away.
That night, when we arrived at Kim Son Monastery near Santa Cruz, we went to Thay and rather urgently shared our plan. Thay took some breaths and said, “No, I don’t want you to do that tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re all going to the beach.”
We were taken aback. The beach? There had just been a terrorist attack and we needed to respond—to act! We didn’t understand. But since he is our teacher, the next day we all went to the beach. Rather than speeding up, we slowed down and were deeply nourished. We played and ate together and swam in the ocean. It ended up being a really important time to connect with each other and feel safe. We can’t create safety for others if we don’t feel safe ourselves. The following day we did all the things we were planning to do, but those actions came out of a different place than they would have if we had gone into action right away.
I learned a lot from that. Thay probably felt quite a bit of pressure from us, his very sincere students, yet he was able to say, “No, I won’t be pushed”—not only by all the urgency in society, the collective sense of anxiety, but even these young students he was close to. It takes a great deal of strength to be able to see clearly in a situation like that. Of course, Thay spent the next many months and years responding to the 9/11 tragedy. His whole life has been a response to the tragic and profound events of suffering continuously occurring in the world.
Whether or not we respond is not the question. We must respond. But how? And where does that response come from? The way we respond is crucial.
During the war in Vietnam, Thay set up the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS). Thousands of young people were sent out into the countryside to rebuild villages, schools, and roads to improve people’s lives. This was important work. Yet every week they would take a day of mindfulness for themselves, to refresh and come together to practice, listen to each other, share, and heal. They didn’t say, “No, this work is too urgent, we have to work seven days a week.”
This is true for all of us. In order to sustain ourselves, we have to take regular pauses.
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