In the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis, dharma teacher Larry Ward says we have to “create communities of resilience,” and offers his mantras for this time.
Here’s an excerpt from the article that may find of interest:
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a poem after a bombing that happened in Vietnam. A bombing, of course, by Americans. He wrote:
I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm—
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.And it is very important here to understand the point of anger in Buddhism. Anger is a normal, perfect human experience that you may and I may be having in daily life, but especially at this moment. The point of this is not to lose ourselves. Not to lose our sense of oneness with ourselves, not to lose our sense of loving ourselves, not to lose ourselves in fragmentation. And it could be anger, it could be fear, it could be numbness, but the point of practice is not to lose ourselves. We don’t push away suffering. Feel every ounce of suffering through your whole body, but we don’t drown in it either. And that’s the great practice of my life.
