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Non Hatred in the time of war - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 17, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Non Hatred in the time of war

So good evening. I'm Maria Straatmann, and I'm sitting in for Diane, and I'll be here for a couple of more Mondays. I am a retired scientist and businesswoman. I've been around IMC since, oh, I don't know, a little over 25 years. It is a delight to be back here in the hall, and I feel very strange to actually be here without a mask tonight, but isn't it wonderful?

I'm going to begin by telling you a brief story. I was at Stanford Mall last Sunday—well, I guess that was yesterday; sometimes the days seem very long. I had just come out of a place where my husband and I had brunch, and there were these two little blond-headed kids. They were about five and seven, and they came rushing up and were running around a car playing some kind of chase-me game. They had pastel clothes on, and everything was sunny, and their parents were maybe 20 or 30 feet away. So I immediately looked out to make sure there weren't some cars that were going to hit them as they were running around this car, and thought how bright and sunny everything was.

And the thought arose: they're not afraid. They're not acting paranoid. They're not worried about whether they're safe. They're not aware of their surroundings. They're not looking around. They're not listening to bombs fall. They don't feel the noise and the thunder and the dirt in the air. And all of a sudden, everything in that picture became very dark. I felt the stabbing in my heart.

And I was very grateful for them, that they were able to run around that car and participate in the sunlight and not be afraid. And I was grateful for me, that I could be there watching them run around that car and delight in them, and be happy they're not in Ukraine or Israel or Gaza. And I thought about how that burden is entirely different for so, so many other children.

That led me to say, "And I'm here. I'm here thinking all these thoughts. I am in touch with just being here, thinking these thoughts." And it reminded me of the beginning of the Dhammapada¹².

"All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows like the wheels of the cart behind the hooves of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow.

'He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. 'She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends. Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth.

Many do not realize that we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end.

One who recites many teachings but, being negligent, doesn't act accordingly, like a cowherd counting others' cows, does not attain the benefits of the contemplative life. One who recites but a few teachings, yet lives according to the Dharma³, abandoning passion, ill will, and delusion, aware and with mind well freed, not clinging in this life or the next, attains the benefits of the contemplative life."

How do we live a life of non-hatred? How do we see? How do we live? How do we bear the unbearable? It is not my intention to be in any way political tonight. So if you hear anything political, be sure it is in your mind; it is not in mine.

One of the chief intentions in my life has been to be openhearted. From the day I first walked in here, my intention has been to be openhearted. And I can assure you that 25 years ago or more, when I first walked in here, that was not readily available to me. The heart was not open. The heart was very much closed and scaled over and protected and unavailable.

What practice has done is made it very possible for me to be hurt, thinking just the thoughts of the suffering of those children who I don't even know. And practice has led me to a place where I am eternally grateful for the practice, for the ability to see the possibility of non-hatred. To see the benefits of a contemplative life, to live in the place where it's possible to open my heart and not be consumed in who's right and who's wrong, and who's "we" and who's "they".

I'm going to read you another story. Yesterday, Gil⁴ gave a talk on non-harming. If you didn't hear it, I really recommend that you listen to it. He was also very careful to talk about non-harming, and not about what you ought to do. The interesting thing about the way he spoke about non-harming was that it really had to do with action. He took the point of view of action, and my intent is very much parallel to what he had to say, but I want to come from the place of what you hold in your heart. Because what you hold in your heart is what you will produce in the world. What you hold in your heart is the condition for the next moment. It is the condition that the mind uses to create the next moment. It precedes, leads, and makes your experience.

This book is a book of poems by Naomi Shihab Nye⁵. She is a poet who lives in San Antonio, Texas. She is half Palestinian—her father is Palestinian—and half Latina. This story is about her son. It's titled "Someone I Love."

"Someone I love so much cut down my primrose patch. It looked like an oval of overgrown weeds to him, in the front yard near the black mailbox on the post. He did not know that for weeks I had been carefully tending and watering it, as a few primroses floated their pink heads above the green mass, unfurled their delicate bonnets with dozens of buds waiting to shine. We were on the brink, everything popping open despite the headlines. All sweet flower-beings from under the ground remembering what they were supposed to do.

He mowed it down with the old push lawnmower. I was out of town. He didn't ask his father, who knew how precious it was to me. His father was in the back while this was happening and didn't see. There wasn't a second thought. Why would we have had such a tall patch in the yard? What does my mother do when she comes out here with the old shovel in the bucket and the mysterious sacks of rose food in her pocket, bending to the wild tangle of jasmine on the fence, the Dutchman's pipe, the happy oregano, the funny cacti crowded together in complicated profusion like a family, the miniature chilies? What does she do? Why is this here?

He just cut it down. It wasn't easy. He must have pushed really hard to get it to go. When I stood outside in my nighty the next dreamy sweet morning at dawn, after returning home on the midnight plane, watering my bluebonnets, snapdragons, butterfly bush, lantana—wanting to feel tied to earth again as I always do when I get home, rooted in soil and stone and old [thick Asian?]⁶ bamboo and trees, a hundred years of memory in their trunks, and bushes we didn't plant, and the healthy Esperanza never losing her hope, and the banana palm just poking out their fine and gracious greenery—when suddenly I saw what was gone. What wasn't there. Not there. Impossible.

I was so shocked I let the hose run all over my bare feet. The cold stun of fury filled me, sorrow rising and pouring into questions. Who could do this? Why? How could anyone? I thought of the time my daddy came home to find every head cut off his giant sunflowers right after they had opened their faces to the sky, only the empty stalks remaining. His disbelieving sorrow as he went to his rooms and lay down on the bed and closed his eyes and thought, 'I will not mention this. I am too sad to mention it.' This is the pain of people everywhere, the pain this year deserves.

But at breakfast I went a little strange, like the lady down the street who shows up at people's doors with a snarling dog and a hammer in her pocket. I went wild and furious. And he swore they just looked like weeds to him. Why hadn't I warned him? Why did I only tell Dad? 'I pointed them out to you weeks ago,' I said. He said, 'I don't remember flower things like that.'

And it was the season of blooming and understanding. It was the season of hiding from headlines, wondering what I would do if the whole house had been erased, or just the books and paintings, or what about the whole reckless garden? Or then it gets unthinkable, but we let ourselves think it now and then to stay human. The child's arms or legs... What would I do if I did not love him? Who could I become if I did not love him?"

Who could I become if I don't allow myself to love? Who could I become if I don't allow myself to feel? Who could I become if I callous my heart over and say, "those people"? Who could I become? How filled with hate could I be? How righteous and angry could I really become? The answer is: pretty righteous and angry. And it's a little frightening.

We are always, all the time, becoming something. We like to think that we are something: "I'm this person. I'm that kind of person. I want to be that kind of person. I'm going to be better." But the truth is, we're always becoming. We're always different than we were. But we're never who we think we need to be or what we want to be. We're always just this person—this person that shows up in this moment that is created by our intention and what we hold in our hearts.

Which makes what we hold in our hearts really important. Because all of life is a becoming. It is a process. Breathing is a process. Thinking is a process. We are not nouns, we're verbs. We're action. We're happening. We're not finished products.

So how can we respond when what we see is not what we want to see? How can we call for and demand justice? We Americans, when we have a totally dysfunctional House of Representatives because we can't even vote for a speaker—really, we can't pass any laws because we can't agree on who's going to be in charge, which is about power and not leadership anyway. What is this about? We can't seem to do that. And before you say, "Well, I'm not those people," right away you hear "those people" in me. It's that division that we buy into of "those people" and "we" that somehow we have to break. We have to break that cycle of putting other people in some giant box where they're all the same. There are "those people," and there are "my people" and "me," and we're all like this, and they're all like that. Which we know isn't even true. But the emotional connections that we make usually revolve around just one thing. It varies what that one thing is, and all of those people are "those people," and my people are over here.

We even do that within ourselves. There's that person that I don't really like, and then, you know, there's this ideal person that someday I'm going to be. And we get consumed with self-criticism, and non-acceptance of oneself, and anxiety over who we're not.

The truth is, non-hatred really doesn't begin on a global scale. It really begins right here in our own hearts, in the way we meet every moment. In the way we meet the news that we hear. Just before I left home, my husband and I for some crazy reason were watching CNN. And, you know, all of the particular talking heads were talking about the war in Israel primarily. And I bet it wasn't 30 seconds in before I was in tears. I thought, "Well, you know, buck up here. You can't be crying, you've got to be ready to meet the world." And I said, "No, no. I want to meet the world with that heart. I want to meet the world as someone who in 30 seconds can cry because this is too painful. I want to meet the world as that person."

Because there are different kinds of pain. There's physical pain, there's psychological pain, there's emotional pain. And what is pain? Pain isn't a noun either, it's another one of those processes. It's a concept. Pain is a concept and it's a signal: something needs to be paid attention to. And how we meet that pain, what do we do with that pain? Do we resist that pain? Do we say no? Usually, what that does is just make the pain stronger in some way.

The people who research pain at Stanford have discovered that there are two neural circuits associated with pain. One is the physical reactive circuit, where the body physiologically reacts to whatever the physical source of pain is. But there's also an emotional neural circuit associated with every pain. If you slam your hand, there's an emotional neural circuit connected with that. Well, that's kind of interesting. So when you think about that, you realize that there is always some minor or very large emotional component to every pain that you experience. So the question, "How am I?" every time you experience pain is a very useful question.

It turns out the answer to what to do to respond to what is unbearable is exactly what the Buddha said you do to avoid all suffering, to put an end to suffering: you establish mindfulness⁷. He didn't say you sit down and meditate, although he advises that that's a good way to establish mindfulness. He says establish mindfulness. There are four things, you know: mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of emotions, mindfulness of the mind, mindfulness of Dharma. Establish mindfulness. "Here I am. There's pain. I'm sitting here watching TV. I'm disturbed by this. It's hurtful for me." Establish, know that you're here. Know that this is happening. Don't just gloss it over or try to get rid of the pain. Know that it's here, see it. Because in seeing it, you're better able to say, "I see things clearly here. I see what's happening here. I understand what's happening here." It leads to understanding.

You're less likely to misinterpret the emotional content of what you're seeing. You're more likely to get to the place where you begin to trust yourself. Which to me has been one of the most important benefits of my practice after 25 years: that I am beginning to trust myself. Hallelujah! Who knew?

I get these... I don't know how often they come, actually. I get so many emails that it's better if I don't know how often some of them come. I was recently on a three-week retreat, and I came back to 1,500 emails, and I finally got through them after two weeks. But one of them that I found was from Jack Kornfield⁸, and this is a brief piece that was in the last few days, actually:

"Mindfulness is the means by which we can bring our full caring presence to the world with balance and understanding. We can experience gain and loss, pleasure and pain, war and peace—the joys and sorrows that make up human life. The open and compassionate attention of mindfulness liberates us from reacting to and being caught by all things in the world. Instead, we offer the world our peaceful heart. We respond with care and courage, and in doing so, we embody the presence and liberation we wish for all. Sometimes this is called mindfulness, sometimes it's called love."

That's his quote. Mindfulness is the means by which we can bring our full caring presence to the world. Full caring presence. So it's another way of describing just what I began with in the Dhammapada. If all experience is led by the mind—heart-mind here, if we think of it as heart-mind—then showing up becomes an act of mindfulness, of faith, of love, of caring for ourselves and the world. Showing up just as we are. Not the ideal us, but just showing up as us. That's what presence is. It's showing up and knowing that we're there.

Who is here? I'm not over there, I'm right here. This person, Maria, is here, and she's had a really weird day. Some of the things have been good, and some of the things have been kind of weird. And here she is. Fairly stable, a fairly stable mind. And knowing that I am here on this dais, and I'm speaking with you, and I see you, and I register: I am here speaking with you. And I'm aware that you are here. It's not complicated. The mindfulness doesn't have to be intense or psychologically clear. I just have to know what it is. I'm here with you, and what am I feeling? How am I feeling? "Well, I'm stable. I'm a little shaky about that, not so good about this, I'm pretty good about that."

We grow to understand the difference between the triggers that set us off thinking about something that takes us away from this moment into the past or the future, and signals. "Pain is here. Oh no, not again, this is the same as last time. I thought this was over." And off we're doing something else with the mind. Or, "Pain. Okay, do I need to move? Oh, this is about... oh yeah, it hurts. It hurts to be open to this. I get it." Totally different. Or I can say, "Oh, that makes me so angry." Anger is here, but it isn't me. I can just see anger. I can put it up here and... "Okay, anger is going to be over here in the left-hand corner of my visual field. Anger is here, I got it. Got it. I'm just not going to spend all my attention there because it hurts when I'm angry. It hurts when I'm angry, and I don't particularly like that." "Yeah, but I'm still angry." "Well, okay, just sit there for a minute, and I'm going to look outside at this oak tree. Or I'm going to notice this tape going down here is kind of crooked. Wonder who laid that tape down, that's interesting. Look, it's the same color as that air freshener." All of a sudden, the anger doesn't have as much power. It's still there, just not as much power. I don't have to become as entangled in it. I can see it. It's just seeing it. Knowing what kind of pain is there, seeing what the pain is. I don't have to be different. I don't have to not have any triggers.

There's a book called Lessons in Chemistry. I don't know if any of you have read this book, but it's a novel. Have any of you read it? Yeah, okay. I love this book. It's about a woman chemist who runs afoul of her male advisors, and of course she gets fired, and she's brilliant, right? And she ends up teaching cooking on television. But she treats the women who are taking this class with a great deal of respect, and you know, some of them go off and become microbiologists and stuff. Apple is doing a series of this book, and it just started this weekend. So of course I'm watching it, because I loved this book because I totally identified with this woman. And she gets triggered, this scientist. Watching this happen, and watching my own reactions, and seeing the trigger come up in me and go, "You know, I did a lot of work. That trigger doesn't trigger me anymore." And I could sit there and just go, "Wow. Wow, wow." And the pleasure that came from just not being entangled with that anger anymore is just unspeakably wonderful. Took a long time. Took a long time.

So the question is, how do you meet pain? Well, you don't know if you don't watch it. If you constantly try to get away from it. You don't have to analyze the pain, dig into it. You know, there are lots of people who give you instructions about sitting with the pain and befriending it. You don't have to befriend it; just know it's there, figure it out, watch it. See how you react to it. What kinds of pain do you react to, so that you know yourself? So you know how that works, so that it doesn't hold you, it doesn't tangle you up, so that you're free of entanglement. So that you're free, and then you can trust yourself, and you can trust your heart to be open. It's always a good idea to check whether today's pain is associated with the present, the past, or the future. That's how you recognize a trigger or something that leads you into the fantasy ideal self of the future. Just look at that.

What happens is we slowly develop faith, or confidence. Call it confidence. We slowly develop confidence, and confidence leads to more effort, and effort leads to more mindfulness. It's really a wonderful circle. And mindfulness then leads to a steady, stable mind—samādhi⁹. And then you begin to understand things as they are. It leads to wisdom, which leads to confidence, which leads to more effort. It feeds itself. These are the benefits of a contemplative life.

I brought with me... I couldn't decide, so now I've decided what poem I'm going to read to you. This poem is by Ada Limón¹⁰, who is a current Poet Laureate, and this was written to her poetry students, I'm sure. It's called "The End of Poetry," but it actually fits the life of a mindfulness student like me.

"Enough of osseous¹¹ and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing, enough of the kneeling and the rising and looking inward and looking up, enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world, weary and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border, enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease, I am asking you to touch me."

Don't talk about all the high ideals and all the things you want to achieve, and all of the concepts of the worlds, and the things that you want to believe. Allow yourself to be touched. That's the home of non-hatred. Allow yourself to be touched.

Those are my thoughts. Thank you. Does anybody have any comments or questions, or complaints?

Q&A

Questioner 1: Do we have a microphone here? Yeah. I was in progressive radio, and I've always been a news freak and a political junkie. And I'm having a very difficult time. It's unheard of for me not to turn on the news every day, and I haven't turned the news on in the last three or four days because I can't deal with it. I feel like I'm living in an uncivilized world. I love children, and when I heard what they were doing to the children, I'm very easy to cry, like you. I just don't know how to deal with it. Your reading tonight was wonderful, but it's just so hard to be present and deal with this. How do you do that? It's just so far removed from what I am. I'm having a difficult time, I really am. I don't know how everyone else feels, but this craziness is just... I don't know how it's going to stop.

Maria Straatmann: There is no question that it is crazy and that there is brutality in the world, and I will not defend it, ever. And I also know that if we point to anyone, they can point back. There are no heroes right now.

I read a couple of days ago that the US had appointed a former Mideast expert, whose name unfortunately I don't remember, as a humanitarian aid ambassador sent off to the Middle East. And I thought, "Well, at least we're appointing somebody, besides sending the warships, you know." And the invasion that was supposed to happen two days ago hasn't happened yet, which is probably because they don't know how to deal with the underground tunnels. Biden is going to Israel on Wednesday. It's like things are moving, but the last number I saw of children that were killed on both sides was 749 children. For what? For craziness. For making a political point. Nobody was served by this. Nobody was served, and nobody will be served by an invasion, either.

One of the things that Gil talked about—somebody asked him a question at the end about, "Well, what do you think about this?" I don't remember exactly the nature of the question, and he referred to Thích Nhất Hạnh¹². What he referred to is written in Thích Nhất Hạnh's book Being Peace. Thích Nhất Hạnh was in Vietnam and supporting both North and South Vietnamese peoples, and refused to take sides. So he wasn't trusted by anybody, and his monks were killed by both, but he refused to take sides. What Gil did yesterday was neither take sides nor not take sides. He basically said, "I just want to talk about non-harming."

And where we find ourselves is in dealing with the unforgivable. How do you keep yourself from developing hate? So the approach I took was, I'm not going to solve this by choosing somebody to blame. And so what I can do is come here and talk to you about keeping your heart open. That when you make a one-degree turn, it looks like nothing until you get far enough out. That's all I can say about it. I think next week I'll talk about forgiveness.

Yes? Wait, we do need to get the microphone. Anyone else have something to say?

Questioner 2: I really don't want to interrupt. I just have a little comment at the end. Thank you.

Maria Straatmann: Anybody else? Okay, should she comment first? No, you do.

Questioner 3: I just wanted to say, I just came from Costco, and they do have the book. I'm sorry, Costco has the book. I know we should be supporting independent booksellers, but it's nineteen-something, and they had a few copies. So if anybody wants to get it, Lessons in Chemistry.

Questioner 4: So, I didn't want to talk about myself, but Maria, it's fantastic to see you. I've been coming here—it got to be on and off till I moved to Half Moon Bay, and now I'm doing Vipassana¹³—but since about 2005, and this place has really helped me get a lot better. So when I first heard what was happening, it just smashed me down. But I feel a lot better now, and it's because I'm doing something that I'm hoping will make some kind of a difference. So if anyone is interested, I just so happen to have some little flyers that are giving people details about a legislative effort that just started today, and it's a ceasefire resolution, and more congresspersons have signed it. And if anyone has an interest on the issue, especially for folks who live in Palo Alto, we could, you know, call her, email her, visit her office on Emerson. All that information is here.

Maria Straatmann: Okay, please talk after the talk.

Questioner 4: Yes.

Maria Straatmann: So she clearly has everything you need, so thank you.

Questioner 4: You're welcome.

Final Reading

Maria Straatmann: I'm going to read something that ends with hope. That was the other alternative. So this is also by Naomi Shihab Nye, and it's called "Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal."

"After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. 'Help,' said the flight service person. 'Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this.' I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. [unintelligible Arabic] The minute she heard any word she knew, however poorly used—excuse me—she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, 'No, we're fine, you'll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let's call him.'

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he spoke to her for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, answering questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade ma'amoul cookies¹⁴—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers, non-alcoholic, and two little girls on our flight, one African-American, one Mexican-American, ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person at this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost."

Thank you all. May you all enjoy a warm, open heart.