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Happy Hour: Holding Sacred Space for Peace with Compassion - Nikki Mirghafori

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 14, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Happy Hour: Holding Sacred Space for Peace with Compassion

Introduction

Hi Audrey. You're testing my voice recognition. I'm going to stop guessing your names, you can just say your name. Peter in the Mid-Atlantic, in Dallas. Hello Amy across the ocean in Oahu. William just on the other side of the high school in Redwood City. [Laughter] Claudia from New York, Padma from Belmont, Jerry and Sarah from Toronto, Karen from Washington, Hina from way across the ocean in Japan, B in Australia, SC from Missouri. It is lovely you can join.

Thank you for the community support to debug the audio. I always do the check at the beginning. If the audio is okay, give me a thumbs up.

Thank you all. Let's begin. My heart is warmed up. Now we have more hellos: Lynn from Belmont, and Rosa gives a warm autumn greeting. Thank you Neil for posting information about the Happy Hour Google Groups. If you're new to Happy Hour, we invite you to join the mailing list.

Hello everyone. It's lovely to be with you, lovely to see you. I really enjoyed our saying hello at the beginning with the different geographical locations. I truly feel that when we do that, when we say hello and just share our voices, our goodwill, our metta¹, it brings me more present. It brings a sense of shared community—that here we are, from different places in the world, coming together to do this cultivation of kindness and goodness. We practice together.

Holding Sacred Space

It's in this light, in this spirit, that for today's practice I would like to offer two practices that are related. The first one is, as all of us come together from different places in the world, to hold sacred space together. It's quite a doing. It's lovely that, especially because we're not in the same room, we can hold global space, sacred space together across many oceans.

To hold this sacred space for grief, for sadness, for whatever might be arising right now for each of us individually, and also for us collectively with what is happening in the world geopolitically. I know that for many people there is grief, sadness, and anger arising. To hold a simple sacred space to hold it all, not turning our hearts away. When we hold it together, it becomes lighter to hold. Not that the situation is light at all—it's egregious, it's grievous, and it's getting worse. The humanitarian crisis is worsening, and we must meet it in our hearts with this stability of care and compassion.

I know that for me, as I've been listening to the news, I've been finding myself crying. There are human beings who are suffering regardless of their beliefs, religions, and backgrounds. Personally, I've identified myself jokingly with friends as a "Muju." People who have been Jewish and practiced Buddhism are sometimes called Jubus. I was raised Muslim, went to a Jewish grade school for five years back in Iran, and now I'm a Buddhist teacher. So there is this sense of so many people I know and care about being affected, and so many people I don't know being impacted.

Today I was listening to a rabbi and an imam on the radio on NPR. They were talking about how they're supporting their various communities. The rabbi said something very profound that the imam loved and re-echoed at the end: there is not so much of a dividing line between different people of different religions in this scenario, but it's really a dividing line between people who believe that violence is the only solution and people who do not believe violence is the only solution. That is so profound.

Let us count ourselves, add our names as signatories to not believing that violence is the only solution to the world's problems, but actually compassion, understanding, dialogue, and care. Let us be a part of—at least as we engage with our own hearts and practice, and the way that our actions in the world reverberate—being voices for love, for care, for compassion, for dialogue, for understanding, and not for hatred and violence.

With that, I'd like to share a practice of both settling into a sacred space and then opening our hearts to hold whatever is arising with compassion for ourselves and other beings in this world who are just like us. They're not different from us at all and are just caught in this tangled mess because of where they're born.

Guided Meditation

So let us arrive. Let us arrive in our bodies in this moment, feeling our feet on the earth. This earth that houses so many of us is the only home to so many beings—humans, non-humans, animals.

Letting this body rest. Letting our heart rest.

Feeling a shared space of care and wishes for peace that soothe, calm, and hold us, as well as everyone else on this planet. A sacred space that holds wishes for peace can also hold sadness and grief if it's present.

Letting our presence, our living, breathing bodies be a signatory to a prayer for peace in the world. With each breath, deepening our commitment to peace. To inner peace first, so that we can enact outer peace.

Letting the breath be supportive, grounding us to this present moment. Feeling both the importance and the gravity of our practice in this moment. Coming together in peace, in kindness—how important this is in our troubled world. How important just sitting in kindness is, not adding fuel to the fire of hatred.

Connecting, receiving each breath as an offering, as a gift, as a peace offering to this world. To yourself internally and externally, each breath a peace offering.

With every out-breath, breathing out peace, goodwill, care, both onto yourself and onto others. Internal, external.

If you're suffering in this moment, if your heart is breaking, if it's heavy, let yourself receive the care, the compassion first. Establish a sense of stability. And if there is groundedness, let the care be outwards, touching those who are suffering in this moment. Bringing them succor², bringing them ease. Maybe just a bit of lightness in a moment of darkness. A bit of uplift. Spreading your wish of goodwill.

And if it might be supportive, adding the phrases of compassion: May I, may you, have ease in the midst of this sorrow, this pain, this suffering. May you be free from suffering. May you be safe, as much as possible. Or simply: I care about your sorrow, your pain, what you're going through. I wish you ease.

If you wish, you can either stay with yourself, your suffering, your sorrow, and pain, or expand externally to those who are suffering in this moment. Especially in the Middle East, the whole region, there is so much pain. So many humans in sorrow, danger, and grief right now, regardless of the borders, nationalities, and beliefs. They're human beings, just like us.

Just as I wish to be free from sorrow and suffering, I wish you ease. May you have ease. May you be free from pain, from sorrow, from danger.

Wishing ease, peace, and goodness to all those who are suffering in our world in this moment, wherever in the world they may be. Wishing well for all those who wish for peace. And wishing clarity of vision for those who think that hatred and violence are the solution to humanity's problems.

May all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be free from suffering and sorrow. May all beings everywhere be happy and have the causes for happiness. May all beings be free.

Compassion vs. Empathic Distress

Thanks for your practice, everyone. I have this image of each of us praying or practicing with each breath for compassion, for peace in the world. Each of us is holding this candle together. May there be peace. May there be peace on earth.

War is hell. Saying this, I actually... when I was growing up in Iran, I lived through the bombing of Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war. And it was nothing like what we hear on the radio right now. I just remember how painful, difficult, and uncertain it was. So may there be ease and peace for those who are in grave danger and suffering in our world. Extending our hearts to them, practicing compassion one breath at a time.

Of course, it's so important not to lose our own stability with the practice of compassion. Because the pain of the world sometimes can feel so overwhelming that it can feel easy to veer into empathic distress. And that's not helpful. That doesn't help anyone, and that's not compassion.

Empathic distress is when we're falling into the waves of the ocean with the people who are suffering. We're bobbing up and down with them without the ability to extend a holding hand. Compassion has more stability, has care, has love. It's not overwhelmed. It feels the pain, but holds the pain with equal amounts of care, love, and compassion, so that it doesn't become a practice in self-flagellation and just feeling pain over and over again.

So be very careful and clear when you're practicing compassion. If it veers into empathic distress, it's wise to pull back and turn to compassion for yourself, because you're the one in that moment who's suffering and has lost your balance.

Think of it: compassion is a balanced action of feeling another person's suffering, sorrow, and pain (which could be your own), as well as care and love to hold it. If there's not enough love and it's just pain, that's not compassion; that's empathic distress. So be clear and wise about how your practice shows up internally for you. If it veers into empathic distress, it's not a sin. Don't self-flagellate. It just means the practice has gotten out of balance. It's fine, no problem. It's time to bring more balance into it. Turn to bringing more care, more love, and turning to yourself so that there is balance until you can turn outward again.

I'd like to invite us to carry this sacred space that we're holding together into our small breakout groups. We'll hold sacred space together in small groups. You can share your reflections or simply hold space in silence. You can just be candles that show up and hold space together for other human beings in the world. Maybe that's enough. If you want to say a few words, the invitation is just a self-exploration of how this practice was for you this evening. There's no right or wrong answer. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Be kind, be compassionate, and be a candle of light and peace.

Reflections and Q&A

Welcome back everyone. The breakout rooms are closed, and everybody's back. Thank you for your practice tonight.

I would love to hear from you. Are there any reflections, comments, or discoveries from the practice, especially with this compassion practice in this moment in time?

What I'll say about practicing compassion, especially when there are challenging events in the world: it feels like the appropriate response instead of getting entangled in anger, blame, and overwhelming grief. Practicing compassion leads to actual actions of compassion. Instead of being devastated or angry and inflaming the situation, it is the appropriate response, both for ourselves and for the world. Wholesome actions can come out of this instead of unwholesome actions, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of humanity. We are training our hearts, training ourselves, as we are one drop in this ocean of humanity.

Neil says in the chat, 'I try to remember the environmentalist statement of think globally, act locally. The same is true for peace and kindness.' Exactly. In this practice tonight, we definitely thought globally and acted locally here, each one of us.

Kevin, I see your hand.

Kevin: Yeah, so last night I spoke with a friend who is Jewish and from Ukraine, so he has been profoundly affected by both of the wars going on. I also had an extremely heavy work meeting immediately before this sitting. I just really appreciate this space and being in community with others. I think this practice of compassion is so important, to be able to hold this sacred space for all of the suffering. I just really want to express gratitude for this space and for everyone's practice. So much metta for everyone. Thank you.

Nikki: Thank you, Kevin. Thank you so much for your share. I saw lots of hearts showing up while you were speaking.

Jennifer says, 'Thank you, Nikki, for your compassion and wisdom. This was a powerful metta tonight.' Thank you, Jennifer.

Na says, 'Mr. Rogers advised children in times of distress and troubling news to focus on the helpers. He said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"' Indeed. Thank you, Na.

Ellie, I see your hand.

Ellie: Hi Nikki, thank you for the teaching and bringing the subject to the forefront. It's hard. I've been getting more of the empathic distress. It takes a while for me to have the other part underneath it—the compassion—to hold both. As we know, Buddhism is full of paradoxes. But just being so close, originally from that part of the world, it's hard to keep both sides. It's hard not to take sides. Especially when a million people are being displaced and have to move tomorrow. Having to hold both sides is difficult when you're close. That's what comes to mind.

Nikki: Thank you, Ellie. We live in paradox. In some ways, it's a paradox, and in some ways, it's the truth of how things are. Many things that seemingly, for our limited cognition, seem at odds, are actually quite consistent with one another. Grief, sadness, and sorrow can coexist consistently with kindness, love, and care. It seems like a paradox, and yet it's the natural response of the heart.

Sometimes the mind wants to have a binary. The mind wants to strictly stick to one way or another. But, like a loving parent, you can say, 'Sweetheart, it doesn't have to be binary. It doesn't have to be strictly one way or another. You have much more capacity to hold multitudes.' You can feel the pain of people who are being displaced, and feel the pain of the people who were surprised and hurting. In fact, you can just hold pain. There's just pain. There are human beings all around.

If you want to take sides, dear heart, advise your heart to take sides with peace. Take sides with nonviolence. Take sides with compassion. Take sides with humanity. Take sides with human beings all around in that complicated, complex region of the world—that I'm from as well—that has been hurting for so long.

Compassion isn't just tender; it's both tender and fierce. It's also protective. It gives and shares of itself, but it doesn't include hatred. It sees the suffering and it sees the ignorance of human beings that keep perpetrating pain on each other, and it forgives and loves. It doesn't condone, but it loves, as deeply and as painful as it might feel to continue to love and see the humanity underneath—that everybody's hurting. Hurt people hurt people.

Jerry says in the chat, 'Are there relationships between compassion and justice and peace?'

How can I address this in 30 seconds? I trust you have heard of restorative justice. Restorative justice is justice that doesn't blame, shame, or hate. Restorative justice has compassion and the wish for peace as an integral part of it. That's how compassion, justice, and peace coexist together. There are a lot of resources on this, so I'll leave it at that.

I'll share the NPR interview I mentioned earlier with an imam and a rabbi in the chat. If you just Google 'NPR imam and rabbi,' you'll hear the beautiful conversation they had today.

Vicki adds, 'Seeing the Dalai Lama³ cry and then laugh joyously one minute later was informative years ago, to hold both.'

Yes, exactly. Holding both joy and sorrow. Holding pain and gladness. Our hearts are so vast, we have so much capacity.

All right, dear ones, we're out of time. Thank you so much for this very rich practice, conversation, and holding space together. I am moved to go now and light a candle, and I invite you to do the same if you're moved to. Thank you all. May all beings be well. May all beings be free. Take care. See you on Monday. I'm going to ask you all, if you like, to unmute yourselves on Zoom and say a cacophonous goodbye⁴! Thank you all. Have a beautiful evening. Be well.