"We are in grief. With all that's being inflicted on the natural world and the social fabric of our lives together, there's fear too, anger as well. These responses are natural and healthy. If we disown them, we cripple our vitality and intelligence.
"So we bow to them instead. When pain for the world arises within you, recognize it and pause. Pause and breathe, as if making room for it, as if letting that pain flow through your heart. Realize that you are capable of suffering with your world. 'Suffering with' is the literal meaning of the word compassion. It is proof positive of our interconnectedness, indeed of our inescapable interexistence.
" 'There is no birth of consciousness without pain,' said Carl Gustav Jung. Our pain for the world releases us from the illusion of separation. It has a key role to play in birthing the collective consciousness that may well be the only resolution to the global crisis of our time."
"Metta, or loving kindness, is a Buddhist meditation-in-action that many today are finding wonderfully efficacious. It is good for dispelling fear and ill will as well as for generating care and understanding.
"This practice functions not as a vague, diaphanous feeling, but as a series of fairly precise person-by-person intentions. One traditional Burmese practice, for example, takes a fourfold form, such as this:
"May (a specific person) be free from physical suffering.
May he or she be free from mental suffering.
May he or she be free from conflict.
May he or she have ease of well-being.
"It's important to extend this to oneself as well (May I be free from mental suffering, and so on). Variations are encouraged (May he or she be free to develop the beauty of his or her mind). This practice, when in play, cannot coexist with fear."
