By Douglas John Imbrogno | theSTORYistheTHING.com | november7.2024
I awoke to a morning sky over my house after Election Day the color and texture of thick, dirty Styrofoam. It was an appropriate hue for the dawning of dark days in America. I have no easy solace to offer, but I will share three things that may offer a little inspiration and strategic thinking for moving forward.
It is very important that the other half of the country — the part that did not choose the fascism-inquisitive, clearly decompensating churl who is jazzed by racism, sexism and mass deportation — feels what we are really feeling. And, also, that we see clearly that we have agency and control over the most fundamental tool for managing these dark days. That agency rests in our minds, our reactions, and where and how we place our attention.
Below is the first of three things to ponder moving forward.
THING ONE: On the Unshakeability of Mind
Instead of reaching for my cellphone the day after the election to scan the funereal posts of progressive folk whose writings I turn to after big or terrible news, I reached for a different kind of report. I sought a dispatch from someone who has long investigated the mind’s front lines. I keep a book by an American-born Buddhist monk close at hand: ‘THE SOUND OF SILENCE: The Selected Teachings of Ajahn Sumedho.’ I have long followed this straight-speaking, wise, and seasoned monk’s teachings from afar, and this particular book was a godsend when I hit a rough, emotional downturn last Spring.
I have only a few chapters left to read. Wishing for some non-mainstream media guidance beneath those Styrofoam skies, I flipped to its final pages. Below is the chapter I came upon. It speaks to how our minds can become either friend or foe when our thoughts and spirits become perturbed, disturbed, and agitated.
AJAHN SUMEDHO: Excerpt from ‘The Sound of Silence’
‘Notice how difficult it is when you’re trying to resist things, trying to get rid of bad thoughts, emotional states, or pain. What is the result of resisting? When I try to get rid of what I don’t like in my mind, I become obsessed by it. What about you? Think of somebody you really can’t stand, someone who really hurts your feelings. The very condition of feeling angry and resentful actually obsesses our minds with that particular person. We make a big deal out of it, pushing, pushing, pushing. The more we push, the more obsessed we become.
‘Try this out in your meditation. Notice what you don’t like, don’t want, hate, or are frightened of. When you resist these things, you’re actually empowering them, giving them tremendous influence and power over your conscious experience. But when you welcome them and open up to the flow of life in both its good and bad aspects, what happens? I know from my experience that when I’m accepting and welcoming of conditioned experience, things drop away from me. They come in and they go away. We’re actually opening the door, letting in all the fear, anxiety, worry, resentment, anger, and grief. This doesn’t mean that we have to approve of or like what’s happening.
“I can either get caught up in the pain that comes to me, attach to it, and be overwhelmed, or I can embrace it with acceptance and understanding, not add more suffering to the existing pain, the unfair experiences, the criticisms or the misery that I face.“
~ AJAHN SUMEDHO
‘It’s not about making moral judgments. It’s simply about acknowledging the presence of whatever we’re experiencing in a welcoming way — not trying to get rid of it by resisting it, holding on to it, or identifying with it. When we’re totally accepting of something as it exists in the present, then we can begin to to recognize the cessation of those conditions.
‘The freedom from suffering that the Buddha talked about isn’t in itself an end to pain and stress. Instead it’s a matter of creating a choice. I can either get caught up in the pain that comes to me, attach to it, and be overwhelmed, or I can embrace it with acceptance and understanding, not add more suffering to the existing pain, the unfair experiences, the criticisms or the misery that I face. Even after his enlightenment, the Buddha experienced all kinds of horrendous things. His cousin tried to murder him, people tried to frame him, blame him, and criticize him. He experienced severe physical illness. But the Buddha didn’t create suffering around those experiences. His response was never one of anger, resentment, hatred, or blame, but one of acknowledgment.
‘This has been a really valuable thing for me to know. It’s taught me not to ask for favors in life or to hope that if I meditate a lot I can avoid unpleasant experiences. “God, I’ve been a monk thirty-three years. Please reward me for being a good boy.” I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. To accept life without making pleas is very liberating, because I no longer feel a need to control or manipulate conditions for my own benefit. I don’t need to worry or feel anxious about my future. There’s a sense of trust and confidence, a fearlessness that comes through learning to trust, to relax, to open to life and to investigate experience rather than to resist or be frightened by it. If you’re willing to learn from the suffering in life, you’ll discover the unshakeability of your own mind.’
THING TWO: We’re in this together
Elie Wiesel might be forgiven for having given up early, if you examine his remarkable life. At age 15, the Romanian-born teenager and his family were living in German-occupied Hungary. Along with the rest of the Jewish population in the town where they lived, they were first placed in confinement ghettos and then deported in May 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his mother and younger sister were among the people murdered upon arrival not long after they stepped out of the boxcars, as the Wikipedia page on his life notes.
He and his Dad were chosen as laborers, so long as they remained able-bodied, after which they, too, were slated for the gas chambers. The two were later deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his father died before the camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on April 11, 1945. As an adult, Wiesel went on to become an internationally known writer, professor, activist, and Nobel laureate, helping to establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., while writing 57 books along the way. Among them was ‘Night’, based on his experiences in the Nazi camps. I read it as a teenager, at just about the same age he was when he was shipped to Auschwitz, and it seared itself into my consciousness.
I post the meme above to remind myself and to remind anyone who resonates with its message how we might address the rising despair in that half of America that believed in the hope of a Kamala Harris administration. Let us attend to each other, and to one another’s despair. Let us rise out of that despair where possible and — like Elie Wiesel, and with the guidance of teachers like Ajahn Sumedho or whomever speaks most to you — make it our mission to settle our restless minds and spirits. In this way, we can better attend to the needs of our families, friends, country, and world as best we might, even in the darkest of days.
THING THREE : ‘Solidarity Matters’
The excerpt below comes from the ‘ZETEO’ newsletter by Medhi Hasan, titled ‘My Seven Takeaways From Donald Trump’s Shocking Victory.’ I will leave you to discover for yourself the first six takeaways from a pungent political observer whom I find always worth reading, even when I disagree with the tenor of some of his takes. I commend to you his Item 7, and the fundamental significance of solidarity in the days, months, and years ahead:
MEDHI HASAN: ‘The Name of the Game’
‘Yes, a majority of American voters may have cast their votes for an unhinged racist and demagogue who is promising a “bloody” program of mass deportation and a new and bigger‘ Muslim ban,’ but the rest of us need to stick together. Solidarity is about to become the most important word in our political vocabulary.
My friend Erika Andiola, the immigrant rights activist whose experience as an undocumented migrant herself helped shape her work, tweeted late last night:
“Pray for our immigrant families in the United States. We might need it for the next 4 years. You have no idea what’s about to come if the results don’t change. We will need you.”
‘We need each other. And so, for the next four years, solidarity is the name of the game. ‘
P.S.: ‘Closing Argument’
I posted the video below on the eve of the election on Nov. 5, 2024. What happened happened, and it was dire indeed what happened. Yet I feel the video is still worth viewing because it looks ahead. My closing argument is really no argument at all. In the form of a video/poem/black-and-white slideshow and meditation, it encourages us to be kind to one another and to ourselves, and to attend to our spiritual lives after the tumult and trauma of this election season.
I like what Tom Nichols had to say on Twitter/X on the morning of the election: “There’s no point in any more arguments. After today we’re either moving ahead as a democracy or we’re figuring out how to shore up the American system against an authoritarian takeover.” Alas, it turned out to be the second choice. So maybe, for right now, for this very second, let’s all take a breath. I hope this video offers a few more breaths and thoughts for the days, months, and years ahead.
CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO
Thanks to Jeff Seager for his editing mojo and feedback on this post.
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