Growing our Hearts, Shrinking our Anger

I was first introduced to Buddhist teachings in an undergrad Philosophy class many years ago. I sat in the back corner with my buddy Joe, where we occasionally listened to the lecture but more often whispered snark and sarcasm back and forth (often at the expense of our earnest and pedantic professor). Now that I’ve lived a bit longer and have been an adjunct professor myself, I think it would be nice to go back and whack my witticism-whispering self over the head with one of the course texts. They were all paperbacks; she would be fine.   

However disrespectful and inattentive I may have been, I did actually absorb one of the assigned texts—“The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching,” by Thich Nhat Hanh. The author, a Vietnamese monk, presented a lens on spirituality and right living that was so different from the Mormon perspective I was raised in. He put words to my experiences of mindfulness, joy, peace, and love. Every few years, I find myself picking up another book by this same author. This past week, I began reading his “Teachings on Love.”

2020 has challenged my love for my fellow humans. You are easy to love! It is easy to feel empathy and caring for fellow long-haulers, those who have lost loved ones, or those who struggling to feed their families. It’s the rest of the world that gives me trouble. I find it much, much harder to nourish empathy and caring for covid-deniers, anti-maskers, and corrupt or inept politicians. Sometimes, it is even hard to find compassion for people in my own life whose social distancing practices are laxer than mine.

In the opening pages of “Teachings on Love,” Thich Nhat Hanh offers an image of what all-encompassing love and compassion look like:

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into the river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace and transform.

If our hearts are big, we can be like the river. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, the same things don’t make us suffer anymore.

I can’t make anyone else wear a mask. I can’t make anyone else care about the plight of long-haulers. I also don’t want to walk around feeling raw or angry all of the time. Thankfully, I don’t have to; I can work on growing my own heart.

A simple practice that helps me to do this is to notice the people around me and use the phrase “just like me” to observe the many ways in which we are the same. I might, for example, walk through a grocery store and inwardly observe “He is in a hurry, just like me,” or “She looks tired, just like me.”

When I hear of large social gatherings among friends, I might notice that “They are lonely and want this pandemic to be done, just like me.” Or I might remember that “They are human and have blind spots, just like me.”

You can use this phrase in just about any situation. You might even insert the name of a particularly loathsome politician and notice that they are scared, just like you. Doing this doesn’t justify the behavior of a corrupt politician or of a willfully careless civilian. When we observe the ways in which someone else is “just like us,” we aren’t saying that we approve of their behavior. We are simply making an effort to understand. We can understand without agreeing or justifying. We can understand and choose to openly challenge someone. But we cannot understand without softening, without feeling our anger lessen, without feeling our hearts grow.

Our long-hauling bodies do not need the toxins of anger or resentment. This hurting world will not be fixed by judgment, hatred, or blame. How do you release and transform those feelings? How do you grow your heart?