It’s been about five years since I have entered a Buddhist dharma hall to practice meditation. Since the day that I learned that the head of my Buddhist community was alleged to have committed sexual violence, I have struggled with what it means to be a Buddhist. Is being a Buddhist about finding a safe community in which to practice? Is it about listening to a dharma teacher and following their teachings? Is it about direct action and political resistance? Is it about inner peace and realization? What, in the end, is this Buddhist path?
“In these times of fear and violence, I feel that our only hope of survival and happiness is to recognize the interconnectedness of our shared struggles.”
After all this time, my realization is this: I believe that Buddhist practice is, at its core, about realizing the truth of suffering and working to end the violence subjected to other living beings. But realizing the truth of suffering is never over. Realizing the truth of suffering means constantly looking around us to feel the hurt, harm, and violence subjected onto humans, animals, and all living beings, and working to expand our hearts again and again to the boundaries of this harm. There is no boundary to the realization of our suffering. There is never an end. There is always war. There is always more brutality. There is always trauma. Buddhism, to me, is about an expanded effort to build our capacity to feel this suffering, and to work to end this suffering through opening our hearts, building community, and fighting injustices.
This week, Donald Trump once again won the presidency in the United States. I feel pain in my heart and fear for what is ahead—for trans youth without access to unallowed to take hormone blockers, for people forced to carry a pregnancy to term or dying through unsafe abortions, for children who will go unvaccinated. Since the election results, calls to Queer and Trans Suicide Helplines have risen 200% by trans and queer youth. At the same time, the suffering is here now—the relentless genocidal loss of life in Northern Gaza. The killing of children in Lebanon. The boundaries of suffering are endless, and they are associated with but not determined by one specific president. They are driven by the violence of our nation, by greed and colonialism, the stealing of land, by the need for power, and by the refusal to consider so many living beings as humans.
But this is not hopeless. There is hope through our recognition of the shared nature of our suffering, and through working to end conditions of violence.
I believe that the only way out of suffering is to see the interconnectedness of these struggles. For me, being a Buddhist means fighting to end the genocide in Palestine. It means fighting for trans youth. It means fighting for the right to bodily autonomy. It means feeling the pain that those in positions of power produce, and striving to create a more interconnected world bound by the teachings of impermanence and inter-being. I do not believe there is separation between myself and a Palestinian. What separates us is that my body and land are not under attack. I am not losing everything because I am already a part of a country that has taken and continues to take and dispossess. Being a Buddhist means recognizing this violence and refusing to allow this violence to continue. Being a Buddhist means refusing to place boundaries around who counts as human and who doesn’t, and fighting policies and words that enact these boundaries between us.
In these times of fear and violence, I feel that our only hope of survival and happiness is to recognize the interconnectedness of our shared struggles. To open, again and again, to the truth of our shared condition. To the sanctity of what holds our lives together, and yet what separates our lives too. Buddhist practice is about working to end suffering—a suffering that does not end, but may be ended, by our shared realization about our interconnected struggles for freedom.
