Permission To Be Sad

I am sad.

Will you permit me to be sad? Or will you insist on my happiness?

I feel the sadness of God, gazing down on humanity. I feel the sadness of Gaza, the Congo, the Sudan. I feel the sadness of those who drink cheap wine, and those who drink fine wine. I feel the sadness of yuppies, New Age yogis and Evangelical Christians, desperately trying not to be sad in America.

There is no deeper sadness than the sorrow of those who do not permit themselves to be sad. If you have a New Age teacher, a minister or guru who makes you feel guilty about being sad, because enlightenment is supposed to be a blast, a constant high, and you must be showing a lack of faith in your guru's teaching if you stop smiling, then be forewarned: this is not a real Teacher. This is the abuser of your heart.

There can be no love without the capacity for sadness. Sorrow and joy are two forms of the same energy. We never find the deepest, most potent form of that energy unless we embrace all its manifestations, dark and bright, without resistance. Life is vibration: no wave without a trough, no mountaintop without a valley. The tidal wave of your joy rises because of the depth of your sorrow.

But you do not need to label it "sorrow." Just feel it. Just feel the mysterious dark energy of what it is, without a name, deep as the mother's womb.

Sadness only becomes suffering when we give it a negative name and feel ashamed of it. Those who are ashamed of being sad are stuck in shame, not sadness...

Jesus came "that your joy may be full." Yet he was "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." Radha felt bereft as she searched for Krishna, her paramour, in the garden of Vrindavan. Her heart broke with longing.

Buddha taught that true enlightenment includes four cosmic emotions. The first is Upeksha, dispassion. The vast space of dispassion contains Metta, compassion for all beings. And compassion embraces the twin opposites, Karuna-Mudita. Karuna: the capacity to feel others' joy. Mudita: the capacity to bear others' sorrow. The Christ, the Buddha, Radha-Krishna, all can feel the sadness of this world, for their hearts are courageous.

If you have courage, you will permit your heart to feel sadness as much as joy. But if you refuse to embrace sorrow, are you not a coward? What are you afraid of?

Embrace the world, just as it is, in your heart. Certainly, this world contains pain and sorrow! Breathe it in without resistance. Do not be afraid. The bud of sorrow will break and blossom into the flower of compassion. Breathe out compassion to the world. This is the breath of a Bodhisattva. This the breath worth breathing.

Sadness is a divine quality, giving depth to the waves of God's love.

Go ahead. Give yourself a break today. Be sad.

Hearing Things

'These stones would shout' (Luke 19:40)

What tall hemlocks tell,
rock-tumbled waters sing,
moss-coated cedar-sapling
nurse-logs murmur, violet
revelations in
mosaic dome of branch
and sky whisper, this
particular cherry pit
in purpling cougar scat
shouts too, amidst the blare
of silent foxgloves, pink
trumpets burnished in green
darkness: "Wake!" it sings,
"Remember why you came
to the forest!"

What Is Action?

Chinese masters speak of "Wei Wu Wei," doing by not doing. An ancient Chinese general, having defeated several armies of invaders, declared, "I would rather retreat one mile than advance one inch." Is that action?

In the "Bhagavad Gita," which was Gandhi's favorite book, God appears to the warrior, Arjuna, on a battlefield just before combat. Arjuna asks the Lord whether to fulfill his duty and fight, or refrain from battle. The Lord replies: "When you see stillness in action, and action in stillness, then you truly see."

Quantum physics reveals that material particles vibrate out of a silent vacuum. Even more mysterious, the stillness of the vacuum is teeming with unmanifest "virtual" particles. It seems this entire world of physical activity is pervaded by stillness.

If you march in a political demonstration, passionately shouting your beliefs against those who shout against you, shutting down traffic and commerce to stop the war, is that action? If you stand still for hours in silence, with a vigil candle in hand, before a court house or a military recruiting station, is that action? If you write a passionate essay or a letter to the newspaper, are your words actions?

If you gaze into the eyes of a passing stranger, with your heart full of love, what have you done?

If you sit in deep meditation, filling the boundless universe with compassion, are you not doing? Not-doing? Or undoing the not?

In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ's disciples confronted the authorities with sword in hand. The situation was ripe for revolution. But Jesus said, "Stop. Put the sword away." The authorities arrested him, beat him up, and took him to Pilate, the Roman ruler. Finally, Jesus had an opportunity to speak truth to power! But before Pilate, he was silent. Not a word! They led him away to be crucified.

Why didn't he do something?