Living lowers our resistance. We are here to be vulnerable: that is our calling.
Instead of pretending to be dispassionate, pretending to be above my moral outrage, pretending that there is no I reacting to terrible events, why should I not just accept my poor little mind's judgments with compassion?
In fact, why not accept anger as the pure energy it is, without justification? My anger has a right to be here, and does not need to carry the intellectual baggage of moral outrage at all.
Now, resting with undivided attention in this anger, why not sink even deeper into it, and taste the fear that lies at its heart?
False detachment, moral reaction, and anger are just layers of armor with which I mask my fear.
I confess that I am afraid. I am afraid to live in an unpredictable world, where incomprehensible violence happens to innocent children. It's scary, isn't it?
And now, instead of projecting my reaction out there, why not hug this cinder of fear, the burning spot inside me that reacts? Why not observe my own pain instead of blaming the other?
John 33:11 tells us that "Jesus was moved in his spirit, and deeply troubled." See? Even Jesus was vulnerable.
The children of the earth are innocent and lovely, but not invulnerable. No one ever promised us a life without loss.
It is only when I surrender to vulnerability that I discover the immortal: a groundless depth, a space within the heart, where moral judgments, emotional reactions, even birth and death, arise and dissolve like dewdrops in the sky. This is why we live. This is why we die.
Thank you, little one, immortal teacher. Pray for us.
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