Where do we find hope in the midst of having to embrace suffering?

Tonight I received very troubling and tragic news about the wrongful deaths and disappearances of several individuals from a solidarity caravan headed to San Juan Copala, Oaxaca. This hit close to home for me, as two beautiful people (who I developed a great fondness for during my recent visit to Oaxaca) had originally intended to participate in this caravan.

Following the receiving of this news, my closest friends in the States with whom I traveled to Oaxaca called me. They, like me, found their hearts heavy and troubled by the terrible reminder of how easily people’s lives are violently ripped away and destroyed. And together we were confronted with the heart wrenching dilemma of trying to figure out a way to bring profound honor and redemption to the many people who lose their lives in similarly tragic ways throughout the world on a daily basis.

As I silently searched my heart for an answer to this dilemma, I felt compelled to transcribe part of an interview conducted in 1994 with Buddhist meditation teacher and psychotherapist, Jack Kornfield.

The following is Jack Kornfield’s response to the question, “Where do we to find hope in the midst of having to embrace suffering?”

This is from Martin Luther King, right after his church was bombed, and people were in great despair.

• We will match your capacity to inflict suffering, with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in good conscience obey your unjust laws. But we will soon wear you down with our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom, we will so appeal to your heart, that we will win yours as well.
  

There is a way in our society in which we believe that the great strength of the world comes from a power over people. And there are two great strengths in the world – one is those who are unafraid to kill, and they run a lot of countries through guns and armaments and so forth. And the only thing that equals that, are those who are not afraid to die. So that our capacity to open to life is what gives our heart courage, is what gives us meaning. So rather than being despair, it is actually through that that we transform the world, and make it a place of compassion.

And so the other great power of the world, besides the power of arms, is really the power of loving kindness. It’s how Gandhi can go to East Pakistan at that time – and they send 60,000 troops to West Pakistan – and Gandhi is more effective through his soul force than 60,000 armed soldiers.

I had the privilege of working in the Cambodia Refugee Camps some years ago with a wonderful monk – an elder who survived the holocaust in Cambodia. And he decided to build a temple in the Khmer Rouge camp of 50,000 people. So we built this bamboo temple, and invited people to come whose villages have been destroyed, whose families… there was not a single intact family… terrible suffering. But the Khmer Rouge underground in the camp said anyone who goes to this temple, when we get out of this camp, you will probably be killed. So we didn’t know who would come. And he rang the gong after the temple was built. Fifty thousand refugees on hot dry barren land; and 20,000 people came to the square and sat. And he began the ancient chanting, “namo tassa bhagavato…” that they hadn’t heard through all the war. And people just sat in a kind of stunned silence as he chanted. And then it was time for him to speak. What could you say to people who have been through the destruction of their lives and their society? And Gosananda, this monk, took one of the first passages from the Buddha, and he chanted it in Sanskrit and in English, the words, “Hatred never ends by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law.” And he chanted it over and over. And people started to chant with him, and just sit there and weep. And the weeping was for their own sorrow. And the weeping was also for the fact that the truth he spoke was even greater than their suffering. That we’ve all suffered, and what will we do with it? Can we use it to transform ourselves to love?