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So sometimes we're asked: how can we
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possibly justify the practice of sitting
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in meditation when the world's on fire?
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When there is so much violence, injustice,
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and suffering in the world, how is
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meditation in any way an appropriate
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response? And sometimes there's even the
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sense of, "Is it spiritual bypassing?
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Are you just running away from the problem?"
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So in our tradition, we have some quite deep
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responses to this. The first is what our
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teacher used to say, which is: "Each one of
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us not only has the right to sit in
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meditation, but we must kind of reclaim
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that right." And for him, it was to say
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that we have the right to stop, to look
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deeply, and to listen deeply. And to take
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care of the pain of the world as it
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expresses itself in our body.
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And this is the insight of interbeing.
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Right there, the pain in our body,
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the tension in our body, the suffering,
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the anguish in our heart is not separate
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from the suffering and anguish of the
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world. There is a profound interbeing
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between the two. So we have
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the right to show up, to slow down, to
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stop, to look deeply, and to actively take
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care with our compassion and mindfulness
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of, like, the ground of our being in
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our body and
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mind. And then he went further, and he
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said, "Not only do you have the right to
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sit in meditation, you have the
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responsibility to sit in
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meditation. Your sitting in meditation is
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already a contribution to the situation."
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Now, that might sound really
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strange. How can it possibly be that
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little old me, little young me, whoever we
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are, wherever we are, sitting in
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meditation, how can that possibly help?
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But in our understanding of action and
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energy, we say that there are three kinds
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of energy: there's the energy of our
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bodily action, the energy of our speech,
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but also the energy of our, kind of,
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thinking, our mental-emotional
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landscape. That is an energy we are
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bringing to everything we're doing in
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the world. And the way in which our
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meditation is a field of action is that
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it is literally the ground of our being,
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being that is the ground of our doing.
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If we don't have that 10, 20, 30 minutes a
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day where we touch deeply again into the
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magic and mystery of life,
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into that realm where we can have deep
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compassion for great suffering, where we
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can transcend our hatred and blaming and
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really touch
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non-discrimination, when we can lean into
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that and dip into that as part of the
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landscape of who we are as people, that
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quality of
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being is already action and will
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determine the quality of our doing and
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engagement. And we may be able to devote
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however many hours of the day it is to
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our service, to our activism, to whatever
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we have chosen as the field of our
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contribution to help make our world a
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better place. But those minutes of
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meditation
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become, yeah, like a sacred ground of
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being for that doing.
