Injustice, Getting Angry, and Heartbreak

STUDENT 1
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about injustice. Definitely feeling some personal experiences of injustice, just, like, the classic experience of misogyny and patriarchy. But I was wondering if you could also connect it to a larger view on injustice.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, I can't talk on the topic directly, exactly as you posed it, because I really never think about injustice. My relationship to things like misogyny, or patriarchy, or genocide, or any of the things that we're experiencing, is really not in the realm of injustice.

Injustice is based on societal norms. Right? For instance, just to bring it down to a different place, the first thing that occurred to me is, in some cultures, it's perfectly fine for teachers to beat students.

There are cultures where if a teacher comes around and hits you with a stick, or beats you in some way, it's not considered to be injustice. Or a wrong of any sort. And in other cultures, of course, it is.

So, we also know that from our perspective, indentured servitude, or keeping people under a bond of debt and making them work, is an injustice. But in many cultures in other times, it hasn't been an injustice. Even from the perspective of the people doing it, being bonded servants.

Injustice is a term that is really relative to whatever culture and the norms of that culture, the ethics of a culture, the morals of a culture, and what counts as injustice.

So basically, what injustice means is going against whatever your culture or you, or some group that you belong to, thinks is trampling on somebody else's rights.

And those rights could be considered to be inherent, like human rights. Like something that might need legislation to support it, but is not really considered at the base to be a matter of law.

So when we talk about human rights, we're talking about something that either we think everyone has or should enjoy, or that only a certain elite squad should enjoy.

But in any case, whatever your idea of human is will determine who you think has human rights.

But generally, human rights are considered to be something we're born with and they can get trampled on. And they might need legislation and laws to protect them, but they're not made by humans. That's– By definition, that's what a human right is.

An injustice can be when we think human rights have been trampled on, or not followed. But again, that's going to be relative. Who we think is human and what we think human rights are.

Injustice can also be just the breaking of ordinary laws that are supposed to protect people. Right? It's unjust if someone's legal rights are overlooked or trampled on or not followed.

But I think injustice is something that was much more part of my framework for analyzing things and responding to things when I was younger. When I was in my 20s and 30s. And when I still thought that there was injustice, and being angry at injustice was the righteous thing to be.

But when I started doing practice and learning about this tradition, I realized that just generating anger and being angry was not the thing that you want to do for the rest of your life.

I kind of recognize that as something that you go through that is really useful at a certain point. Right? Like, getting angry at something that's hurting you is a very healthy thing at some point.

But if we're going to be spiritual practitioners, we're going to understand that that isn't our destination. Our destination isn't getting angry at everything in the world that we think is unjust.

And then the teachings of these traditions, and also my direct experience, is, things are what they are. There's neither justice nor injustice.

Things are arising. They're all arising from the same source. And at some level, everything that's happening, even the horrible things, is a play of experiences.

So, where does that leave us? Because you all know that I'm very politically engaged in some way. If justice and injustice are no longer my lines of demarcation, then what am I doing? Right?

My answer to that is I just want what I wanted when I was five years old. I want people to care about each other. I want people to take care of each other.

I want the virtues of the heart to rule government. I want government to come out of the virtues of the heart, compassion and tenderness.

And I want us to have some intelligence in dealing with each other. And I want the equality and the belonging of everyone to be recognized. The incontrovertible inherent equality, not the kind that's legislated.

I want it to come from the heart. I want it to come from caring.

And one of the things I realized underneath the anger and the hurt and the frustration of feeling that one has been treated in an unjust way. Underneath that is a feeling of sadness about not being properly cared for.

So now that's where I'm at anyway. I'm there. Still wanting those virtues of people caring better for each other to be part of our everyday lives.

I was thinking today and yesterday, there's this wonderful woman on Instagram, Sim Kern. And she is a lefty Jewish person who's done a lot of wonderful, wonderful teaching and commentary about the situation in Palestine. And she says she's an anarchist.

I have no idea what that means. I looked it up today on Wikipedia. I have some very, very sketchy idea of what that means. [laughs] But as I was reading a little bit about this, I realized I'm not an anything. Like, I'm no longer subscribed to anything.

I just want us to be in community and care about each other and take care of the Earth.

I mean, this is, like, totally pie in the sky, but this is what I actually want. And so doing this on a small scale in community with you guys, doing the practice that we need to do to be heart-based rather than rule-based.

I also read something a long time ago about rule-based versus faith-based churches. And I've sort of changed that into rule-based versus heart-based churches.

And it's according to the IRS, we are a church, we're a religious organization. And I want us– And I want the whole world, but, you know, with some humility, at least [laughs], I know that isn't going to be possible. Things are as they are.

I no longer think, this is injust, and this is right, and this is wrong. I am simply letting myself be moved by whatever moves me and acting on that.

And that sadness of not being treated well, not being treated in a caring way, I think that's at the basis of all of the anger and outrage about injustice.

So, again, a lot of people who are part of groups of people that have been treated very unjustly need to go through anger. That is the gateway that you need to go through.

And certainly I was very, very angry when I was in my 20s and further on. Very angry. Just angry all the time. About everything. I was angry because people didn't care about each other more.

That's, like, the most silly thing that I can say was true of me then. [laughs] I actually wanted to yell at people about not caring about each other more. [laughs] If you can imagine.

So I'd say, if you can feel the sadness, and also the sadness for the people who are caught up in ways that means they're really out of touch with the basis of reality, which is actually compassion.

You know, I wrote an article last week, some of you may have read it. And one of the things I said was that I just feel very deeply for the Israelis. Their lives have just been completely hijacked by hate and racism. They're, like, completely taken over by this. It's astounding to watch. Their lives have been ruined, basically.

And I find that kind of heart-wrenching.

So when we can feel our own sadness, we can feel other people's also. Anger doesn't really allow us to feel much sympathy for other people.

When I was growing up, I lived in a neighborhood where there was a lot of racial and religious and class division. When people got into a lot of problems with each other, there was a lot of domestic violence also.

And I remember once I was riding in my car with my mom, and I started crying. I went, I hate everyone here! [laughs] But the reason I hated them was because they didn't love each other more. [laughter]

So this is where we can get when the anger is in the forefront. We can even get to that ridiculous place, right? My mom just didn't know what to make of me. She was... [laughs]

I don't know if that's helpful, but that's where I am.

STUDENT 1
It is helpful. I think the hard part is feeling sadness for the other person because the anger is occluding.

SHAMBHAVI
There's a difference between being chronically sad and disappointed, and that also comes with a bunch of anger. And really letting your heart break. Like really letting your heart break for yourself and other people.

When you really let your heart break, instead of just maintaining this constant sadness and complaint. Then, as that famous song from Leonard Cohen said, the crack is what lets the light in. Right?

My level of anger at other people for not loving each other [laughs] went way down when my heart broke. And even before, I had a sort of bigger spiritual type of broken heart.

Even in times when my heart was broken, just like in an ordinary sense. You know, a breakup or something like that. I always noticed that there was so much tenderness for other people that came in during those times.

When I felt very heartbroken about anything, whatever it was, suddenly I would feel all this communion with other people would come in. This tenderness for other people.

I don't really know how that works, but that's been my consistent experience. So how can you relax and really let your heart break?

STUDENT 2
A week or two ago, you posted something about heartbreak as a skill, and I was wondering if you could talk about that a little.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, it requires skillfulness. I think that was Daniel Maté who said that, or he quoted somebody else saying that on one of his live things.

I think recognizing the wisdom in heartbreak, and walking through the crack in heartbreak, walking into the openness that heartbreak allows us, is a skill. It's skillfulNESS. It's intelligence.

And I don't know if it's a skill we can take a workshop in and learn [laughs], but we can consider that we can walk into the fallenness of it and the openness of it. The unknownness of it and the pain of it. And just let that be without trying to fix anything.

That's one of the big skills of heartbreak. Don't try to put anything back together again. Things will reform on their own differently.

Heartbreak is an open door. So it's– The skill in heartbreak is learning to walk through that door. That involves giving up whatever we were heartbroken about. Saying goodbye to it.

Because as we walk through that open door, we're walking out of an enclosed room. And I'm having an image of, like, just walking from an enclosed space to an open space. Where there's more possibility.

If we always want what we had, we're always going to be the person who only wanted those things. Do you know what I'm saying? We're holding onto a personality structure.

Let's say it's a job, or it's a person we loved, or it's a circumstance of some sort. And we hold on to it wishing that we still had it and thinking that's the thing that we need. Then we're always going to be the person that needs that.

STUDENT 2
I was thinking in terms of Palestine, thinking that things are always going to get better. Just kind of coming to terms with the world as it is.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, I think the heartbreak of Palestine is going to be different wisdom for different people. And that's only something that you can discover, I think.

But certainly, really being broken-hearted about that. Caring that deeply for people who are in a different country, and in our cases, of a different race, speaking a different language, having a very different experience.

Being very personally heartbroken about what is happening to them. And understanding that we're implicated and feeling the pain of that. Knowing that every bomb that's dropped and every baby that's killed, we've helped pay for, and just feeling so intimately connected to that.

There was this one guy who looked like– from the South. He was in a truck, and he had this kind of scraggly beard, this white guy, and he looked a bit disheveled. He was a little bit overweight. I don't remember exactly what he was saying, but it really moved me.

He was saying, this has just changed my life forever. He said, I feel so ashamed that I didn't know about this before. Just seeing it has changed my life forever. And then he said, from now on, it's Free Palestine.

Even just thinking about that is bringing tears to my eyes. That someone could be that moved. Just some random guy in a truck in Arkansas or wherever he was. He was so sincere.

And I think all of the lives of the people who have broken hearts over this have been changed forever.

When I was growing up, my whole childhood was populated by things like this. And by various liberation movements. I vividly remember what happened in Cambodia and Pol Pot when I was a kid.

And other massacres, and massacres of activists, and things. It seems like it was just continuously happening in my childhood.

And I don't know why, even for people that are activists, this is so galvanizing. I just think it's sort of, like, the mandala of everything that's been happening over decades and decades and decades has somehow coalesced.

The Sudan and Congo. All of this is happening right now.

And somehow this has just coalesced around the Palestinians and has broken so many people's hearts. In that sense, it seems like a magical moment. I hate that this is how it's happening, but it does feel kind of magical.

It feels like more wisdom is becoming available. More clarity, more heart is becoming available. I don't know. This is weird to say, but maybe what's happening in Palestine is, like, our Kurukshetra. I don't know. But it feels something of that magnitude to me.

STUDENT 3
The what?

SHAMBHAVI
Kurukshetra is the battlefield in the Mahabharata, where a battle is fought between two sides of a family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. And one side represents greater ignorance, and one side represents greater wisdom.

And the whole battle is being orchestrated by Lord Krishna to bring about a shift in yugas, a shift in epochs. From the Dwapara to the Kali Yuga.

It's just, like, a way of thinking about change. I'm not saying it actually happened. There is some historical evidence that there was some battle of magnitude around that time.

But in anyway, it's an incredible epic tale of how we overcome ignorance, and it's like a battle. And in this case, it's concretized in an actual battle.

But I have wondered, that's a big question for me, why this? Why this genocide? There have been so many genocides. And you could say, well, it's being played on social media. Everyone's seeing it every single day. Well, not everyone, but people who are looking.

I think it's more than that. There's a lot of people in the world genuinely moved in a way that they haven't been before. Or not shutting down in the way that they...do.

They're not shutting down in greater numbers. And also the total unmasking of our own leaders here in the US, the complete unmasking. It's like the gloves are fucking off, and only someone not paying attention doesn't know that.