The Willingness to Be Inconvenienced and Spiritual Strength

SHAMBHAVI
Inconvenience is a word that was introduced to me in the context of some view of human life by Jacques Derrida. You might have heard me talk about that. Because, like a lot of people who are interested in things spiritual and things philosophical, I'm interested in friendship.

And he's a French continental philosopher from the twentieth century. He wrote a lot about friendship, and he defined friendship, at least in one place, as a willingness to be inconvenienced.

So if we think of that on a global scale, how willing are we to be inconvenienced by others? What does that mean? To be inconvenienced means to not be self-interested, at least for that moment, when you're willing to be inconvenienced.

Convenience is comfort, some sort of comfort level, or just going along with our plans and what we think we want to do. And basically, we don't want our self-interest to be interrupted, is what that means.

What Derrida was pointing to with inconvenience was having a break from self-interest and be willing to go off on a different track in the interest of the well-being of someone else.

It might also mean not just doing something inconvenient, but inconveniently giving up what we think we want.

For instance, if we love somebody and we want them to be living with us, or at least we want them to be in the same town with us because we like hanging out with them. And then they say, 'Oh, I'm going to move somewhere else. There's an opportunity for me somewhere else that I'm going to move.'

And in a sense, that's being emotionally inconvenienced. Our plan for that friendship or that love-ship, whatever we want to call it, is now not going to be fulfilled.

So we can either fight that and try to convince someone to stay with us, or we can wholeheartedly support them to do what they need to do for their own development as a person.

So that's an inconvenience also. To set aside what we want, and sometimes set aside the things we deeply want, in order to support what is good for somebody else.

And of course, healthy relationships always have that as an aspect of healthy relationships. It doesn't mean we can't express sorrow if someone's going to go off and do something that doesn't involve us.

But in a healthy relationship, we want the best for others. We want their well-being, and we will support them in that no matter what. It's not that common. [laughs]

So the quote was that we're not willing to be inconvenienced, right? By and large, we're very self-interested, very self-protective, and that means we're not really particularly willing to be inconvenienced.

One of the really lovely things about what is happening worldwide, I was just talking to a couple of people about this the other day. Ever since October 7th, I have been trying to suss out just for myself. And I've actually asked a bunch of people online I thought would know much better than I would, Palestinian activists and things like that.

Why are people running around the world as they're marching, chanting "In the millions and the billions, we are all Palestinians"?

That it just struck me as, and it still strikes me as something so unusual and also incredibly moving. And it's in the context of having grown up with left-ish parents who dragged me around to a bunch of marches. I was just aware of things.

They were talking about things at the dinner table, like what should we think about the Black Panthers and things like that. This is our dinner time conversation.

So I grew up with a lot of social justice movements, civil rights movements, a lot of genocides, where I was aware of when I was growing up.

And a lot of the discourse around cultural appropriation and different people's experience, and how much of our experience can we share, and how can we support but not take over and not claim too much, and all this kind of discourse.

And suddenly, you have all these non-Palestinian people running around the globe saying, "In the millions and the billions, we are all Palestinians."

And it seems to me that, I've just been pondering this for three months now, but it seems to me that there's more awareness at basically how fucked over we all are in our various ways by the various people that are supposed to be taking care of things.

That's been building and building for a while. There's something much more than just empathy happening. There's something more than just anger happening. There's something more than just sorrow for somebody else happening.

And there's something happening which is a real deep identification with the pain of being fucked over.

Basically, I can't think of any other way to say it. I probably would think of some more elegant way to say it later, but in any case.

Interestingly also, and very, very movingly, Palestinians, in the midst of losing their homes, losing their families, losing their friends, not having food or water or a place to sleep, are turning to the cameras and saying, "Anyone who's speaking up for us is Palestinian."

So there's this mutual conversation happening. I almost burst into tears every time I start talking about this. That just seems really, really different than what, at least in my lifetime, has ever happened in all the movements I've been involved in and watched happening.

There just seems to be this lowering of barriers and opening of the heart that I've just never seen before. And so it seems like a lot more people are willing to be inconvenienced.

There was this lady, this white lady from wherever, Kansas, as far as I know. I don't know where she was from, but she got on TikTok the other day, and she had written this long thing out. It's very, very moving. Of all the things she didn't know before October 7th. Did anybody else see that?

And there was this other video, just right after October 7th, of some guy in his truck on TikTok saying, I didn't know about this and I didn't know about that, but now that I see what's happening, it's Free Palestine all the way every single day.

I'm just like, who are these people? [laughs] But they're actually doing something. They're not just going, 'Oh, thoughts and prayers.' They're actually feeling something really deep and feeling not just empathy, it's a commonality with this situation of having violence done against you by the people that are supposed to be protecting you.

Anyway, I just find this so incredibly moving, and it's so profound to me that I'm still trying to articulate it to myself, even.

One day, I keep thinking I'm going to make a video just talking about it, because I begged other people to talk about it, but nobody did. So I guess it's down to me.

But am I quite ready yet? I haven't quite gotten there yet. I think we are more willing. Some of us are more willing to be inconvenienced than we were before. Not all of us, obviously, but some of us.

And Motaz, the journalist who just got out of Gaza a few days ago, has 18.5 million followers on Instagram, more than President Biden.

STUDENTS
Wow. That's awesome.

SHAMBHAVI
And there are people every day writing on there, people from the US and from European countries, writing to him and saying, 'I have never loved a stranger this much.'

It's just like... saying that in all different ways. People writing on Bisan's Instagram, 'I wake up every morning, and the first thing I do is check to see if you're alive.' And like 'You're my daughter now.' It's astounding to me. I don't know.

I can only speak to the US experience, but I think people just feel, a good number of more people are just feeling the cruelty of our culture and the cruelty of our government and how it just screws everybody over regardless, and in a very intimate way.

Like health care, education, the environment, opportunity, infrastructure, everything is just not geared toward taking care. There's a fundamental lack of care and a fundamental violence that's happening that is just becoming more and more and more apparent, and nobody is left out.

STUDENT 1
I also feel like seeing the Palestinians, which in the US, we've never really got to see before, seeing them report themselves.

SHAMBHAVI
There is definitely the way that they take care of each other day after day after day, watching fifty guys scrabbling in ruins, pulling out bodies and trying to help each other.

STUDENT 1
The resilience and the kindness, I don't feel like I've seen it on such a large scale before.

SHAMBHAVI
Yeah. And I think that's what everybody longs for. Everybody longs to know that their neighbor is going to help them if something goes wrong. But we don't know that. We don't have that feeling here.

STUDENT 2
I am here visiting my mom who has dementia, and it's just really hard to roll with it sometimes.

SHAMBHAVI
One thing I noticed, and I've talked about this a bunch of times before, I used to work in a nursing home teaching chair yoga, and there was a lot of people who had various stages of dementia.

And I noticed that they got pared down to their most fundamental behavioral patterns. I'm sure that that's what you're noticing. That's what you're referencing, right?

And it's just completely unique from person to person. Sometimes it means people are really sweet, not necessarily that they're argumentative, but if being argumentative is a core thing, then it's going to be that.

So you can do a few different things. One is learn to take breaks, learn when you just had enough, because with dementia, there's also a lot of repetition. So people are pared down to that core, and then there's all this repetition.

And if you happen to have a pitta personality, then hearing people repeat the same thing over and over again is likely to be triggering [laughs]. Regardless of the content.

So, it's good to know when you lost or you're getting near to losing your ability to digest what's happening and just step out of the room or step out of the house, even for just five minutes, is a really good strategy.

And recognize that that would be the case for anybody. It's not like everyone should be able to handle it and there's something wrong with you for not being able to.

This is It's pretty much across the board when people are having to deal with someone with dementia. And especially when it's a parent because there's just all that history and patterns of things that have built up. And then you realize at some point you're not actually going to get to resolve a lot of that stuff.

STUDENT 2
That's right.

SHAMBHAVI
Understanding that you're not going to get to resolve a lot of it actually can be helpful. That you, as a practitioner and a mature person, are going to have to resign yourself to that.

And not having that chugging engine of thinking, I'm going to get them to see my point of view, or I'm going to finally win this. You know, there's a kind of peace that can come from that.

And then there's two other things I'll say. One is that from my perspective and the perspective of this tradition, the most important thing when anyone is dying, but particularly a parent with whom you have shared karmas. The most important thing, at a certain point, when you get to this point that you're at, is to help them out in the most relaxed way they can possibly go.

For them, recognizing that you don't have a lot of control over that. But the more relaxed they are, then the more karma is going to unwind for them and you.

So whatever is possible, you just want to think that from this point forward, my job is to help them die, and that's what I'm doing here. I think having that very clear purpose is also relaxing. You don't have to worry about all the other stuff.

And then the last thing is being in the state of your practice. I don't think you've been coming to the Tuesday morning heart practice online, but if you can, that would be a really great thing to start doing at this point.

Because it gives you very, very practical tools for being in the heart space and relaxing and just having momentary breaks from your karma. And being able to have tools to experiment with, well, what is it going to be like to be in this situation and be resting in the heart space, not planning what to do or what to say next?

Those are a few things I could suggest. There's also a number of people in the community whose parents are also experiencing dementia. Many questions like this have come up in Satsang.

STUDENT 3
We were talking earlier about the Palestinians, how much they care for each other. That is life. It's actually that level of caring for each other. In some ways, we just live in a culture that doesn't support that level of care.

Even though it's like, I know I have to do this, but I'm falling behind on all of my other responsibilities and my own family and financially. And like this is not supporting me doing this thing I know I need to do.

SHAMBHAVI
Most of the stuff we think we have to do, we don't have to do. Most of the stuff we think we have to keep together, we could let fall apart. Not everything, but sometimes these moments in life are a good opportunity to relinquish that sense of urgency about things that need to get done.

Or how productive you think you need to be. That's like a disease. So it might be a good opportunity to deeply re-evaluate all that. It doesn't mean you can't have different phases in your life.

Sometimes we're just being naturally very productive. Other times we're hibernating. There's a beautiful image of life's progression in the bamboo. Bamboo grows really, really quickly, and then it stops. And that's where those knots develop. And those knots are where it's collecting nourishment for the next growth spurt.

But everything just slows down when it gets to that point for a while, and then it grows again. Life is more like that. We're like a gliding bird that's gliding and then roosting and then gliding and then roosting.

We're never always just going at the same pace. It's only this culture that tells us we always have to be like.... [STUDENT 3: I know] and then we're all exhausted and stressed out. Why? [STUDENT 3: Totally] It's a good time to re-evaluate and maybe get back to a more natural rhythm.

Just try to recognize it's okay to have times when you're just not producing in the way you were before. Just doing other stuff or not doing anything.

STUDENT 4
I've just been realizing how for a long time, I've mistaken kind of tension for strength. I'm battening down and pushing things down as a feeling of strength. And I realize more now that's not the case, and I'm kind of curious about what is actual strength.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, from the point of view of a practitioner, we should be using our strength to remain in the state of our practice as much as we possibly can. And why is that strength?

Rudy described something he called spiritual muscle. I mean, he was very attached to hard effort, and he described everything about spiritual practice as work. I don't really subscribe to that at all.

But there is something to this idea of spiritual muscle, a effort where you have these karmas. They are actually made of energy. They have strength themselves, right? Anybody who's tried to change even a minor habit, knows this.

'Okay, well, I'm going to try to sit in a different chair at dinner.' Even something dumb like that could be hard, right? Or I'm going to floss every day.

The most minor things we find, at least at times, difficult to push against the momentum of habit. And so when we're being practitioners, we're pushing against every habit that we have, but not all at the same time.

But basically, we're trying to divest ourselves of these habitual patterns that just go on and on and on without any awareness. So that's where the strength comes in.

For instance, if we feel some habit pattern of frustration coming up or wanting to power through something, going into the heart space and relaxing and letting the real feeling of energy come through and forcing ourselves to actually get in touch with a feeling of kindness for other people, even when we're angry at them. Those require strength.

Those things require strength. They require persistence. They require repetition. They require remembering. They require determination. They require sticking to what we know is actually of value and not giving into the desire for some momentary fix.

Because basically, when we're giving in to those patterns, we're basically just getting a fix of some kind of emotional reward. Even anger and sadness can be emotional rewards, as anyone in this room knows, if we're being honest about it.