Don't Just Sit There And Take It

A friend of mine runs a boxing gym in Bushwick. “Come train,” he’s always telling me. “You don’t have to actually fight.” I tell him I grew up around a lot of violence, and it can still be triggering. “Oh boy,” he says. “In that case, you DEFINITELY need to train. You need to get in touch with the part of you that understands self-preservation.”

In the West, there's a kind of defanged spirituality that tells us to simply “be with” whatever arises in the mind. But while the Buddha taught nonviolence toward actual living beings, he often used the language of war to describe working with the mind: fight the armies of delusion, take up the sword of wisdom, make a warrior’s vow. Because part of your mind is trying to kill you, literally, and you have to learn how to protect yourself.

This isn’t hyperbole. The voice that says you’re a fraud may seem normal, but if left unchecked, it can drive you into isolation, addiction, and depression. The voice that insists everything is a catastrophe may sound rational, but if you defer to it, you’ll stop making an effort at anything. And the voice that wants to see others suffer may feel like justice, but if you follow it, you'll lose sleep, friends, and all sense of proportion.

Be careful about political despair. Yes, things are very bad. Yes, people are being shot in the street. Yes, we need to resist. And yes, spiritual teachers should be speaking up. But if the way you resist amplifies the mind’s voices of hopelessness and powerlessness, you’re literally a government psy-op, even if you're making anti-government content on your Instagram page.

The role of a spiritual teacher isn’t just to say, “100k people watch my yoga videos. Let me rant about ICE to them.” The role of a spiritual teacher is to give people tools to keep their minds healthy, steady, and oriented toward self-preservation in the face of struggle.

Here’s one tool, from the Buddha: whatever arises in your mind, ask, Where is this thought taking me? Is it leading toward a wiser, safer, more just world? If not, you don’t have to just sit there and take it.