Let Yourself Be Moved

Wherever I go, people seem to think Buddhism is about “inner peace.” But the Buddha didn’t teach inner peace. He taught skillful action, which is both internal and external. If you go around lying, cheating, and oppressing people, you won’t find peace inside. And if you don’t change how you think and talk to yourself, you won’t find peace outside either.

For a while now, the West has been peddling a kind of Do Not Disturb Spirituality that is pretty useless for addressing our planet’s issues. We’re taught that being spiritual means avoiding negativity, difficult emotion, distressing news. Yet what have we gained from this fragility, other than our hearts becoming more stiff and thus more easily broken?

Why shouldn’t we let ourselves be moved by the realities of war, injustice, and suffering? Isn’t all reality moving? Your insides are moving. Your blood circulates. Your neurons can’t stop firing. And as we’re literally flung around a star, what is this place of motionless composure we keep hoping for? If there’s any stillness, it must be within the chaos, not against it.

This is how the Buddha taught peace: When you are seeing, he said, let there be only the seen. When you are thinking, let there be only the thought. Take yourself out of the equation. You don’t need so many identities and opinions. You don’t need to justify your anger, defend your sadness, or explain your anxiety. When you are moved by these forces, let yourself be. Only, hold back a bit of you that can just be the observer.

“But how can this change the world?” The answer is right there in your breath. To breathe through anger rather than lash out, to breathe through grief rather than become a victim, to breathe through fear rather than believe it — I can’t think of anything that can change the world more.

Let yourself be moved. Right now there is some fantasy or hatred you keep trying to root in. That root will not hold. Break free, like a spinning top, moving out into the fullness of your life. Peace is there or not at all.