Sharon Salzberg - Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World

Wisdom for Our Time and All Time

Ive been working on this book for a long time and finished it just before the massive disruption, harm, and anxiety wrought by COVID-19 was made manifest. It was written before the inequities, prejudice, shortsightedness, and fear that form the scaffolding of several of societys structures were so powerfully highlighted. It was written before so many of the things we casually expected for tomorrow or next week or next month were turned right around on their heads.

In these times of great loss and uncertainty, we each look for what can sustain us, what can help provide assurance that something is intact. We look for something essential that has not been blown apart, and we yearn to once again align with our deepest values, so we can find renewal.

After an atomic bomb blasted Hiroshima in 1945, further panic swept through the city when rumors arose that grass, trees, and flowers would never grow there again. Was this disaster of such proportions that everything people had relied on, everything they had cherished, the very laws of nature, had exploded along with the bomb? Although, when faced with such intense suffering, we may certainly question whether there is any underlying possibility of renewal, of authenticity, of goodness, the grass actually did grow once more in Hiroshima.

Seeing that, despite having also seen their world suddenly, brutally blown apart, survivors were more able to go on. Reflecting on this story, I am reminded to look for what is whole, integrated, undamaged, even in the face of devastation or loss.

One of the original meanings of the Sanskrit word dharmaoften translated as the way of things or the law of natureis that which can uphold us, that which can support us. As the conditions of the pandemic unfolded, and I looked for what could support me as I grappled with the fundamental questionWhats still true?I turned once again to timeless wisdom, and time-tested methods of meditation.

I have asked myself that potent question repeatedly. It always reminds me to look deeplywithin myself and outside of myself as well: Whats still true?

In that light, Ive been examining some familiar images and metaphors. For example, to create audio recordings, I was reading aloud some of the guided meditations youll find in this book. Among these was a lovingkindness meditation where we offer a sense of care and inclusion to a sequence of different kinds of people. One of the classical categories of recipients is someone known as a neutral person, someone we dont generally like or dislikethe kind of person we tend to overlook or discount, not through bias or antipathy, but mostly through sheer indifference.

Its suggested that you choose someone you tend to see now and then, just so you can gauge the feeling of connection you might find growing toward them. For more than thirty years my colleagues and I have commonly recommended someone like a supermarket checkout clerk as a neutral person: the very epitome of someone who performs a service for us but whom we tend to be conditioned to disregard. As I was reading the instruction aloud, in the midst of the pandemic and social distancing, I was dumbfounded. We wouldnt be eating if these people were not showing up for work, I thought. It makes no sense to have so much indifference toward such people!

I know these shifts and revelations are good to wake up to, even if they can leave us somewhat unsettled. Frequently we find a previously overlooked truth, like, Look at that! I am actually dependent on all kinds of people that I might have tended to objectify, as though they werent people with hopes and dreams and fears and problems just like me. I think its imperative to look now not just at what were used to, but at the deepest places within us and between us to consider, Whats still true?

As I was reading this book yet one more time, in light of current events, I was moved by a sense of greater peace and conviction, believing that the grass and flowers could grow again after devastation, that there was a way to reclaim wholeness and abide in integrity. The path laid out in this book seemed to me to be as true as it ever was for our personal healing and our ability to affect the world: feeling the stirring of agency; transforming anger to courage; moving from grief to resilience; allowing joy; taking care of ourselves as well as one another; living by the truth of interconnection and the power of compassion. This is a book not only about trying to bring about change in the world, but also about how this ever-changing world also changes us in the process.

May this book be of benefit, may it help to ease suffering, and serve to connect us further so that we are not defined by isolation and fear, but rather by wisdom, generosity, and love.