From the Polycrisis to the Polychrysalis

This essay originally appeared on Shilpa Jain’s Substack.

I watched a hummingbird dance festival the other night. Within the branches of my friend’s olive tree, amid the glow of the setting sun, so many hummingbirds gathered around the red glass water-feeder to drink, play, rest and, really, just be. Mesmerizingly beautiful and so simple. I was in awe, watching them til the light of the day was gone, and they flitted away. Such a contrast to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the collapsing of democracy, and the ongoing wars that I’d been thinking about earlier that day. Is this really the same world?

Wherever you go, there you are.

Maybe my questions these days are not so different from what theirs were back then: What does it means to live in a world of many worlds, if one of them is trying to destroy all the others? How can the other worlds stay alive and flourish in times like these? What can I and we do to stop the destruction and fuel the liberation?

Earlier this month, I gathered with many wonderful folks for the 2nd EcoDharma retreat, sponsored by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center and held at the Garrison Institute in upstate New York. It braided the Buddha dharma, with indigenous earth-based wisdom, and African and African-American spiritual traditions, like pouring libations and calling in the ancestors.

While there were dharma talks, indigenous stories, guided meditation instructions, and a few opportunities for community connection (including a two-minute-each go-around on the question, “Who are you, really?”), most of the retreat took place in noble silence — that is, no talking to, no looking at, no engaging with, the other people in the retreat. I’ll admit this, at first, sounded like torture for an extreme extrovert like me. How was I going to not interact with all these people? Hanging out with awesome people is my jam! (Yes, pun intended, my friends.)

And yet, over the course of the few days, this silence gave me a gift. In it, I could hear the trees speak. I could take in the warmth of the sun and the vastness of the sky. I could see the smallest flowers blooming in the bushes and hear the dried sticks crunch beneath my feet. As I walked and sat by the Hudson River, I could slow down and feel my breath. In the retreat, the teachers talked about the importance of the inward gaze, and I also realized that all of the gazes offer a different gift to me — the inward, the outward, the upward, the downward. The silence let me see, listen to, and feel the connection to life in all of the directions. Earth is the sangha (the community of practice), as Venerable Dayananda, one of the teachers shared, and I felt the truth of that.

In one of my communions with a purple-leaf tree (it might have been a Crimson Maple), I asked it what I could do in this big world experiencing so much suffering. And the tree responded, “Be a refuge.” With a caterpillar crawling up its trunk, and large red ants scooting along its branches, I saw how it shared its life-force energy with others. There was no strain — only its presence and stillness. The tree sent to my heart-mind that beautiful song,

“Oh love prepare me / To be a sanctuary / Pure and holy / Tried and true / And with thanks giving / I’ll be a living / Sanctuary / For you.”

The silence also gave me the opportunity to get to know the quality of my own mind, which was amusing, to say the least. I found my mind to be a planner, often thinking about the next step, what’s coming up, anticipating and organizing, moving ahead of this moment. I realized that I seek certainty through my planning, presumably as a means to feel ease and safety — as though the future is in my control. I saw my mind wanting to know what cannot be known, since it is continuously emerging with infinite seen and unseen variables.

When I’d catch myself, I would slow down and come back to my breath, my heartbeat, the sounds I could hear in the moment, my knees (which were my chosen touchstone). I would aim to anchor myself in the here and now, the only truth that actually exists. I could do it for some time, and then watched my mind race away again. What cute little active puppy mind! It was challenging, yet when I met it with a sense of humor, I experienced the quiet of presence and the taste of freedom.

Konda Mason, another one of the wonderful retreat teachers, shared a beautiful teaching about the the difference between pain and suffering, and how our liberation lives in the distinction. Pain is real and unavoidable as a human being — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual pain — but suffering is our mental relationship to our pain. The Buddha called it the second arrow. The first arrow is the pain (the thing that happened); the second arrow is the story we tell ourselves about it, which is entirely in our own hands. (Note: This is quite like the way Gabor Maté talks about trauma.) I could contract from the pain, push it away, dump it on others; and/or, I could sit with it, expand with it, grow through it.

I had a funny experience of this distinction on our last morning, when a fellow participant accidentally squeezed mustard on herself at breakfast. As she started to clean it up with shame on her face and self-disparaging words coming from her mouth, I said, “Don’t shoot the second arrow!” She paused and looked at me, and we both burst out laughing. She said, “You’re right. I was about to judge myself but I can just drop that. The pain is the mess on my clothes. No need to add more to it.”

Maybe that’s a somewhat trivial example of suffering, and yet, maybe it’s not. Maybe all the great pain in the world, which is at the root of great suffering, started with something so small and insignificant — a judged mistake, a feeling of unworthiness, a moment of disconnection. Under certain conditions, it ramped up exponentially, got institutionalized, and led to more pain (Hurt people hurting people and creating systems that hurt people.) Maybe pausing and being with the pain, instead of shooting that second arrow at ourselves or others, could help us on the path of healing and offer freedom from suffering — which, as Konda said, could be one definition of liberation.

It reminds me of something that Jack Kornfield shared at the 1st EcoDharma retreat, back in September at Spirit Rock. He was quoting his meditation teacher, who said,

“There are two kinds of suffering. One that you run away from, that follows you everywhere. One that you face and go through, and that is the gateway to your liberation. So, I hope you’re not afraid of suffering.”

This facing of suffering as a pathway to liberation sparked another thought: What if the polycrisis — our multiple serious entangled ecological, social, political, etc., challenges — is actually a poly-chrysalis? Where many places of metamorphosis are co-existing as intertwined healing and transformation opportunities? (My friend Alixa Garcia made an amazing film about the imaginal cells and transformation in the chrysalis, which I highly recommend.)

 

 

Just as small raindrops gather to form mighty rivers, so too can these moments come together into a flow of collective change. Our internal slowing down, coupled with our sharing with one another, and practical alignment into our structures, could truly make a world where more worlds can be held. And where we cultivate the fortitude to persevere against the attacks of the dominating systems and those caught up in them.

As my elder-friend Pat McCabe / Woman Stands Shining recently shared in a gathering, she has been working with a powerful question to discern the best use of her time and of collective actions. She asks, “Is this in service to all life?” And, if the answer is no, she says, “We must begin again.” I feel this willingness to ask the question, slow down to listen, and be honest with my response, is a potent way to find direction away from the cycles of suffering and towards the metamorphoses of healing change. That’s another way to safeguard the other worlds and co-create more of them.

While building the poly-chrysalis in these polycrisis times is not easy, we do have another tool to help us with it: metta. Often translated as loving-kindness, Konda described it as the heart of the practice, where the deepest relationality reverberates from each of us to every corner of the universe. To me, metta is another way I can support those other worlds to flourish and to diminish the forces of destruction.

Metta grows and extends loving-kindness, starting first with yourself, and then to the people you love, then to neutral people, then to difficult people, and then to all beings everywhere. This short form song offers metta to each place: “May you be filled with loving-kindness / May you be well / May you be peaceful and at ease / May you be happy.” With each round of singing, I envision in my heart-mind where I want to send these prayers. I call forth those most suffering first, and then the people behind that suffering, and wish both of them metta so that the suffering may end.

In the silence, I saw that I generally have a friendly mind towards myself and others. It’s not that I never go into rehashing something that’s past, or judging myself or others, but overall, those thoughts don’t linger or fester much. Maybe it’s because of the decades of YES! Jams, noticing my panic zone and what it takes to come into my stretch zone again. Or my love of appreciative inquiry, or my explorations with the compass of compassion. Maybe it’s the inspiration I received from Thich Nhat Hanh’s smile meditation, or Joanna Macy’s wonder and love of life, beauty, community, food, music, fun; or the Buddha’s own teaching to “live with joy among the hateful, live with health among the afflicted” that helps me to tap into something bigger than the suffering — which is joy.

I can see that to practice metta is to be filled with joy and connection. To be a refuge is to nurture a place of rest and peace for myself and others. To pause the suffering cycle and sit with pain until it changes (for it will change) is to transform the polycrisis into the poly-chrysalis. To honor a world of many worlds, and to stand up however and wherever I can for all of them, is to be fully alive.

How are you giving and receiving loving-kindness in these times? What parts of the polychrysalis are you nurturing through your life and work? I would love to hear in the comments if you’re willing to share.