Grief Isn't a Mistake - Buddhist Wisdom on Compassion and Presence

Sep 27

4 min read

The Order of Care: Skillful Means

What Is Compassion?

I recently published an article in Lion’s Roar called “The Light That Is Always Here,” where I compared our minds to an oil lamp. While the flame never goes out, soot accumulates on the glass from our forgetful actions of daily life, obscuring the light. Our practice is how we clean it.

One sentence in that essay said that suffering happens when we misunderstand how life actually works. My friend wrote back with a question I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Would saying that to someone in a war zone who’d just lost his family to a missile be skillful and compassionate?

No, it wouldn’t. And I had to admit I’d written the piece for a privileged set of readers, people with quiet mornings and free time in first-world countries.

My friend’s question showed me that being compassionate means meeting people where they are (skillful means), and compassion follows an order. First, we see the suffering. Then we say it’s real. Then we stay. Only after that do we offer medicine.

In that essay I wrote about the Buddha as the great physician, and no good doctor writes a prescription before looking at the patient. Unfortunately, in that one sentence I went right to the prescription.

The same order holds when the pain is our own. The sutra on mindful breathing guides us to first just be aware of a feeling and calm it second. Feel first. Then calm. We don’t need to go to war with ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh used to say that when a painful feeling comes up in us, we hold it the way a loving parent holds their crying baby. They don’t lecture or blame the baby. They pick it up, hold it, and comfort it.

Seeing Clearly

Seeing suffering clearly means seeing where it came from. A man whose family was just killed by a missile isn’t suffering because he misunderstands life. He’s suffering because he loved them and they’re gone. The misunderstanding isn’t his. It belongs to whoever ignorantly decided that missile was a reasonable thing to launch as a way to solve some political problem.

Nichiren knew where a warning belongs. When famine and plague swept thirteenth-century Japan, he admonished the most powerful man in the country, in his case to bring peace to the land. We can do the same. We call out the harm, putting the blame where it belongs, and stand against it.

Acknowledging It’s Real

What that man needs to hear first is simple. Your grief isn’t a mistake. It is real.

The Buddha told a story about two arrows. The first arrow is the pain life hands us. The second is the one we shoot into ourselves: the blame, the dread, the stories we pile on top. Telling a grieving man that his suffering comes from misunderstanding how life works doesn’t pull out an arrow. It hands him another one.

Holding Space

Being present for someone comes before prescribing. Sometimes presence is a bowl of rice. Mostly it’s sitting beside someone and keeping quiet. The late Fred Rogers showed us that the most compassionate and noble thing we could do is sit with someone and simply say, “I see you.”

I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the famous pyramid with food, water, and shelter at the bottom and reaching your full potential at the top, offers us another way to look at meeting people where they are. For someone living in a war zone, the bottom of the pyramid is on fire. Meditation comes near the top of the pyramid. Companionship comes closest to what is needed, because what helps in that moment is someone there.

Nichiren understood this too. When one of his followers, Ueno-ama, lost her teenage son, Nichiren’s letters to her were full of his own shock and grief. He grieved right alongside her.

Offering Medicine

Only then do we offer medicine, and even then it’s an offer. For the man in the war zone, taking the medicine of mindfulness may be a long way off.

The Lotus Sutra tells of a doctor whose children have swallowed poison. He mixes good medicine and leaves it where they can reach it. He can’t take it for them.

My tradition teaches that every state of life, from hell to buddhahood, contains all the others. We call it the mutual possession of the ten realms. It means buddhahood is present even in hell, and there’s no truer hell than a city under bombardment. Viktor Frankl found that light in the hell of a Nazi concentration camp.

My own situation might be useful. My number one reason for practicing Buddhism isn’t enlightenment, whatever the heck that means. It’s therapy. I’ve lived with anxiety and depression my whole life, and every time I think I’ve got it beat, it comes roaring back. I’ve always had a fantasy that practice would change my karma and fix it for good. It hasn’t. As long as I chant every day, take my low dose of Zoloft, eat well, exercise, get enough sleep, and steer clear of self-made stress, I’m in a pretty good place. Equanimity isn’t somewhere I’ve arrived. It isn’t the Land of Eternally Tranquil Light. It’s a constant balancing act, and like everything else it depends on causes and conditions.

There’s an old Buddhist story about a man walking home at dusk who sees a snake on the path and freezes. When he brings a lamp closer, it’s a coil of rope. Much of what my anxiety sees is snakes. I have found that mindfulness is bringing the lamp closer so I can see clearly what it is, rope or snake, and then take appropriate action.

Nichiren Buddhism uses the phrase bonno soku bodai, “defilements are awakening.” Our troubles aren’t in the way of awakening. They’re what awakening works with.

Inside and Out

So, here’s what I’d add to the article if I wrote it again. First, see the suffering. Acknowledge it’s real. Be present with it. Then, and only then, offer medicine. Whether it’s someone suffering in a war zone or you sleepless at three in the morning, the order of care is the same.

For that man, I’d offer something like this: your grief isn’t a mistake nor is your fault. While the light in you hasn’t gone out, now isn’t the time for cleaning. When you’re ready, I’ll be there to help you clean.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo