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Zen trainer Jules Shuzen Harris teaches us a three-step apply to attach with and serve those that are struggling. Illustrations by Carole Hénaff.
In instances of doubt, disbelief, and insecurity, the apply of bearing witness might be an necessary side of our consciousness and presence.
Bearing witness might be outlined as acknowledging that one thing exists or is true. From a Buddhist perspective, and particularly the Zen Peacemakers Order, to bear witness is to embrace each the enjoyment and the struggling we encounter. Quite than merely observing the state of affairs, we turn out to be the state of affairs. We turn out to be intimate with no matter it’s—starvation, poverty, discrimination, illness, or demise.
Bearing witness invokes a way of interconnectedness, a direct realization of the wholeness of life.
After we analyze and choose a state of affairs, we usually come to it with all of our concepts and recurring beliefs. We’re solely in a position to see it by way of the lens of our conditioned pondering. However once we shift to the apply of bearing witness, we droop our analytical pondering and transfer to a spot of open consciousness. This permits the witnessing presence to turn out to be one with no matter state of affairs we encounter.
To bear witness, we have to put aside the deal with our personal reactions and enter a spot of stillness and receptivity. Bearing witness on this planet, we’re cultivating the identical floor of open coronary heart and thoughts that we apply in our meditation.
This brings us to the query, “What’s the good thing about bearing witness apply?”
Psychologically, it permits us to attach with a spot of actual empathy. It additionally supplies a form of catharsis, a launch from our emotional reactions of pity, disgrace, or concern.
Spiritually, bearing witness invokes a way of interconnectedness, of oneness, a direct realization of the wholeness of life.
Politically and socially, it permits us to see clearly the whole internet of causes and situations that create struggling, and to take efficient motion to enhance folks’s lives.
Here’s a three-step apply of bearing witness that you are able to do:
1. Determine Who Wants You
First, establish an individual or a bunch who’s disenfranchised or who’s struggling. Their state of affairs may be one thing acquainted to us, linked to one thing we ourselves have skilled, or it might be one thing completely unfamiliar to us, bringing a brand new edge to our consciousness and understanding.
2. Be There and Be Empty
Second, spend significant time with them. This can be a time to let go of what we got here with, and study and pay attention. You would possibly do a road retreat with the homeless. You would possibly volunteer at a drug rehab clinic, take part in jail outreach work, or present help to sufferers and/or households in a hospice heart. You possibly can participate within the voluntary providers provided to veterans by the VA program.
Central to this step is coming from a spot of vacancy, approaching it with willingness to turn out to be really intimate with one other’s expertise. Bearing witness requires a form of psychological and bodily give up to the state of affairs to permit it to completely enter into your consciousness.
3. Serve the State of affairs
After a while, ask your self, “How can I most acknowledge folks’s plight?” If they’re hungry, do I serve them a meal or do I give you a means of serving to them to feed and shelter themselves? I might say sure, you need to do each. To bear witness is to embrace and acknowledge the entire state of affairs. On a private degree, you feed them. On a systemic degree, you interact the system.
If there was ever a time once we wanted to bear witness, it’s now.
There are numerous ways in which witnessing can turn out to be an lively expression of our consciousness and our empathy. Proper the place we reside, the town council, the mayor’s workplace, governors, or legislative meeting might be introduced into this recognition of what’s calling out for consideration. On the federal degree, your congressional consultant or federal businesses might be held accountable to their tasks. Our private witness consists of supporting organizations which can be pushing for laws and insurance policies that handle human struggling and that promote peace and justice.
In a cultural anthropology class I took years in the past, I discovered in regards to the notion of cultural upkeep, which describes how a tradition, as a system, defends itself even when it means disguising the reality or absorbing what that tradition perceives as threats. Bearing witness is a radical act—it’s a means of shining a lightweight on the reality and standing steadfastly in that mild.
The apply of bearing witness is just not simple, but when there was ever a time once we wanted to bear witness, it’s now. Gone are the times when it was sufficient to march within the streets to result in social change. Every of us known as upon to maneuver past our personal mounted views and open our eyes to penetrate to the true actuality of the world as it’s.
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