I want to write a little bit about striving to be our best selves as we participate in the political process and hopefully offer a perspective on how to navigate the emotional minefield of electoral competition. I offer this advice for everyone (including myself).
A couple of years ago I stopped paying attention to politics for a while. That wasn't unusual for me. My interest and engagement have always fluctuated through my life. But this time was a bit different because of what I was focused on instead of politics: my personal spiritual development. I was meditating regularly. Nothing fancy. Just basic mindfulness meditation (also known as Insight or vipassana mediation). And I was trying to absorb and begin living some foundational spiritual ideas, mostly from Buddhism, that are part of a meditation practice. I was slowly learning to react to situations in life with greater equanimity.
And then I saw some political news. I don't even remember what it was. Congressional Republicans were doing something or other and it pissed me off. It disrupted the hell out of my equanimity. And I thought, what did you expect? And my impulse was to turn away again from the political world. But then another thought occurred to me: that's how it's supposed to work. In modern American politics the provocation of anger and anxiety is a feature, not a bug. It is designed to turn people away. There are always those who benefit when others disengage from their own governance.
The thing is: this dilemma of politics, that engagement is required of responsible citizens AND that it seems to require sacrificing our serenity and emotional equanimity, is simply a special case of the dilemma of life. Duh! There is shit we have to do. And doing some of that shit is going to cause pain. If coping with politics is obviously just a special case of coping with life, then I knew where to turn for guidance in dealing with it.
The Second Noble Truth
Attachment leads to suffering.
Let that sink in for a second because it's the crux of what I'm sharing. It is the second of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The First Noble Truth is that there is suffering. But you probably already knew that. The third and fourth Noble Truths are about alleviating suffering. One can (and should) spend a lifetime studying and practicing these. But I want to share a cliff-notes version as it applies to political engagement.
If attachment leads to suffering, then obviously detachment is the path to alleviating suffering. But applied to the realm of politics, wouldn't that mean that we should stop paying attention? Cease our involvement? These are the questions I was asking myself a couple of years ago when I serendipitously came across some helpful advice from author and spiritual teacher, Sally Kempton:
It took me a few years of throwing out the baby instead of the bathwater to figure out that detachment is not about external things. In fact, as is so often the case with the big issues of spiritual life, detachment involves a deep paradox. It’s true that those without a lot of clutter in their lives have more time for inner practice. But in the long run, disengaging ourselves from family, possessions, political activism, friendships, and career pursuits can actually impoverish our inner lives. Engagement with people and places, skills and ideas, money and possessions is what grounds inner practice in reality.
...[A]cting with detachment means doing the right thing for its own sake, because it needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure.
Ram Dass explains it in the same way: "It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s how much you’re attached in doing it."
The Bhagavad Gita, the original Hindu source document for this nugget of wisdom, puts it this way: "Be not attached to the fruits of the action."
Now this is an interesting idea and perhaps a difficult one for the Western mind to grasp: to do things without worrying about success or failure. But...really? How are we supposed to fight for something and not be attached to winning? It's not easy. It's a lifelong practice. But taking some simple steps can begin to help pretty quickly.
Learn to meditate.
Try to practice the Eightfold Path.
You don't have to be a Buddhist or Hindu or anything else to practice some of these things. Sally Kempton also offers a helpful step-by-step process of detachment.
Pema Chodron
And it's not just about about bringing greater serenity into our individual lives, although that's a pretty worthwhile goal in itself. Making an effort to approach politics and activism with emotional detachment is part of being the best activists and advocates we can be. To do otherwise works against our efforts.
Ram Dass explains:
I know many of you will feel uncomfortable when I say this, but the hippies create the police as much as the police create the hippies. That the liberals create the conservatives. The protesters create the John Birchers just as much as the John Birchers create the protesters. That as long as you are attached to whatever pole you are representing, the vibrations which you are sending out are creating its polar opposite around you. If you can do whatever is your karma, which may be walking in a protest march or fighting in Vietnam, or being a conservative or a liberal or being a housewife or being a yogi, and can do it without attachment and do it fully and thoroughly, but without attachment, then you do not create that karma, do not create the polar opposite.
This is a very difficult concept. But think about it in terms of debating a political issue or candidate with someone. The more attached you are to winning and feeling victorious (as opposed to persuading or simply communicating), the more you are perpetuating the disagreement and the more you will suffer if the fruits of your action are not what you hoped for.
