By Marisela Gomez

Talk at ABC Home

September 2016

Dear friends, dear Thay,

I want to share about what love in action may look like, and maybe why it is necessary. This is not just for activists but for everyone who is negotiating and navigating today’s world.

I recently had the pleasure of being on a retreat with Bikkhu Bodhi, an elder monk in the Theravada tradition. I had a chance to ask him a few questions about mindfulness, social justice, and activism, because it is a big part of my world. His face lit up, and I could see he had something to say about these topics. One of the questions I asked him was what good mindfulness is in today’s world with all the difficulties we are facing.

I gave him a specific example. In August 2016 in Baltimore, our Sangha, Baltimore and Beyond Mindfulness Community, hosted a panel discussion on the role of mindfulness in the criminal justice system. We are facing a lot of difficulty with the criminal justice system and policing, especially with the black community and low-income community in the city. It was up to us to look into what we were going to do about this difficulty—this inappropriate action that is harming many of our brothers and sisters. Our panelists were two Dharma teachers and a young man who had been incarcerated for murder. One of the participants, a young black man, asked the panel: “I’m a black man. The police pulls me over all the time. What’s this mindfulness going to do for me?”

Great question, right?

It is the question we are asking today: How does our practice, how does coming back to ourselves, and how does finding peace in ourselves help us bring peace in our intimate interactions and also in the ones maybe we would not want to be so intimate? This is what social change is, isn’t it? 

Bikkhu Bodhi said mindfulness would be very helpful because in the midst of all the difficulty where a police officer might take advantage of his power, if you have calm and peace inside yourself, you can fundamentally change that situation. You can have the control in making a different outcome. If we have that peace in ourselves, this is what we are going to bring out. That is the process of changing the world.

I understand this response to be a teaching on being more peaceful and calm inside ourselves, so when we bring ourselves into the spaces that are going to be challenging, we know how to act because we have access to appropriate action. I felt his response rang true because I have experienced it myself. Because of my peace and my calm the outcome of something that could have resulted in my being shot turned out in a completely different way.

I was cat-sitting for a friend who lived in a middle income white neighborhood in Baltimore. When I woke up in the morning, I forgot there was an alarm. I do not usually think about these things, so I did not disarm the alarm and it went off. I also did not realize that when the alarm goes off, the police come. I called the alarm company to tell them everything was okay, but apparently the police were already responding, which was amazing. That was a quick response; I wish the police would respond that way in all of the communities.

The police came. The door was open, but the screen door was still locked. It happened very quickly, but in my mind it happened very slowly. That is because when you have peace inside of you, everything slows down. When things become still, you see things more as an observer rather than be pulled in and absorbed into it. I walked toward the door, and the police appeared at the door.

One police officer yanked the door open with a gun drawn at me, and the other one was going to his holster. They came in, and it all happened so quickly. All I could think was, “I really have to be peaceful right now.” This was a dangerous situation, so I went very slowly. You have to put your arms up slowly when a gun is pointing at you. I put my arms up. I was in so much control; I do not think I have ever been in so much control, but I also knew my life was at stake. I said, “We don’t need any guns here.”

I had stopped; the police had stopped; and I looked into their eyes, particularly the one with the gun already drawn. I could see anger; I could see fear, but I could also see me. It was just another human being, right? The officer was in a difficult situation, trained and imprinted to respond in a certain way, especially when he sees someone who looks like me in a house—in a white neighborhood—where an alarm went off and maybe thought I should not have been there. I told him why I happened to be there and I forgot to take the alarm off, and I had to say it twice. I kept my hands up; I could see in the moment he was really thinking, and he had to make a decision what to do. With my hands still up and his gun still drawn, he said he needed to see an ID. There was no way I could show him my ID with my hands up. But it was all good because one of us was in control, and it was not the police with the gun. It was me with my breath.

The other police officer did not take his gun out. He kept his hand on his gun but did not take it out. So it was a stopping, right? I convinced the first officer to let me walk over to my bag behind him and told him I needed to put my hands down so I could get my ID. Then he put the gun down.

All this happened by my not responding with anger, fear, and a sense of worthlessness. When we are faced with very difficult situations, depending on how we feel about ourselves, we might allow someone to act toward us in a way we feel we deserve to be treated. As a woman of color, I have noticed as I continue to practice, my sense of who I am in this world has fundamentally shifted because part of taking control of the situation is feeling that you can, you are worthy of being present, and what you say is valid.

All kinds of things happen when we stop and find stillness. We find ourselves; we find value in who we are; we find peace. It all comes from stopping and looking. Unless we stop, we cannot look because we are moving too fast. Too much stuff is going on in our minds and in our bodies, and it is all going on together. What I remember is the force and the power and the control with which I said, “We don’t need any guns here,” because we did not need guns there. I really felt that, but I also felt I had the ability to control and change that situation.

It ended well and I am still here. I could have gotten shot, this is true, but some part of me did not think so. Some part of me felt like all this was unnecessary. I thought this man was acting with rage, and there was no need for a gun. With mindfulness practice, you see more clearly; you get perspective. And you get something else from being able to have some stillness: I didn’t want him to do something he would have regretted for the rest of his life…and that’s love, right?

It’s love when you are helping someone not to do something that will cause them harm. This is love in action. We do not practice just for ourselves; we practice for every person whom we interact with. If mindful presence is in our interactions, we bring it every time we communicate by phone, in person, or through email. That is what we bring, and we are offering something to the other person. We are changing the world because the way we bring ourselves into a space fundamentally shifts the energy and the dynamic in that space. There is no other way.

When people ask me, “How do you change the systems of oppression?” I say, “Change yourself.” Start looking at how you are moving through the world. If you bring anger and rage into those spaces because these systems are oppressive, how do you think those means are going to justify the ends for a more just world? In practicing, we bring a different way of doing the work of action and justice. In practicing, we are saying the means has to justify the end, and the only way we get to that end is through saying what we want and, with each step, moving toward it.

What words do we use when we go to protest? Are we violating the person in front of us because they are a police officer? If we work in a non-profit organization with people who do anti-gentrification work, do we call the developers terrible names because we think they are greedy? If they act in ruthless ways, as if they could not care less that they displace people over and over again, how do we engage? How do we practice this thing called peace? How do we practice this thing called love in a fundamentally real way every day in this world we are moving through? How do we do this? How do we change this world?

It is cool to say, “Be the change you want to see,” but what does that really mean? When we are faced with a difficulty, where can we actually shift the situation and “be the change”? Because we have control of how we respond in every situation, every single time, we have the ability to change a situation if we are aware of what we bring into that situation. But if we are unaware, then we are as clueless as the person in front of us because we do not have the means to make this fundamental shift in a peaceful way.

When we talk about where love and action meet, where spirit and action meet; when we think about what is justice, even when we think about what is injustice, I think about how I participate in injustice in small ways. It is easy for me to see the big injustices, the oppressive systems, and it is easy to address that. But when we come back home to ourselves, to this self, this Marisela and how she is moving in this world, doing that thing she says is about justice, how do I do that? How do I fundamentally do it in every single action?

So it’s this mindfulness thing, right? This step, this walk—slowly take a breath. Closing the door behind you, and remembering the door is there before you go through it. Putting your shoes down and making sure they are lined up. By doing that, we change the world. Can everybody remember this? Every time you take off your shoes from now on, can you make sure they are lined up? Because that is the practice of mindfulness. It does not get much deeper; it is not that profound. The effects are profound; what we take out of it and what we bring to the world when we are aware and present with what is in front of us is what changes in a profound way.

If we want to enact social change, let’s start by changing how we interact socially, because most of the time we are not present, and we have so many things going on. How do we train ourselves to come back to this breath? Remember the breath is there. We can only be present with the breath when it is here because the previous breath is gone, and the next one is not here yet. When we are aware of our breath, we are present. How do we fundamentally train ourselves to follow this peace so that when we meet those systems, aggressions, and sufferings by walking down the street, how do we do it in the moment? Can we look at how we respond? Can we see the first thing that came to mind?

A Day of Mindfulness is precious, right? We get to come back together as a community. We are being supported and protected, and we are held by the energy of this community. It is training us and imprinting different things in our neuro-pathways so that when we go out, we may have a more of a reminder the next time someone cuts us off in traffic, or we are late for a meeting that is a really important meeting in our head. That moment of remembering—that is justice. It is how mindfulness becomes justice, because the way you are going to talk about justice in that meeting, just after you cut someone off or maybe thought some unkind things about someone, is a contradiction, isn’t it?

What I am challenging us to say is: Let’s fundamentally shift the whole thing. It’s time; it’s really bad now, right? Things are crazy, and what are we going to do to change it? We can change policy; we can address laws; we can protest. And we can change ourselves. I had another interaction with the police where I ended up in jail. I was so angry for being pulled over for no legal reason because I did not deserve it. I could not take control of the situation. I let the situation control me, and that meant I let the other person’s uncontrollable anger, rage, and misperceptions of me affect me. In that situation we are playing off each other’s anger, and we do not expect anything good will come of this because I am letting their perception of me control how I respond.

In the first police interaction I described, when I felt in control, I knew what was happening with those two white police officers, and there was no time for anger. If I had gone to anger, it would have been jail and it might have been a bullet, but I did not go to anger. I thought, “This is a crazy situation. What am I going to do to handle it?” So I have a comparison: I have an angry Marisela, a calm Marisela, a Marisela in between, and it is all a continuum. It is all a process of where I am in my body, how much I am aware of what I am doing in that moment, and how present I am with what is happening in front of me. For me, it always comes back to the breath. If I can remember to breathe, it is a whole different space.

We talk about justice; we talk about being activists; we talk about wanting our action to be informed; we want it to be based on love and peace. My challenge today to all of you is to really rethink that. We must rethink it because that is the path to our healing; that is the healing we are going to share with others.

It is difficult because outside in the world, there is a completely different mindset of what justice means. But I feel justice means love, and justice means mindfulness because mindfulness allows us to be present. When we are present and we are touching our truest selves, it is going to be harder for us to act in unjust ways. If we can act less in unjust ways and more in the ways of justice, that is what we are going to bring to every interaction we have. And that is social change.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM WKUP.ORG.

Marisela Gomez, Loving Presence
of the Heart, is a member of the
Baltimore and Beyond Mindfulness
Community for activists and
people of color. She is involved
in equitable and sustainable
community rebuilding and enjoys
writing and noticing the movement
of natural bodies of water. To
watch her Ted talk on overcoming
racism for individual and collective
wellbeing, visit www.youtube.com/
watch?v=kSZEsPnhIXg/