A number of years ago, I lived in Monterey, California. One of my favorite places to go was a grove of eucalyptus trees in the next town over, Pacific Grove, the winter home of monarch butterflies. Walking into the grove and looking up at the towering trees, you’d think you were seeing thousands of leaves draping down from the top of the trees to almost reach the ground. Then the sun would shine through the pervasive coastal fog and the entire “branch” would come alive and start moving. That’s when you realized these were not branches but butterflies, flapping their wings as they dried off from the ocean fog.
The monarchs stayed in the grove only a few weeks each year. Their lifespan is quite short—just enough time to lay their eggs and then continue their northward migration thousands of miles from Mexico to Canada. By the time the butterflies complete this journey, they have come to the end of their life—one that only lasts about eight months at most. It always amazed me that these creatures would put in so much effort only to die at the end of it. But a new generation of butterflies would be born and through some great mystery, that generation knows how to make this same journey, continuing the cycle of life.
One of the questions that I find most compelling as a socially engaged Buddhist is: “How do we let go of our attachment to outcome and yet stay engaged?” The question feels like a koan, one that doesn’t require an answer but rather invites us to live into it with an open heart and mind and see where it takes us. Perhaps the question is also about how we stay engaged in our own life and practice in the face of challenges, and in light of the fact that the story ends the same way for all of us. We are on a certain path to our own self-extinguishment, just like those monarch butterflies and their short but exquisite lives.
This koan feels close to my heart. It’s one I have held as I seek to bring my practice to issues such as economic and racial justice, which can seem so intractable. At one sangha conversation about racial justice some years ago, a number of folks pointed out that little seems to have changed over all these years, despite all our efforts. How can we find it in our hearts to stay engaged in the face of such huge struggles with what can seem like very little to show for it?
I also think about my own life and see patterns that I have tried so hard to shift, yet they continue to pop up. Sometimes I want to throw in the towel and give up. Sometimes I work at letting go of attachment to outcome and then find myself in a place that is lacking passion. That doesn’t feel right either.
Even the way we ask a question plants the seeds for how we may live into an answer. At my most desperate moments, this question has taken the form, “Why bother?” But a more helpful way to ask it might be, “What is there for me to learn here?” There is always an invitation to lean into our life with curiosity and openness. That, to me, is the heart of practice.
The second of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths tells us that the root of suffering is a craving for things to be other than what they are. If something in our lives causes us pain or unpleasantness or discomfort, we want that thing to be gone. If something brings us pleasure and happiness, we do not want it to disappear. We hang onto it with all our might. This is the essence of duhkha, the Sanskrit word for suffering. An essential ingredient of our practice is learning to see how this craving operates in our life, and then practicing so that it loosens its hold on us.
Equanimity, one of the four brahmaviharas, the heavenly abodes, allows us to be at peace in the midst of stress, uncertainty, and difficulty. But the near enemy of equanimity is passivity. If we are not awake to it, equanimity can slip into not caring, or it can turn into a well-polished disguise that hides the fact that we’re avoiding something that needs our attention. It can be easy to succumb to spiritual bypassing in the name of equanimity. It’s the shadow side of our practice.
One key I’ve found helpful to working with this koan is a line from the “Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi,” a poem attributed to Dongshan, a Chan Buddhist monk of the Tang dynasty:
“Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire.”
My Zen teacher, Victoria Austin, reminded me of these words a number of years ago as I was facing a confounding situation in my life. The phrase offered an invitation to practice more deeply with the situation, to neither run away from it nor be consumed by it.
We may also want to reflect on our relationship with some of the ingredients that go along with what we might think of as a “failed outcome.” Here are some things to contemplate:
- • What is my relationship with disappointment? Can I be at peace with disappointment, or do I take it as a mortal blow to my happiness?
- • What is my relationship with loss? Can I relate to loss as a place of potential rather than a negative factor?
- • What is my relationship with despair? Can I understand despair as an indicator of the deep love I have for something, whether that is myself, or another person, or our Planet Earth?
- • What is my relationship with not getting my way? This is a very juicy one. If we notice that we are very invested in things going our way, it might be helpful to explore how we’ve attached our identity to a certain outcome. It’s useful to consider the source of our actions.
Another helpful practice, as we seek the middle way between turning away and touching, is nourishment on every level: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The more we are able to cultivate nourishing elements in our life, on a moment-to-moment basis, the more we strengthen our capacity to be in that middle way.
A practice of sitting meditation also gives us a way to work with this koan. We sit with complete openness, without any goal. Yet we are engaged in a vibrant way with our body, with our breath, with our mental and emotional process. Practice is not about zoning out, it is about tuning in. In that way, it offers a template for our engagement with the world. The path itself is sacred. It’s less about where we end up and more about how we walk the path. Another line from the “Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi:”
Communing with the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the road.
We might think that a Zen approach means dwelling only in emptiness. But intention is radically important. I think of the questions Roshi Joan Halifax poses so often: “Who are you? Why are you really here?” This is true for our personal lives and for our shared life as a community. We need to anchor ourselves in a sustained commitment to something greater than ourselves. I imagine the monarch butterflies do much the same thing as they make their long journey that ends in death, but gives life to a new generation.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this koan. How do you practice with staying engaged, even as you let go of attachment to outcome? What have you found helpful? Please leave a comment!
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Practicing Equanimity in the Face of Injustice: Social Activism and the Middle Path
Anti-War Performance, Part Two
Anti-War Performance, Part One
Reviving the Dhamma: Ambedkar’s Impact on Empowering the Marginalized through Buddhism
Book Review: The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on Effective Altruism, Engaged Buddhism, and How to Build a Better World
A Buddhist Understanding of the Dharma and Human Rights
