Breathing In And Breathing Out, We Can Spread Compassion
Having grown up the New York area, I became a fan of Broadway musicals at a young age. Perhaps it derives from my personal perspective, but I often detect spiritual truth within the lyrics of Broadway songs.
This past week, PBS broadcast a revival of the delightful musical from the 1960s, She Loves Me. It tells the story of two warring shop clerks unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal. The show inspired the popular film from the nineties, You’ve Got Mail.
In a song called “Perspective,” a character named Sipos explains why the angry outbursts of his boss, Mr. Maraczek, don’t disturb him.
He notes that the perfume shop where he works is but one of several in his city. His city is but one of several in his country. His country is but one of many on its continent, of which there are seven on this planet. And this planet is just one within a solar system among many solar systems.
From that perspective, he observes: “In this infinite, incomprehensible scheme, if a dot called Maraczek should scream at a speck called Sipos, what on Earth does it matter?”
Sipos’ ability to float above the chaos around him, and confront difficult events that arise with a sense of detachment and equanimity, might serve as a model for us as we deal with our country’s relentless onslaught of troubling news.
His philosophy reminds us that we are all dots and specks in an infinite scheme, and that as Buddhism teaches, all of life is impermanence. This chaotic time too shall pass.
There were echoes of that perspective in an online retreat I participated in this week, guided by spirituality writer Carl McColeman, on the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. To arrive at an inner freedom, both great saints encouraged cultivating a sense of detachment from events and material things.
Their teachings are similar to those of St. Ignatius of Loyola, another great Spanish mystic. He urges us to take up an attitude of “indifference.” In this context, neither detachment — nor indifference — mean not caring. Nor do they connote helplessly standing by when situations do need to change.
Instead, detachment and indifference help us let go of anything or anyone that impedes us from loving.
Quoting from St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, Boston College professor Marina McCoy writes, “Indifference means being detached enough from things, people or experiences to be able either to take them up or to leave them aside, depending on whether they help us to ‘to praise, reverence, and serve God.’ In other words, it’s the capacity to let go of what doesn’t help me to love God or love others — while staying engaged with what does.”
To deepen my prayer life, I began taking online instruction in meditation earlier this year from Lama Tsering Ngodup Yodsampa. He is a hospital chaplain in Boston and the Tibetan teacher who has been instructing my good friend, the poet Lisa Breger, for several years.
The parallels between Buddhist teachings on meditation, St. Teresa’s “way of perfection,” and St. John’s “ascent” to spiritual maturity are quite revealing.
A fundamental Buddhist teaching is that suffering comes from attachment — attachment to particular outcomes, to material objects, and even to people who might hinder our spiritual progress. Our well-being lies in practicing non-attachment.
One of the first mantras I learned from Lama Tsering is the lotus mantra, or the mantra for purity of heart: om mani padme hum. We repeat the words, drawing in our breath and exhaling it, similar to the Christian practice of “centering prayer,” which focuses on the silent repetition of a single “sacred word” and mindful of breathing.
I find I don’t struggle as much with mental distractions reciting the Buddhist mantra as I do trying to focus on my sacred word during centering prayer. I love the sound of om mani padme hum and the way the words feel emerging from my mouth. I control my breath more easily repeating those six syllables.
It helps to imagine that as I speak each syllable, I am sending into the universe an antidote to one of the many emotions that can afflict us. Om evokes generosity; ma ethical behavior; ni patience; pad perseverance; me, selflessness; hum, wisdom. They act as bulwarks against the afflictions of pride, jealousy, ignorance, prejudice, greed, anger and aggression.
Lama Tsering says that when he prays, he is drawing on the breath of all spiritual teachers has ever known or studied, both living and deceased, going back to even the Buddha. That touched me greatly.
When I pray now, I evoke my own teachers. Sister Helen Jean Everett, my high school Latin teacher who taught me to love art, music and poetry. The Jesuit priests I encountered in college who encouraged me to be “a person for others.” The Benedictine sisters who continue to school me in compassion. My friend Brother Paul Quenon of the Abbey of Gethsemani, who taught me to pay attention, and other teachers too numerous to name.
My efforts at meditation remind me too of the late Sister Agnes Honz of Mount St. Scholastica, the monastery in Kansas where I am a lay associate. She used to tell me to stand each day facing each of the four directions. Breathe in loving compassion, she would say. Breathe out peace to the four corners of the world.
Breath is powerful. As Lama Tsering, the hospital chaplain, points out, we can contract the deadly corona virus by breathing it in, and we can infect someone else by breathing out. Can we not then use our breath to spread peace and compassion?
What are the emotions from which we need to detach and practice “indifference?” This week, can we remain conscious of our breath? Are we breathing in compassion, breathing out peace? I believe even Sipos in She Loves Me would agree that every “speck” in this “infinite, incomprehensible scheme” of a universe can make a difference.
