Save the Toddler Crying for Her Mother

I vow to save all the beings of the world. -from the four Bodhisattva vows 
Say something in response. Say something backwards. -Yunmen

It’s been hard recently to see the suffering of children and parents at our borders, their pain at being separated from each other while trying to seek asylum in our country. It’s devastating to look at and it’s deeply discouraging, it’s frustrating and maddening and sickening, and most of all, it’s heartbreaking.


As a mother, I’m one of a multitude of mothers (and others) looking at the photos of the crying faces, hearing them, and feeling my own longing to comfort, to make it right. The little girl in her tiny red sneakers, crying in full despair, I want to hold her. I can’t not feel this. 

And, as a woman, I can't help but notice that this is an attack specifically on mothers with children who are seeking asylum in the United States, these are policies targeting women and children.  Immigrants should never be treated harshly, but, in addition, these are not just any immigrants, and they are clearly not drug dealers, nor gang members. These are a special group, families who have left everything and everyone they know and come a very long way, with their sometimes very young children, in the hope of surviving. These already traumatized people are then torn, child from parent, and charged with made-up crimes. In order to accomplish what? What possible excuse is there? My outrage says, how dare they do this in my name?

And then my thinking mind kicks in, and I say, if this is what I'm supposed to be looking at, what am I not supposed to be looking at? For what is even this just a cover? Am I being overly cynical, or is there some other atrocity or corruption my emotions are being manipulated in order to not notice? And, if it costs between $250-$900 a day per person to incarcerate these children and their parents, who is making the money off their misery?  (hint: private prisons) So, what actually is going on? Are our collective emotions and these children in despair being used in some shell game? And now I'm caught in a lonely noir world of distrust and us vs. them. 

And then I remember what Al Gore said in 2006 in his An Inconvenient Truth, that climate change leads to political and economic instability that historically is seen to lead to mass migration that leads to further political and economic instability. Climate change created the conditions for helpless people fleeing their countries being met with rabid xenophobia and nationalism. We're not going to address climate change by spending billions of taxpayer dollars torturing women and children. To put it bluntly. My outrage is back. 

What would this Zen of ours be for, then? No amount of practice could or should make this kind of inhumanity okay, or give me calm and equanimity in the midst of it. So, if its purpose is not to make me feel better, to forbear from weeping or rending my garments, to escape this terrible life, then what? Yunmen says for me to respond. How do I respond?

Apparently there's something here about the vow to save all beings. There's something that's possible and important and can be done while we're waiting for reinforcements, for a plan of action, for a way forward and an idea how to engage. There’s one thing this Zen practice has to offer when I am in other ways helpless: it offers me the courage to feel it, to feel my rage and impotence, to feel how frightened and lonely I am, and how much I really do care, and how I can share that with all beings.

There’s a tendency to overlay a story onto difficult times to make ourselves safe, even if it’s just the story of outrage. We keep ourselves separate that way. And these stories can even keep us from being close to the ones we love, who are right here. So we can also be humble enough to see the cruelty and coldness inside us as well, and notice when that begins to take us over, when we migrate into the roles of those whose actions we decry, when we try and find safety in hardness and separateness. This is also part of the human condition.

Yunmen also said to say something backwards. That's important. Sometimes I think what's needed is for me to be strong, when it may be just as important to be vulnerable. It's a big thing we do when we stop inventing stories in order to keep life at a distance, when we stop spinning fantasies about how it’s not about me, or it’s not real. Because it’s always real, and we humans can give each other, brave and frightened, the dignity we deserve by not turning away.

If the world needs something from us, right away and always, it’s to feel this time for what it is. This means we include the sadness and brutality, as well as the courage, let it enter us and transform us. We may even be able to feel our way into the vast web of people who do amazing work to protect and defend others, scientists and civil rights lawyers, citizens who are persistent, young people who ask questions, writers and poets and singers and dancers, and to know that’s within our power too. It's possible for each of us to stand up for each other, in large and small ways. 

We can change ourselves by doing the work we do, both through making things conscious, and through making friends with the dark. This is how we can help change the culture, if we're very very lucky.