Spreading karunavirus

UPDATE APRIL 5. Currently many monasteries and Dhamma Centres are offering teachings via their websites or Zoom. Check in online for details.

So, the world has changed, we're in lock-down, and Dhamma practice continues with heightened focus. Covid-19 just marched in.

I just got back to Cittaviveka from a retreat in the Netherlands; one of the last creatures on Noah's New Ark after my train was cancelled, a flight to replace it was cancelled and another flight promptly arranged by the tireless, unflappable, and matter-of-fact compassionate retreat manager. 

 As the retreat contained people from New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, Ireland and the USA, there was quite a lot of rearranging to do. The teachers themselves (from four different countries on this planet) met briefly each day, to look at the new unknowns, return to the concerns of the retreat and its yogis, and open to what seemed best – for now. A sound Dhamma focus. And this was what we brought back to our students; creating up to four days of practice to facilitate moving out into the new world. So there had to be time to sit in silence as a group, grounding the agitation and anxiety with embodiment, and the encouragement to expand mindfulness around that. Also there was the invitation to feed back on what arose from that process. 'Compassion' (karuṇā) was the universal theme. Concern for others arose, particularly of course friends and relatives back 'home'; gratitude was expressed – for having the container of the retreat and the companionship in Dhamma; and in the silence and the restraint, there was a sense of the enormity of what all humans are involved with now.  This is the response from balanced and trained awareness. Other signs are not so positive.

As I mentioned in my September blog (http://sucitto.blogspot.com/2019/09/systems-breakdown-what-next.html 'Systems Breakdown'), when customary structures weaken or collapse, there are a number of responses that occur. And this is what we're seeing now. 'Fighting over toilet paper' is a laughable reaction; 'buying guns and bullets' is more frightening. Will food supplies last? When people panic, wild reactions set in built around self-preservation. More common is the loss of reasoned assessment – we imagine that the system or our nation can manage, this will all blow over and then it's back to normal. I doubt it. Our governments are making up strategies as the situation develops (or trivialising it), but this situation could go on for the rest of the year, and its ramifications last much longer. People are dying and will continue to needlessly die where there has been a long-term absence of socially, universally accessible welfare and health services. That has to change. Travel will have to become even more security conscious. Will we travel less? Will governments maintain their power of security when the police get sick? Can even the military cope with the civil unrest of millions of people?  That social unrest, especially in the USA where nearly 90 percent of the people possess firearms, is another disturbing consequence.

As I noted, more positive signs are already arising in terms of the movement towards compassion and sharing. To quote again from that September blog: 'An act of faith is definitely called for, along with sense-restraint and compassion.' Well, in Britain, the restraint with regard to theatres, pubs, restaurants, shopping and socialising, was first suggested and then enforced. When the known becomes the unknown, an act of faith can only arise with mindfulness: 'Here we are now, the future always was uncertain, we always were going to get sick and die and be separated from the loved; best stay grounded and open to what arises in awareness.'  But when proliferating emotions and thoughts are checked by that practice, self-oriented panic gets replaced with concern for others. People come forth with good heart. Members of Cittaviveka’s international resident community have taken it upon themselves to make the perilous journey home to look after their ageing relatives. As far as the monastery itself goes, we have removed our 'required requisites' list, thinking that it's better if people donate food to those in greater need. Throughout Britain, people have been volunteering at a rate of three per second to act as assistance workers to support the National Health Service (more than 400,000 in one day alone.) In the wider world, medics have come out of retirement; hotels opened their doors for relief accommodation; drinks manufacturers used their alcohol to produce free sanitary gel. Virtual gatherings were already happening the day before I left the retreat, and now online Dhamma programs are getting rolled out. (See your local and national Dhamma centres.) And as for the economy, for whose welfare we were receiving austerity budgets – that has had to break its rules. Money always was just a promise – isn’t it time to make it into the promise to support our human welfare? Can there be a discussion around that, rather than a decision made by a few? Maybe rather than return to business as usual, we'll have to make the economy (from the Greek 'house management') fit the ecology (='house knowledge’). It might be good to really get to know what our house is before we manage it.

On that note, the last comment I have to make is to reiterate another phrase: 'Maybe Nature, internal as well as environmental, is calling us out of our selfishness.' Let's bear in mind where coronavirus came from. Not to stop at 'China'; but to point out that covid-19, along with HIV, Ebola, SARS and MERS, is a virus that has mutated from a pathogen that infects wild animals (and that they can cope with). When humans plunder the fragments of wilderness that are left and kill the few animals that remain (only four percent of all land mammals are still wild) these pathogens transmute and transfer to people. With lethal effect. Isn't it time to learn something? Not just to create a new vaccine (until the next virus mutates and floods the population), but to call a halt to the needless and suicidal destruction of the biosphere. It seems that the wildfires, hurricanes and floods didn't hit hard enough; but now a grim heavenly messenger is driving the point home. We're creatures of this Earth: if we can't offer support, we have to at least respect each other's right to live. 

And yes, now is the time to meditate. The skill is to not deny fear, but to steady awareness in the body, then encourage it to grow bigger than the fear. From this the heart of compassion gains ground.

Some tips:

Sit steady and upright and establish your awareness in the presence of your body. Not in a particular spot, but in the living presence of being here. Shift attention away from agitated or tense areas of your body. Being with the tide of your breathing might make this more comfortable.

Draw awareness into whatever seems to be the centre of your body then, as things stabilise, relax whatever is around that centre. Extend your awareness to edges of areas that are tense and agitated, as if you are gently applying warmth to frozen tissues. Stay with this until your entire body feels balanced and at ease.

Feel to the edge of your body and sense the space around that. 
No pressure. Open. Feel wrapped by that space.

Bring to mind that the body is vulnerable and feel protective towards it. This is not defence – which operates in terms of fear of 
the other and what might be, but protection – which gathers around what is valuable and loveable.

Bring to mind other people, in their laughter, intelligence and sorrow, and extend that protective sense to them. Let the extent of ‘other people’ widen to include more. 

Bring to mind other creatures, in their living contexts – fish leaping and flowing through fresh water; land animals foraging, resourceful and alert; birds swooping through the skies. See them as intrinsically valuable and marvellous. 

Bring to mind the resilient plant life that feeds and shelters creatures and fertilises the Earth. See this too as intrinsically valuable and marvellous.

Consider any action that you can undertake to respect, protect or support others.