15. Being True To Oneself
Clearly, as humans, we live in a world not of our making. We are forced, if you will, by biological nature to participate in our own existence. By necessity we are compelled to eat, drink, and interrelate—but the intensity and contradiction pressed onto human experience gets unimaginably dark.
It’s nearly impossible to hold our hearts open while imagining the daily existence of a child prostitute, or a kid strung out on crack or heroin, wasting away on some city street. Or what it must be like to be one of the hundreds of wrongly accused awaiting execution on America’s death rows. Or to feel the anguish of one of the two million girls subjected to genital mutilation each year.
It’s no wonder that so many people find it more difficult to embrace life here on earth and engage their humanness than to seek a better life beyond this world and follow spiritual paths that espouse escapes from this hell. A compassionate response to suffering understands our human drive toward escape.
The Dalai Lama of Tibet speaks of a fellow Buddhist monk in his homeland whom he greatly admired. He explained that this monk, known as the “Weeper,” was given his name because he was so attuned to the suffering of others that he often wept. The Dalai Lama was deeply inspired by the Weeper's highly developed compassion.
Of course, crying all the time does not describe your stereotypical well-adjusted spiritual citizen. In fact, in most circles such a person would likely be evaluated as severely traumatized, in denial of some dysfunction, and very likely prescribed anti-depressants. If the condition persisted, as it did with the Weeper, it’s possible the person would be committed to a psychiatric hospital and medicated even further.
Yet somehow this weeping monk was an inspiration to the Dalai Lama himself. Simply stated, choosing to liberate freedom as a way of life requires a remarkable appreciation for both compassion and non-conformity—the art of being true to onself.